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What makes Vienna a success in terms of contemporary art? Home to the curator of the next Documenta, one of the most well respected company collections (the Generali Foundation), several institutions offering challenging programmes and, not least, a growing number of internationally recognised artists: Elke Krystufek, Mathias Poledna (now on view at Witte de With), Josef Dabernig, Florian Pumhösl, Gelitin and many others. Christian Höller describes the cultural situation of the city, revisits the idea of the so-called ‘federal curator’ and concludes that the hope for the future lies in alternative initiatives and sub-scenes.‘Vienna’s Art Miracle’. Twenty years ago, this headline in the German magazine art put the city back on the map of international contemporary art, from which it had essentially vanished at the time.1 Admittedly, the main focus was on the New Painting boom which in Austria too had begin to take hold at the time – be it in the form of Neo Geo, new informal abstraction or the Junge Wilden. All other artistic currents – from media art to the more recent conceptual approaches that were also taking shape during this period and which now far outshine the painting of the time – were omitted from this miraculous discovery. At all events, from this point on, Vienna was internationally rehabilitated as a ‘happening city’, allowing it to begin a steady rise, a development which seems – in terms of vitality and diversity, new institutions and market activity – still to be in progress.At the time, however, Austria’s handling of its own art scene and its attempts to situate that scene within its own art history were anything but uncomplicated. Even Actionism, the country’s only significant post-war avant-garde, had, at the time of the ‚ ‘art miracle’, more or less disappeared from public consciousness, only to be gradually rediscovered from the late 1980s. Today, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (MUMOK) possesses an extensive Actionism archive, and the periodic outrage over ‘scandalous’ artists like Otto Muehl or Hermann Nitsch is the only reminder of this movement’s former explosive potential. Apart from knee-jerk incrimination by far-right political parties and the tabloid press, the legacy of Actionism has long since secured its place in the pantheon of Modernism, even within Austria itself. This contrasts with the situation two decades ago, when gaining recognition – be it for Actionism, conceptual art, feminist approaches or media art – still usually required a detour via the international art world.Not long after the feature in art, an issue of Kunstforum International magazine appeared with the title An Island Called Austria.2This referred not least to the country’s ominous isolation from the rest of the world, although from then on, a progressive opening did begin to take place. During this phase, some important work was done by both the Secession and the so-called 20er Haus, a MUMOK side-project dedicated to younger artists. But the main credit for freeing Austrian art from its insularity was to go to a number of new institutions founded from the mid-1980s. The Generali Foundation (known until 1988 as The EA-Generali Foundation), Kunsthalle Wien (since 1992), and the Pakesch and Metropol galleries were those primarily responsible for ending the isolation of Vienna’s art scene by presenting current movements in contemporary art and their key representatives (from Martin Kippenberger to Mike Kelley) in the city for the first time.A decisive contribution to opening up and internationalizing the Austrian art scene was also made by an innovative funding model launched in 1992 with the appointment of so-called ‘federal curators’. With two-year tenure, two art officials were given the means to provide direct and uncomplicated support for pioneering projects and initiatives, including infrastructure funding. This meant that money for exhibitions, lecture series or the founding of (small) institutions was more readily available than had previously been the case. During this period, institutions such as Kunstraum Wien (1994–1996) and Depot (founded in 1994 and still existing today though in a different guise) performed a mediating role (often belatedly) that had been neglected by the larger state and municipal institutions. Over time, this theory-driven, overtly self-critical approach filtered back to the larger institutions, which gradually reasserted their defining presence in discourse, something they had previously only possessed to a limited degree. In 1999, after three two-year periods, the federal curator programme came to an end, and arts funding again became the direct responsibility of the arts department at the ministry of culture with its specially appointed advisory committees.3 What remains is an awareness of the potential for independent initiatives situated outside the major institutions – something that was entirely at odds with the authoritarian principle of official culture funding that prevailed well into the 1990s. From this point, the local art scene was marked by an increase in diversity and heterogeneity.

