Happy New Year everyone by the way! This is traditionally celebrated in Vienna with the New Year’s Concert, for which Austria’s 1% likes to dust themselves off and show up dressed up to hear the same songs over and over once more. The show has been taking place continuously at the turn of the year since 1939, probably on the initiative of the recognized art-loving AH (many older people still have fond memories of him) and is a TV event for the whole world. This year it almost turned out differently. Activists of the last generation had bought tickets and wanted to unveil a banner with the inscription “Two years to go” in front of the running TV camera (regarding 50 million viewers). They also had the scene-typical glue with them. For the first time, the New Year’s concert of the Vienna Philharmonic would probably have been interrupted. It turned out differently. Plainclothes officers recognized and arrested the activists, and the morning concert went smoothly. The Philharmonic thanked the Pole for the “great commitment” because it was possible to prevent “disruption of the concert, which stands for solidarity, hope and peace”. This would be a good illustration of one of the current main contradictions.
Art vs. climate – seriously?
The classical concert business in Austria is a sounding museum without much impact. You can listen to »Be embraced, millions!« a hundred times and still like the border fence around Europe. Aesthetic experiences do not automatically translate into consciousness – even political ones. Sometimes the unthinking social pressure of wanting to belong to a “society” prevails, the rules of which one internalizes and for which one supports oneself unquestioningly, for example by pinning patent leather shoes on the necks of those at risk of poverty. How does it feel, this contradiction between the noble values of high art and your own, sometimes dirty, working life? Just sneak into the foyer of the State Opera and look around, it doesn’t have to be the opera ball. Those active in the classical music scene do not like to hear or address this discrepancy, although they are all artists enough to recognize this very well. But you don’t address that, you stay behind the desk in elegant silence and bow obediently.
But what, dear Franz Welser-Möst and Co, when it’s slowly too late for this hunched posture? “Two years,” says the Last Generation, would remain to turn things around. After that, it may already be too late, by then the pollutant emissions are so high that the climate has reached tipping points that can no longer be reversed. Then humanity may have ruined its own livelihood and there will probably be no more concerts either. Only, we can’t know. While there is no scientific evidence that the partially subsidized expansion of passive houses and the increased use of electric cars would be enough to stop the catastrophe – but hey, hope is allowed, right? Maybe not, because doing nothing is no longer an option, and that has long smacked of criminal failure to provide assistance.
But then what should be done? When activists, like those of the last generation, disrupt the enjoyment of art by others, be it in the concert hall or in the art museum, the first thing they do is arouse anger. But does it create awareness? A survey of those present at the Wiener Musikverein would probably not have found a single person who was not aware of the dramatic consequences of climate change. But knowledge rarely leads to action. If some now act with a morally justified fury and others feel caught, exposed and disturbed, then the legitimate question once more is how these two groups might jointly solve the problems that need to be solved together. On the other hand, without civil disobedience and disruption of established processes, nothing will surely happen. Every person who now has to open their bag at the entrance to a Viennese museum to check whether there are paint bags inside is reminded of the climate catastrophe. And that’s certainly not wrong. It’s just difficult and that’s why skug is happy to welcome activists of the last generation in the salon. In the typical skug style, which is critical and solidary at the same time, because the current hostilities once morest climate activists and the ostracism as »terrorists« are completely misguided. Artists and climate activists should not be divided, because climate protection is not a crime. More details regarding the skug talk on January 12, 2023 at 8 p.m. will soon be available on this page.
Music by indieaorta and Drug Searching Dogs
Eastern Austria’s most post-punk voice, accompanied by a guitar sound fatter than a 1970s flokati carpet, and precise on-the-nose drumming form the mix of indieaorta. Even people who don’t have an intravenous breakfast every day sometimes ask themselves how mental life is today. indieaorta diligently ask questions and use everyday examples such as »Netflix« or »Electric Porsche« to show how complicated everything has become. Packing that into catchy songs is real art. Raising awareness through party punk is slowly becoming a series in the skug salon. One day in the not too distant future, indieaorta will be holding courses on how legitimate aversions aren’t just boozed away, but sublimated and then enema’d by the idiots. In the Salon there is the Pro-Seminar, certainly loud and smart and in the rhiz. Here to heat up the anticipation:
Who let the noise in? The Drug Searching Dogs have a keen sense of what is being countered in a nonsensical way. drugs for example. Because in the »War On Drugs« intoxication is forbidden and taboo, but oppression is promoted. To scream out, and that’s what the dogs do once they’ve been released from the chain. With a sound that kneads your guts when the drum machine and electric bass knock out the last certainties. It will have been clear later: it was the sound, the noise, the drone that finally got us going into the new year, because everything before that was a limp feel-good bubble. Political discourse and live music to make you pop your cork are rounded off with the skug DJ line. All of this from 7:30 p.m. until late at night in Vienna’s rhiz on January 12, 2023. We look forward to seeing you!
