We look back on a challenging year. For about half of the academic year 2019/20, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, like many other universities worldwide, was in distance mode. However, the physical closure of the University did not put an end to our work, but rather moved it to alternative spaces, mostly digital. Teaching, research, exchange and discourse do take place. This is sometimes exhausting and only feasible via detours, but it is essential and it is possible.

Every year, we use the end of the summer semester to present the students’ work and the results of the academic year to the public. We are doing the same this year—in an alternate mode. The Angewandte Festival is the ceremonial end of the academic year. We show what we are dealing with; it is diverse, expressive and often socio-politically charged. “We apply future” is the motto of the Angewandte, and this is visible in many contributions and works, even though the meaning of this slogan has been strongly challenged by the events of the past months.

This makes it all the more important to emphasize what we believe to be self-explanatory: We want to leave no doubt that, concerning the effects of the Corona crisis on the future of (art) universities, we regard physical presence, social exchange and the active, formative examination of physical materialities as indispensable and central to artistic inquiry.

We will return to the workshops and studios. We will again talk face to face, without a screen between each other, to exchange opinions and discuss controversies. And it will all be more important and valuable than ever before. We do not accept a drift into digital one-dimensionality and certainly not the authoritarian structures in a fragmented society of withdrawn, isolated people. This is what we are preparing for when we talk about shaping the future. 

Gerald Bast

Can a festival be transferred into digital space? We think “No”, because a festival comes to life through the meeting of people, from shared experiences and from the unexpected—from the festivity itself. The summer semester 2020 took place under difficult conditions. Workshops and studios were closed. Artistic production was entirely restricted to private space. And yet, we looked for forms of presentation to enable a discursive examination of the works that were created. The Angewandte Festival 2020 will take place.

The chosen setting  is based on the digital, but cannot be reduced to that. Many projects opted to display works in public space. The Festival thus spreads over the entire urban space, with advertising pillars, small trucks, billboards and shop windows acting as exhibition spaces for the students’ artistic works, which can be experienced while walking or cycling. By moving the Festival into digital spaces, we are by no means proclaiming a brave new world, but rather questioning the current situation critically, awake and curious.

Against this background we are looking forward to four Festival days and cordially invite you to visit the Festival website (angewandtefestival.at) regularly. There will almost always be something happening!

Lena Kohlmayr and Eva Maria Stadler with Elisabeth Falkensteiner and Martina Schöggl