STUBENrein

6.9.–22.9.

Caught between showing and hiding, displaying and retreating, interacting in the public realm and maintaining a private sphere, the place of home is more closely linked with the search for personal meaning than ever before. Today living spaces—and often also working spaces—have become arenas for manifesting an individual’s (desired) identity.

A temporary reappointment of private and public spaces in each of the fourteen municipalities of the Murau region aims to make culture accessible in spaces outside established art institutions and to develop ideas for (re-)designing the social community. As part of the festival STUBENrein, some forty artists and experts on the everyday engage with audiences at venues ranging from a recycling center, a vicarage, a local bar, an empty administrative building, or the garage of a transport company to a retirement home or an unused office space. The word Stube, which has meanings ranging from “sitting room” to “home,” is used for its sociological implications and not its cultural and historical relevance.

Taking place for the fourth time this year, the festival measures the “temperature” of the cultural landscape in the region of Murau by using methods borrowed from the fields of art and sociology. In the 2019 edition, a core question asks to what extent the term weniger (less) should take on new connotations and meanings. What kinds of alliances can counter lost regional identities, the disappearance of long-standing professions, the pressure of self-optimization, digitally driven addictive and avoidant behaviors, a glut of consumer goods, and population shifts?

Events