Interview with Ekaterina Degot, Chief Curator of steirischer herbst

Interview with Chief Curator Ekaterina Degot, steirischer herbst

DCI visited the internationally acclaimed art and performance festival steirisher herbst to explore their focus on art addressing controversial issues of our time. At the festival we met with the new Chief Curator Ekaterina Degot, who is the first non-german speaking curator for the festival.

Ekaterina Degot (1958, Moscow) is a Russian art historian, art writer, and curator. In addition to having worked as a senior curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Degot curated the Russian Pavillon at the 2001 Venice Biennale. She has held teaching positions at European and American universities and is a frequent contributor to international art journals. Degot was Artistic Director of Bergen Assembly in 2013, and of The Academy of the Arts of the World in 2014. She was appointed ‘Intendant’ of steirischer herbst in 2017, thus beginning her five-year tenure as director and chief curator of the Austrian art festival.

Read DCI’s notes from steirischer herbst.

How do you see your own role in steirischer herbst, and how do you approach it?

I changed the wording of my position into ‘director and chief curator’, as I see the program as strongly curated, by me and my curatorial team. What we are doing is creating a narrative in the town of Graz, using is a stage, as a tribune, as a grandiose backdrop for installative as well as performative works positioned in public space, but also in well-known buildings. This narrative is political and describes the contradictions of our time, around the controversial title of Volksfronten.

Considering the role that steirischer herbst has played in Austrian cultural life for the past many years, what changes have you intended to bring with this new iteration?

We are about to activate something which was always present in steirischer herbst – its ability to address political and social controversies, to disrupt the quiet life of a very nice and beautiful town, to bring us forward, and this with the participation of works in between art forms, in between genres, – interdisciplinary works, in overwhelming majority of the cases completely new.

In what way do you believe that art and culture can play a role in addressing the challenges that face societies today – if that is the case?

If art understand itself as a form of public statement, it can play a very strong social role. Still, it is art, it does not and should not provide answers, what it does is making things visible, shaping them and the audience at the same time, and creating discussion.

What can we expect from the future iterations of steirischer herbst?

Certainly, a continuation of political angle, in relation to other issues of our contemporary life. And we will certainly work with the psychogeography and history of the city and region, which is on the border of the former political East, be it historical Ottoman Empire of Yugoslavia. We will be looking, in Graz, for something that is relevant for the whole world, and addressing these issues.

About steirischer herbst

“steirischer herbst was founded in the pivotal year of 1968, in opposition to the resurgence of nationalist cultural initiatives gaining traction at the time. This founding moment drew upon a tradition of international modernism in music, theater, and visual art—which the Nazis had labeled “degenerate” three decades before—and the belief that it could (still) provide a bulwark against the deep-seated remnants of the totalitarian mentality in the world”

For further information about steirischer herbst, visit their website.

DCI’s Nikolaj Vedde visited steirischer herbst.