Made in Vienna

Today, hardly anyone talks about the ‘Vienna Art Miracle’. Over the years, however, there has been a continual need to provide cross-sections and overviews for a public that has learned to appreciate Vienna as an ‘art location’. And the last two decades have seen numerous such attempts to map out the scene, in exhibitions, catalogues, books and magazines. The Junge Szene-shows at the Secession (from 1983), exhibitions like Coming Up – Junge Kunst in Österreich (MUMOK, 1996), the emerging artists-series at the Essl Collection (2000–2003) and the first two shows in the Lebt und arbeitet in Wien-series (Kunsthalle Wien, 2000 and 2005) were all attempts at charting terrain whose ongoing diversification makes it harder and harder to represent. Such attempts have also been made in the media, as in the Austria Wien publication by Springer (1995), the Szene Wien issue of art (1995) and the Einrichten Österreich issue of Neue Bildende Kunst (1997), helping to provide discursive backing for an increasingly vigorous scene.4 It is worth noting that most of these overviews focussed more on compiling than defining – something which in more recent cases has repeatedly led to misunderstandings.The Lebt und arbeitet in Wien (lives and works in Vienna) shows initiated by Kunsthalle Wien and delegated to international curators is symptomatic of this. The aim is to highlight the local scene so as to confirm Vienna’s position on the art world map. Among other things, this means demonstrating the pedigree of locally produced art, its ability to connect with leading art world centres. For the curator, the challenge thus consists in making that which exists locally appear in no way inferior to the global. The objective is to make the local scene appear as a creative and diversified hub within the wide world of art. The Lebt und arbeitet in Wien-shows have repeatedly been criticized for the lack of transparency in their selection procedure. But the basic concept itself appears paradoxical (unless of course it is understood as a critique of the city and its institutions). Indeed, ‘lives and works in Vienna’ as a linking or even shaping element can hardly be more than an empty placeholder. Moreover, both shows brought together a considerable number of artists who had built an international reputation in the preceding years – without any kind of location-specific promotion. The neo-conceptualist, mainly film-, video- and installation-based approaches of Florian Pumhösl, Dorit Margreiter, Jun Yang, Constanze Ruhm and Markus Schinwald were featured, as was the pinup girl of post-actionist painting, Elke Krystufek, and the widely successful art world boy-group Gelatin (now renamed Gelitin). From the mid-1990s, all of these artists – like many others born between 1965 and 1975, not to mention the older generation born in the 1950s – had begun to widen their radius and establish contact with the international scene, leading to their participation in many biennials and other large-scale exhibitions. And these artists have long ceased to rely on representative cross-sections, looking back instead on a series of notable solo shows outside Austria – as illustrated by the lasting success of Ines Doujak, Mathias Poledna, Josef Dabernig, Andreas Fogarasi, Carola Dertnig, Marko Lulic or Martin Beck. In the case of all those mentioned, this success was achieved by individual practices consistently pursued and situated within international art discourse.

Multi-tasking

In this context of ‘city-mapping’, representative overviews seem less important than the active local scenes. Cross-fertilization and anchoring in the form of education, the emergence of sub-scenes, and corresponding media provide a critical counterpoint, like the periodicals Parnass, Frame, springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst (since 1995) and more recently Spike Art Quarterly (since 2004), e-zines like artmagazine.cc and independent television from Okto TV.The last decade has also seen a number of changes in the educational situation at state art academies. In Vienna, both the Academy of Fine Art and the University of Applied Arts have undergone ever-increasing diversification, rejuvenation and internationalization of the courses on offer. Both academies have also recently begun to operate as financially independent entities, meaning they are no longer directly answerable to the ministry of education. Over recent years, there has also been a marked increase in competition for attention and visibility in the city, with the two academies tirelessly organizing events, be they small exhibitions, lecture series or the six-monthly ritual of the master class shows. As far as students are concerned, the crucial factor in this competitive situation is dealing adequately with the resource of subjectivity. The ability to multi-task, although still not anchored in the education system, is now a basic prerequisite for any production process, cultural or otherwise. The apparent effortlessness with which young artists today bridge highly diverse media fields and genres seems to correspond only too well with the demand for flexibility that shapes economic life in general. Be it as flexible personality, fulfilling multiple roles, or simply as a reservoir of chaotic creative energy – in all these capacities, creative subjectivity has long become a basic requirement for adaptable cultural producers. Also as a critical response to the powerful processes of globalisation.Under such conditions, the formation of sub-scenes appears more than natural. Seven years ago, for example, a small independent scene in the field of digital video and