Steirischer Herbst 2023 Festival Explores Ethics Through Four Group Shows in Graz

The 2023 edition of the Steirischer Herbst festival, titled Humans and Demons, opened in Graz with Russian director Ekaterina Degot curating an exploration of ethical boundaries during dark times. Running through October 15 at various venues, the festival presents four group shows that combine historical figures from Graz with contemporary artworks. Demon Radio occupies a former call center featuring Zuleikha Chaudhari's 2018 work Rehearsing Azaad Hind Radio, which examines Indian nationalist broadcasts from WWII Berlin alongside 2016 student protests in Modi's India. Villa Perpetuum Mobile at Forum Stadtpark focuses on physicist Stefan Marinov through installations by Vadim Fishkin and Pedro Gómez-Egaña. Onset (2023) by Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich screens at Demon Radio, imagining Russian military air bases through CGI and medieval demonology. Church of Ruined Modernity presents Dana Kavelina's Mother Lemberg, Mother Lviv (2023), a stop-motion animation about the 1941 Lviv pogroms. The fourth exhibition, Submarine Frieda in the Gries suburb, has drawn criticism for its approach to depicting the area's working-class residents. The festival interrogates how ethical frameworks shift under pressure, referencing Primo Levi's writings on dehumanization while examining contemporary threats from far-right politics to artificial intelligence.