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Austria gives go-ahead for cultural events to restart

Austria's government said on Friday it would allow cultural events for up to 100 spectators from the end of the month as the country continues emerging from its coronavirus lockdown.

Published: 16 May 2020 12:15 CEST

Austria gives go-ahead for cultural events to restart

A poster announcing the 100th edition of the Salzburger Festspiele, due to take place in August 2020:BARBARA GINDL / APA / AFP

The government had come under criticism for failing to present a plan for reopening the country's vital cultural sector with its top culture official, Ulrike Lunacek, resigning on Friday.

Shortly after Lunacek's resignation, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober announced in a hastily convened press conference that events seating up to 100 people would be allowed from May 29.

The number of spectators permitted will go up to 250 people from July 1, when cinemas will also be able to reopen.

From August 1, events for up to 500 people will be allowed, Anschober added.

Larger scale events of up to 1,000 people may also be allowed from August 1 provided organisers devise safety measures that meet the government's approval.

The prestigious Salzburg Festival of music and drama will go ahead this August but in a reduced format and without many of the celebrations planned to mark its 100th anniversary, according to the regional government.

The government says it will also publish a framework for performance rehearsals and film productions to minimise the risk of the coronavirus spreading.

The culture sector had this week demanded a rescue plan for the industry, including compensation for ticket losses.

Lunacek, a member of the Green party and former vice-president of the European parliament, had come under heavy criticism for what many in the sector said was the government's insufficient support for venues and artists.

“I find myself obliged to note that I cannot do any more, said Lunacek at a press conference announcing her retirement. “I have not been given a chance,” she added.

Museums and libraries started to reopen from Friday as steps taken since mid-April to ease the lockdown continue.

The country of 8.8 million people has so far recorded more than 16,000 novel coronavirus cases with 628 deaths.

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Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews — also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite? Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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