Context

In Conversation
Jörg Heiser and Sandro Droschl 

Video

Please note that this video is available in German.

In the context of aktuelle kunst in graz 2021, Jörg Heiser talks with Sandro Droschl about the exhibition Europe: Ancient Future. Among other things, they pick up on the main façade of the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, which has been transformed into the Temple of Europe (2021), and turn to various historical interpretations of Greek antiquity. Droschl and Heiser establish a critical dialectic that centers the conversation on crucial concepts of the exhibition, such as freedom and equality. The two draw attention to Aristotle, among others, as an important thinker on democratic values and a theory of functioning community. On the other hand, they also discuss relations of violence and appropriation and ask how, not least, a good relationship can be established with the economy, which seems to increasingly take over European discourse. 

Jörg Heiser is an art critic, curator and musician. He holds a professorship at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts, where he is dean and executive director of the Institute for Art in Context. He worked for twenty years as an editor for the art magazine frieze. Since 1997 he has written for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and also for Die Republik, Art Agenda, etc. His books include ​“Suddenly This Overview. What makes good contemporary art” (Ullstein/​Claassen, 2007), ​“Doppelleben Kunst und Popmusik” (Fundus/​Philo Fine Arts, 2016), most recently ​“Freiheit ist kein Bild” (Textem/​Edition Uhlenhorst Hamburg, 2021). Since 2004 curator of various group exhibitions (including Romantic Conceptualism, Kunsthalle Nuremberg and Bawag Foundation Vienna, 2007/8, catalog), most recently co-curator of the 2018 Busan Biennale in South Korea. The second album of the band La Stampa, of which he is a member, was released in 2018 by Vinyl Factory, London.

Sandro Droschl (*1970 Graz, lives in Graz) directs the new HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, which he recently opened with the exhibition Europe: Ancient Future.

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