Margarete Lamb Faffelberger Livres

Contemporary Austria habitually presents itself as the «cultural nation», or Kulturnation , where the promotion of culture is both of national and economic importance. In 1999, the government stated the value of culture in Austria as «Our cultural heritage, contemporary culture, and art constitute major factors for both our own definition of cultural nation as well as the foreign perception of Austria.» Since the 1950s, Austria has nurtured a romantic attitude toward its past glory and embraced a cultural conservatism that hindered many Austrians from developing an open mind toward – and interest in – cultural criticism, artistic experimentation, and innovation. Therefore, most state funding continues to be channeled toward Austria’s established theaters and artists rather than the writers and filmmakers, who make significant contributions to the public discourse on cultural amnesia and historical revisionism by challenging with varying intensity and on differing aesthetic platforms Austria’s misguided self-promotion, such as Kulturnation par excellence.

Visions and Visionaries is an apt title for this volume of essays on contemporary Austrian literature and film, because this collection offers insightful discussions of a gallery of significant authors and cultural figures. It also investigates important issues of style and genre, and portrays questions of Austrian identity and culture in rich contexts of recent literary and multi-media developments, cross-cultural interactions, and historical forces. This book encompasses relevant trends and notions from the past - especially the complexities of lingering effects of the Nazi era - along with issues of the future - in particular the present and anticipated interactions of culture and cyberspace. The essays are enhanced by poems by Evelyn Schlag and Gerhard Kofler.

The essays in this book document how the impressive body of literary works and films created by women writers and filmmakers has greatly enriched the Austrian cultural scene since 1945. Their contributions, however, were only marginally recognized during the 1950s and early 1960s and remain hidden within the shadows of the body of art created by their male counterparts in the process of reestablishing Austria's post-World War II cultural identity. The situation changed during the 1970s, when the literary and film texts of the younger generation began to strongly assert feminist views and issues. The texts of contemporary Austrian women writers and filmmakers were directed towards social and ethnic consciousness-raising and are united by their radically new use of language.

Valie Exports Filme und Elfriede Jelineks Literatur gehören seit Ende der sechziger Jahre zu den bedeutendsten Beiträgen der feministischen Avantgarde Österreichs. Ihr engagierter Feminismus und die subversive Ästhetik der Avantgarde evozierte eine zumeist negative Haltung der Presse-Kritik, die sich zu Hetzkampagnen und einem sensationslüsternen Zeitungsjournalismus auswuchs. Durch diese Praxis entzog sich die Institution Zeitungskritik jedoch ihrer gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung als öffentlicher Instanz, da ihr jegliche Vermittlungsfunktion von Kunst abhanden kam. Die problematische Presse-Rezeption der Werke Exports und Jelineks reflektiert die schwere Krise, in der sich die feuilletonistische Kunst-Kritik heute befindet.Valie Export's films and Elfriede Jelinek's literature are considered to be the most important contributions to Austria's feminist avant-garde movement. However, their active feminist stand and their subversiv aesthetics evoked mainly negative reactions by the press. The clash between the provocative content with its alternative message reflected in the aesthetics of avant-garde art and the press as a voice of mainstream society demonstrates a climax of the problematic situation of the media's art criticism in contemporary Austria and Germany.