In times of spatial distancing, we as authors are called upon all the more to uphold language as a connecting element, which cannot be constrained by walls, income limits, or national borders. Language intervenes, erupts, reveals, disturbs, speaks.

In this spirit, the Institute of Language Arts contributes a diverse array of projects to this year’s Festival: The students developed texts and poems, linguistic-visual reference objects (including a H.C. Artmann tool), virtual essays, and audio plays, which will be broadcasted in a cooperation with Radio 80000 (“es gibt diese namen / es gibt diese wut” for the think tank “Politik und Gefühl” of brut Wien, Literaturhaus Wien, and the Burg Hülshoff ­– Center for Literature).

The collective projects share a border-crossing, disobedient, resistant, and at times stubborn language: short text miniatures that intervene in the reading flow, divert it, distract it, focus the view on issues beyond the virtual gathering and ask which (new types of) public can be generated.

Prof. Ferdinand Schmatz, Prof. Gerhild Steinbuch, Institut für Sprachkunst