The reverberations of the intellectual, artistic and creative tumult of the end of the Habsburg era are often evoked by contemporaries in the myriad of fields that the period profoundly changed, if not founded. The purpose of the Kakania project – over 4 events, over two dozen new commissions, over 4 locales, 4 publications, a vast array of artists – is not just to evoke that era, but to envelope it, to transpose it. To relive it in new colours. New artists making new work, paying their debt to that remarkable period of Austrian history in the writing, performance and artworks they are making, acknowledging that debt by being faithful to the methods and modes of the now.

The Horse Hospital, London,  Thursday 19th February.

Caroline Bergvall on Gustav Klimt
Martin Bakero on Arnold Schoenberg
Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka
Marcus Slease on Max Kurzweil
Damir Sodan on Gustav Mahler
Joerg Zemmler on Karl Kraus
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke

The second in this series of performances where contemporary artists and poets presenting original commissions on the life and work of a figure of Habsburg Vienna is on Thursday, January 22nd, 7PM, at the Freud Museum, London. The lineup is as follows:

Emily Berry on Sigmund Freud
Esther Strauss on Anna Freud
Tom Jenks on Otto Gross
Jeff Hilson on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Phil Minton on Carl Jung

More at the Kakania site.

There has been no one city’s culture, at one singular time in modern history, more widely influential on contemporary thought than that of Habsburg Vienna a century ago. A time so densely constituted with intellectual revolution in fields as diverse as poetry, fiction, journalism, music, composition, philosophy, psychology, art…that it seems it can often only be evoked through a wistfulness that belies the melancholy, the energy and the seismic change that constituted it.

​​Against these reverberations, Kakania – over 4 events, over two dozen new commissions, multiple publications and an array of contemporary artists – aims to not just to evoke that era, but to envelope it, to transpose it. To relive it in new colours. Kakania is ​new artists making new work, paying their debt to that remarkable period of Austrian history in the writing, performance and artworks they are making.

From the Rich Mix Arts Centre to the Freud Museum to the Austrian Cultural Forum​​ this is a project which explores the legacy of the Habsburg era through decidedly contemporary, original works of text and art which will attempt to be as complex and genre testing as the works, and the people, they are responsive to. This is a project where the past, and our understanding of it, will not be refracted through historical analysis, but the creative process, and one that is utterly contemporary. Kakania will be an opportunity for audiences to discover the Habsburg era in a wholly new guise, that is our era.

The first event takes place on Tues November 25th at the Rich Mix in London, featuring brand new commissions from:
Sharon Gal on Anton Webern
​Jeff Hilson on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ariadne Radi Cor & Diane Silverthorne on Alma Mahler
Dylan Nyoukis on Raoul Hausmann​
Stephen Emmerson on ​Rainer Maria Rilke
​​​​Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas-Salome