music production took shape under the label Austrian Abstracts. In retrospect, these seven years reveal interesting developments. Whereas at the time (around 1999), a first comprehensive platform was provided by the Diagonale festival of Austrian film, this bundled presence has now begun to distribute itself across a wide range of channels. Today, the Abstracts field confidently spans avant-garde, animation and short films, as well as extending to more conventional exhibition scenarios with no particular affinity for new media. In this field, the aura of cultural novelty seems passé. Perhaps a separate genre label only makes sense for as long as it is a matter of promoting innovations and gaining acceptance for work that is unfamiliar and outside established canons. The Abstraction Now exhibition at k/haus in Vienna (2003) used a split model – a tactically wise move – holding up the abstraction label on the one hand, while pursuing the links between this scene and non-electronic fields on the other. A prime example of this approach was the accompanying film show Maths in Motion that situated recent electronic productions within the context of 90 years of avant-garde film history, opening up a broad discursive field.Breaking out of former niches and sub-scenes in this way is not uncommon in the current art scene. Most recently, the Postmediale Kondition show (Neue Galerie Graz and ARCO Madrid 2006) represented an attempt to open up the designated field of media art by examining the mixing and overlapping of diverse media fields in the work of around 40 young Austrian artists. Conversely, the major institutions are currently gathering niches and sub-scenes under their mantles, thus affirming their particular existence – even if they do so inadvertently. Since the opening of MuseumsQuartier Wien in 2001, for example, a whole series of mini-initiatives and mini-institutions have begun to settle in the ‘quartier21’ zone – initiatives which would previously have been considered as part of the lively subculture that was spread across the whole city. Today, these small-scale enterprises are hosted in the ‘Fischer-von-Erlach Wing’, the outer casing of MuseumsQuartier, positioned as a pulsating outpost that signals vitality and fluctuation. The tenants of the niches spread over the venue’s ‘sub cultural’ outer skin range from record shop to project office, from fashion boutique to Internet platform, from pop archive to organic cuisine. These micro-institutions really do provide a dynamic exterior and a varied programme, but in the long run one cannot help feeling that their main function is to enhance the image of an otherwise static and monolithic organization. The use of an overall brand (MQ and q21) seems to represent an attempt to cultivate an aura of diversity, or even unruliness.This interplay of centralization and distancing can also be observed within the broader art market. The last five years have seen a significant wave of consolidation – noticeable for example in the emergence of two distinct ‘gallery districts’ on Eschenbachgasse (1st District) and Schleifmühlgasse (4th District) which are now outdoing the old-established galleries in the city centre. The creation of the viennAfair art fair, which took place for the first time in 2005 in a new building at the Vienna trade fair site, has also contributed to the desired and very real upswing. By contrast, it is still a number of alternative initiatives, ‘from below’ so to speak, that ensure ongoing dynamism and diversity within the art scene. The position occupied in the second half of the 1990s by spaces like Bricks & Kicks or Brasilica has now been filled by locations such as dreizehnzwei (specialized in video and photography) and auto – der neue kunstraum. The latter in particular has, in its two years of existence, presented a rich and varied programme ranging from adventurous individual artists like Hans Scheirl and Katrina Daschner through to project series, such as that on ‘Surrealism today’. Together with established alternative institutions like Kunsthalle Exnergasse (since 1989), IG Bildende Kunst or the popular Kunstbuero and Kunsthalle 8 (including the fashionable futuregarden bar), these spaces prevent the diversification of the art scene from coming to a standstill. Or from succumbing to overhasty re-centralization of the kind that results from the usual institutional dynamic. The variability of sub-scenes and the repeated revitalization of alternative activities continue to play an important role in guaranteeing the ongoing mobility of the institutional framework. Meanwhile, the big institutions can be relied on to make sure another ‘art miracle’ does not occur anytime soon.Notes1. art, February 1986.2. Kunstforum International, May/June 1987.3. In 2004, the state’s art and media department had a funding budget of 73.39 million Euro, in addition to 133.65 million Euro in subsidies for state theatres. By comparison, the 2004 funding budget for Vienna’s municipal culture office, responsible for both the arts and science, was just 171 million Euro.4. See Springer 5-6/1995, art (November 1995) and Neue Bildende Kunst 5/1997.Vienna’s art scene online:Weense kunstscene online:Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Secession Generali Foundation Kunsthalle Wien Depot springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst Spike Art Quarterly Parnass – Das Kunstmagazin MuseumsQuartier Wien quartier21 viennAfair (International Contemporary Artfair)auto – der neue kunstraum dreizehnzwei (Kunstraum) Kunstbuero und Kunsthalle 8Kunsthalle Exnergasse IG Bildende Kunst netbase (Institute for New Culture Technologies)