Austrian writer Clemens Berger and New York-based Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim will talk about Thomas Bernhard and other curioius personalities of international cultural life. They do this not as experts, but rather, from their personal interests (which may extend to a passionate obsession). This raises questions about crafting and establishing fields of interest outside of their own disciplines, and/or how this repertoire of forms and the requisite accumulation of knowledge can be of use in their own work. What, for example, makes Thomas Bernhard relevant for present-day writers and artists from Austria and beyond Europe? On the one hand interest in Bernhard will be considered, while on the other this Bernhardian curiosity is used as evidence that similar fields of interest can be negotiated – synchronously and diachronically – completely independent of one another, simultaneously, and at disparate geographical locations. Related considerations include the futility of being an artist; confusion, disturbance and delight in destruction; repetition as a formal creative method; artistic exaggeration as a source of insight and knowledge…
in English
Clemens Berger (*1979) is a writer. He lives and works in Vienna. Since 2009 he has been teaching literature at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and in 2009 he received the Burgenländischen Literaturpreis. He wrote the book Ein Versprechen von Gegenwart.
Sung Hwan Kim (*1975) is an artist. He lives and works in New York City. Kim has had exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and New Museum in New York.