Welcome to the new academic year! We are pleased to invite you to today's semester welcome event at 4pm in the Courtyard at Schillerplatz. Come by, take the opportunity to get to know each other and exchange ideas. For all (new) staff members there will be the opportunity to get information at the welcome table. We would also like to draw the attention of the new students to the Orientation Days.
We have an epochally hot summer behind us, which gives us an impression of how serious the upheavals will be that lie ahead of us in the coming years. It is already appropriate to speak of a climate catastrophe in the light of forest fires, drought and crop failures. At the same time, we can say with certainty that all these developments will intensify even further in the coming years.
It is true that this situation is primarily a social and political challenge. However, it will continue to occupy us at the Academy in various forms of discursive, political, activist, and artistic intervention. In addition, this situation is associated with numerous organizational and infrastructural challenges that we will devote ourselves to. These include the cooling of rooms and the protection of climate-sensitive equipment and collection works. In addition, we are examining ways to deal with the extreme heat (work time models and cooling zones).
This crisis scenario is closely related to a second one. The budget situation for the next years is still highly uncertain. At the same time, it has been announced in various ways that we can expect significant cuts. These cuts endanger jobs and study programmes as well as funding. Universities like the Academy stand for discursive diversity, innovation perspectives and the opportunity to accompany inevitable social transformation processes with expertise. Hardly anything could be more important in this situation and we will do everything we can to defend the Academy and its programs. But at the moment we lack the guarantee from the Federal Government that the universities can be maintained in their current form. That is why we ask you to get involved in the public debate and stand up for the universities.
Also because of these challenges, the academic year begins with a week dedicated to democracy: From October 12 to 16, an action week with numerous events and formats will take place under the title DEMOK: ACT AND SPEAK. The workshop week and conference explore many facets of democracy under pressure and puts artistic and activist perspectives up for discussion that can help move democracy out of the defensive.
New professors The Academy is and remains a place for criticism and debate and for diverse perspectives on artistic practices. In this spirit, we are constantly developing. Therefore, it is particularly nice to point out new perspectives associated with the appointment of new professors.
In the winter semester, five new Professor_innen will begin at the academy: Sofia Boito will be based at the IKL with the professorship for Gender & Space. Claudia Larcher took up the newly created professorship for Post-Digital Art at the IBK. With Ulrike Müller, the Studio of Art and Image | Figuration is now again occupied on a long-term basis and Lutz Robbers will dedicate himself to the focus on architectural theory and architectural design at the IKA. Eve Tuck will set accents in the field of Indigenous Studies as a guest professor at the IKW. All new collleagues can be found here. Welcome, we look forward to working with you!
Visibility for art We are continuously exploring how we can contribute to further developing Vienna as an internationally significant location for the visual arts, also as part of the cooperation project Die Summe der einzelnen Teile. On Friday, December 4, we will discuss this question with internationally experienced protagonists of the art field. At 5 p.m., Kader Attia, Yilmaz Dziewior, Isabelle Graw, Fatima Hellberg and Stella Rollig will discuss the questions of how the synergies of the Viennese art field could be further enhanced and what role the art universities play in this process.
As part of the cooperation sponsered by Bank Austria, The Sum of Its Individual Parts, the Academy will also award eight graduation scholarships of 18,000 euros each as well as invite graduates of the Academy to create a sculpture in public space. The selected project will be installed in the public space between Karlsplatz and the Academy, providing artistic positions with extended visibility.
Visibility and publicity are crucial to underscore the relevance of your work! We are once again calling on you to propose book projects for our publication series. The call is aimed at all Academy members, colleagues and students. The publication series currently comprises 30 volumes, which can be viewed in the Academy Repository.
Congratulations We are very proud that students, alumni and staff members of the Academy have once again received numerous prizes, scholarships and honors.
For the second time, the scholarship A4 - Austrian Art Alumni Award was awarded by the BMFWF and Austria's public art universities to six outstanding graduates in the arts. On September 21, the Academy hosted the award ceremony. We congratulate Samira Fux, who, as a graduate of the Academy, will receive this scholarship endowed with 24,000 euros for her project Oben bleiben.
Congratulations to Jelena Micić on receiving the Marietta Blau Fellowship of the OeAD and BMFWF and Angelene Wong and Luis Ortiz on the Early Postdoc Fellowship as well as August Sarnitz on being awarded the Golden Cross of Honour for Services to Vienna.
Exhibitions and events We are starting the new academic year with three exhibitions. The exhibition Schwelle runs until October 18 at the Exhibit Gallery. It brings together positions by Academy graduates Ralo Mayer, Stine Ølgod, Maria Petschnig, Michaela Schweighofer, and Adrien Tirtiaux, who deal with the symbolic and physical boundaries that structure our actions – and in doing so put the exhibition spaces itself up for debate.
An epochal review and a preview of the possibilities of the new in art is the exhibition The Great Michelangelo Is Dead! Avant-Garde and Academicism. The exhibition, curated by Helmut Draxler, deals with the relationship between academicism and the avant-garde as well as with the cliché that the question of tradition and innovation can be easily assigned to this duality. In 1726, today's Academy of Fine Arts Vienna received its statutes based on the model of the Paris Academy. In this way, the exhibition invites visitors to engage with the history of art academies and reflects on the present with current artistic contributions.
The Rector invites all colleagues and students to a guided tour of the exhibition on Wednesday, November 18 at 1 p.m. Students and staff members of the Academy as well as their companions generally have free admission to the Academy's art collections and exhibitions. In addition, we would like to point out that there is the possibility of a membership card for students at the Gesellschaft der Freunde der bildenden Künste, which allows free admission to numerous museums in Vienna.
A third exhibition can be seen from Thursday, October 8 in Eschenbachgasse: Clay Commons – Unearthing Urban Grounds (Vienna ↔ Bangkok) is the result of a joint project by students and teachers from the Academy's Workshop for Molding and Casting Techniques and the Workshop for Ceramics of the Department of Industrial Design at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
This year's honoris causa conference will be opened on 19 November with Jan Machacek's AxelmannsFall. A performance on Alexander Popp, Rector of the Academy from 1941 - 1945. On 20 November, the focus will be on fascist art and literary history, graduates of the IKA and the Tiergarten in the Prater, on the grounds of which the Academy's sculpture building stands today.
This semester will once again culminate in our annual open days Rundgang. From 21 to 24 January 2027, the institutes and studios of the Academy will open their doors and offer insights, performances and lots of programs.
We are kicking off the new academic year ambitiously and are looking forward to the many initiatives, projects, and events.
We wish all students and colleagues a good start to the new academic year!