DEMOK: ACT AND SPEAK: Democracy Under Pressure
It is high time to strengthen democratic action. Artists, in particular, are called upon to actively oppose the erosion of democratic structures through teaching, practice, and community-building. As the Academy of Fine Arts, it is clearly our duty to commit ourselves to preserving and safeguarding a democratic society. Starting in October 2026, the long-term DEMOK program will actively invite participants to help shape it and get involved.
The educational mission of the arts and universities must be to preserve, envision, and shape a future society that is better and free—actively and through resistance. As individual institutions operating in isolation within their own interest groups, no one will be able to defend democracy against the hypercapitalist actors.
What we urgently need is a practice-oriented education that imparts artistic language, constructive and resistant thinking, and knowledge of civic rights and duties in the arts—an education that makes the empowerment of the collective visible and treats it as a tool in the struggle against the unjust distribution of capital. Democracy has always been anticolonial. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the answer has always been the same: a democratic movement must take shape through education and those who impart it. The academic world was called upon to rise up and join early anticolonial and antifascist movements in order to support subaltern and emancipatory discourse, as well as artists who envisioned a democratic, postcolonial society yet to be born. Artists therefore play an important role in preserving and creating democratic Forms of Society. That is also what we want: to reach out from the academy and into the consciousness of the academy.
The aula will be open as an event venue throughout the week and can be used free of charge.
Students can actively participate, enrol in the courses offered and also contribute to the content and structure of the Aula.
All programme events take place in the Aula and can be attended free of charge, with or without prior registration.
Program:
Monday, 12.10.
16 h Tai Chi
17 h Input and general discussion by organising team
18 h Dinner
19 h Paul Feigenfeld/ Moderation: Axel Stockburger
21 h DJ Line Up by Nico Schleicher
Tuesday 13.10.
14 h Oliver Hangl on Unsafe interventions in public space
18 h Natascha Strobl/ Moderation: Alexander Martos
20 h Workshop on printmaking by Chen Yifei and dissident zines
Wednesday 14.10.
18 h Widerständige Lieder, Maren Rahman/ Dinner, Punkfurterküche Marianne Eberl
Thursday 15.10.
15 h Workshop Kenneth Constance Loe „Papa, Romeo, Oscar, November, Echo“
18 h Workshop Ertuğrul Bayraktar, Anftifaschischtes Training
20 h Workshop on protest transparent and puppet production
Friday 16.10.
16 h Thomas Zimmermann (Jacobin), Moderation: Johan Hartle
18 h Inna Shevchenko (FEMEN), Moderation: Ingeborg Erhart
20 h drinks, food and music