“As an artist, you are a kind of luxury,” a Carinthian ballet dancer once said. It is not uncommon for art and culture to fall victim first and foremost to the idea of austerity. Our five nominees for the “Heads of the Year” election from Villach and Klagenfurt show us how indispensable a cultural balance can be in times of pandemic and war.
Verena Schellander from Wernberg “strolls over paper with a pencil”, as she puts it. The freelance illustrator has already published several children’s books. In 2019 her first children’s book “Sieben schön Schirme” was published, which was awarded the Carinthian Children’s Book Prize. In it, children can learn regarding shapes and colors in a playful way. Another book entitled “One. Two. Egg. – Ella makes breakfast”, which was published last year, deals with the topic of “eating and cooking together in the family”.
Andrea Nagele combines wonderful locations and cuisine with spiritual abysses in her Grado thrillers. The Carinthian bestselling author, who headed the psychiatric center of “pro Mente” for 15 years, has sold more than 100,000 of her books. “It’s probably also because I give women as victims of violence more space in my books than other authors would,” says the Klagenfurter, who also processes personal experiences in her books.
Artemis Vakianis As commercial director of the Wiener Festwochen, she is responsible for a budget of 12.25 million euros. Giving artists space is their mission. “My job is regarding creating the financial, spatial and temporal conditions so that artists can achieve their best performance,” says the native of Klagenfurt, who grew up in Graz, Vienna and Germany.
Sissy Höfferer likes to poke her nose into explosive cases. The actress shot 180 episodes of the series “Soko Köln”. The native of Klagenfurt recently appeared as a commissioner in the ORF series “Days that didn’t exist”. During her career, she has had TV roles in almost every crime series from Derrick to Tatort. The life of an actor has always fascinated Werner Schneyder’s niece: “I always thought: It’s great how unconventional you are. I want a free life like that too.”
Guido Markowitz has been ballet director at the Theater Pforzheim for eight years. In his home country, the native of Villach presented a ballet production regarding Rudolf Nureyev this year. According to Markowitz, the fact that men were treated equally to women in ballet has a lot to do with Nureyev: “Before he came, the male dancer was more in the background than an extra, but he managed with his charisma that the men were equal partners alongside the ballerinas were recognized.”
