TransAct statement

When I express my views as a producer in the field of culture then a certain professional ethic is involved which I do not want to subordinate to a straight mediating effect which wastes time and resources and which would certainly be inefficient and unpopular. This form of cultural commitment, which in recent years has found more tolerance in Austria than in Germany and which has given many conceptual and explicitly politically orientated artists the opportunity to perform or publish in Austria is an urgently necessary freedom in the face of populism and the wellness of communication which also dominate many current tendencies in art. 

These tendencies are the result of an economic theory whose political climate is not confined to Austria – the fears of the white middle-class for their jobs, their standard of living and their ethnically legitimised privileges, the consequent incitements about "foreign mafias", of being "overwhelmed by foreigners" or "social parasites" which, as so often, merely betray the coarse fantasies of those who project in this way.
It is clear to everyone that these projections are not new, that they point to a seamless historical continuity which does not only exist in the "voice of the people" but in the economic chauvinism which helps to produce them. I do not therefore want to confine my protest to symptoms such as Haider but to encourage an alliance directed against these tendencies.

In addition, I will appear and exhibit as frequently as possible in Austria because I declare my solidarity with everyone who is currently doing great political work in the country.

Alice Creischer
Artist