[Nettime-bold] NY SYMPOSIUM- April 20 -21

For immediate release:

MEDIA CONTACT: Andrea Schwan (212) 873 3284 andrea@andreaschwan.com

Full information: www.acfny.org

INAUGURAL SEASON PROGRAMMING AT AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM TO PRESENT A MULTI-FACETED VIEW OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS

Throughout the inaugural season of Spring/Summer 2002, programming at the Austrian Cultural Forum will encompass events in the performing arts, a series of exhibitions, vanguard film and video programs, lectures and symposia, and installations in a variety of new media throughout the public spaces of the institution's new building on East 52nd Street in New York City. Bringing together more than 100 artists in a variety of disciplines, these activities will be presented from April through June under the banner Transforming Modernity. In the words of Forum director Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, the festival will "illustrate what the guiding principles and priorities are for the future of the arts in Austria and internationally: collaboration, interdisciplinary experimentation, fluidity, and conscience directed toward challenging accepted notions and exploring possibilities for new ways to communicate."

Transforming Modernity is organized and produced by the Austrian Cultural Forum in collaboration with leading curators and experts from international arts institutions and universities. The Austrian Cultural Forum's programs are made possible by the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Austria. Additional generous funding for inaugural season programming is provided by the Federal Chancellery and the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture of the Republic of Austria as well as by the City of Vienna. The Forum also thanks Bank Austria, Austrian Airlines, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and Zumtobel Staff Lighting, Inc. for their valuable support.

In the field of the visual arts, the Forum will officially open its Main Gallery in April with the first of two new commissioned installations by Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich, collectively known as Granular Synthesis. The New York/Vienna-based new media duo, whose work represented Austria in the 2001 Venice Biennale, will create in April an "immersive environment" that literally envelopes visitors and suggests new ways to experience one's body in relation to space and sound.

Describing the duo's work, Hentschläger comments: "For an Austrian artist, the desire is to actually invade the restrictions of the past and expand the definition of art, of music, of sensual experience. Electronica is hot in Europe because it provides the ultimate opportunity to get beyond the hierarchies and the obsession with history that defines much of traditional culture there. What's interesting is that a great deal of inspiration for electronic music came from America -- from the Detroit sound, from hip-hop, and the commercial world. But when we bring our work back to the States, where generally anything new is cultivated and tendered, we find we are introducing something still not widely familiar."

Concurrent with the first Granular Synthesis installation, the Austrian Cultural Forum will host an ambitious international symposium exploring the electronica explosion. Titled Mediations: Archaeologies and Transformations in the Electronic Sphere, the program is organized by Timothy Druckrey, an independent curator and writer acclaimed for his investigations into the history and theory of media. The event will bring together for the first time a group of electronic artists and leading media experts from around the globe for discussion of ways in which representation and communication are being increasingly transformed everywhere by electronic culture, shaping the lives and attitudes of a generation willing to embrace continual transformation as an essential condition.