Mahler Forum

for Music
and Society

für Musik
und Gesellschaft

Foto: Katharina Dubno

Hannah Fitsch

Hannah Fitsch (PhD) is a feminist sociologist of science and technology with a focus on neuroscience, (technology) museums, image knowledge/image practices, aesthetics, and feminist theory. In addition to her theoretical research, she always looks for alternative formats of expression and knowledge transfer, such as in museums, theater, through video, audio, and/or visual work. In 2022 she received the Emma Goldman Snowball Award.
Foto: Silvia Hödl

Markus Gönitzer

Markus Gönitzer is a cultural worker and curator of discourse. Since 2021 he has been a member of the management collective and artistic directorate of Forum Stadtpark in Graz, chairman of Verein/Društvo Peršman, and part of the project coordination of the initiative WerkStattMuseum at the Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Haus in Klagenfurt/Celovec. His principal fields of work comprise culture(s) of remembrance, theories of utopia and transformation, as well as art and cultural initiatives as vehicles of social change. Markus Gönitzer initiates and organizes discursive events in the domains of social policy and political theory, such as the conference It Could Be Different. Utopian Thinking for the 21st Century at Forum Stadtpark in 2020 or the symposium Aesthetics of Resistance. Partisan Art and Feminist Partisan Cultural Practice in Yugoslavia and Carinthia/Koroška at AAU Klagenfurt/Celovec this coming October. He finds inner peace in the punk band Red Gaze and further band projects.
Foto: Maria Ziegelböck

Anna Jermolaewa

Anna Jermolaewa is a conceptual artist born in Leningrad (USSR). A co-founder of the first opposition party and co-editor of a periodical critical of the government, she fled the Soviet Union and was granted political asylum in Austria. Since 1989 she has lived and worked in Vienna and Upper Austria. Her artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media: video, installation, painting, performance, photography, and sculpture. Since 2019 she has been a professor of experimental design at the University of Art and Design Linz. In addition to numerous solo exhibitions, she has participated in various biennials since 1999. Her work figures in numerous collections, and among many other prizes she was recently awarded the Dr. Karl Renner Prize of the City of Vienna. The artist will represent Austria at the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.
Foto: Sat Byul Kim

Ingi Kim

Composer Ingi Kim began playing the piano at the age of six and continued his musical education at Sunhwa Arts Middle and High School. After graduation he moved to Austria to take up his composition studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where he is currently about to complete his graduate studies. His piece White Explosions for chamber orchestra, commissioned by Ensemble Ultreia, was successfully performed in 2019. In 2022, his piece Qualia for piano was selected by the jury as a recommended work in the 5th Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition. His string quartet Linienfärbung II was selected as winner in the composition contest at the 8th International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in 2023 and published by Musikverlag Doblinger.
Foto: Valentina Belej Son

Alja Klemenc

Alja Klemenc, originally from Slovenia, is currently pursuing her master’s degree in conducting at the Gustav Mahler Private University for Music. During her studies she has had the remarkable opportunity to work as an assistant conductor with the Slovenian Philharmonic for performances of Helmut Lachenmann’s My Melodies, as well as with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra for the premiere of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. In 2022, Alja established the Alma Mahler Musikverein and ensemble of the same name, which devotes itself to the performance of classical and contemporary music in fresh, innovative formats. The Alma Mahler Musikverein strives to continue the gifted musician’s legacy by creating innovative and educational projects that integrate painting, literature, and architecture with music.
Contributors: Kristina Presker (soprano), Irina Otto (mezzo-soprano), Igor Golob (tenor), Marijan Novak (baritone), Lukas Aldrian (percussion), Valeria Liaskovets (piano), Nikola Meyer (contrabass), Andi Pogačnik (violoncello), Ivana Tripković (piano), Steven Vrabanec (tuba), Alja Klemenc (Director)
Foto: Petra Rainer

Sarah Rinderer

Sarah Rinderer, born in Bregenz, lives and works in Vienna. She studied visual arts/ experimental design and applied sciences of culture and art at the University of Art and Design Linz. Between literature and the visual arts—and also in connection with music—she deals with language, its voids, white spaces, and interstices. She presents and publishes her prose texts, concept-based works, poetry, and artists’ publications in exhibitions, anthologies, and literary journals. Most recently, she received grants for studio residences abroad, such as in Barcelona (Land Vorarlberg, 2021) and Athens (BMKÖS, 2023), as well as the Feldkirch Poetry Prize in 2021 and the 2nd prize at the FM4 Wortlaut competition.
Foto: Clemens Fantur

Christine Scheucher

Christine Scheucher is an editor at the cultural department of Austria’s public radio station Ö1. She presents the radio features Diagonal, Die Literarische Soiree, and Ö1 Artist Talk. She also produced cultural programs for the national broadcasting station ORF, such as kulturMontag, and the program Kulturzeit for 3sat. Christine Scheucher studied comparative literature in Vienna and Berlin and published texts about the aestheticism of avant-gardes in the digital space. Between 2008 and 2011 she reported from Paris for the Ö1 radio feature Diagonal. In 2017 she was awarded the Dr. Karl Renner Prize for Journalism for her feature on Silicon Valley. In 2011, she and her Diagonal editorial team received the Walther Rode Prize. She is member of the artistic advisory board of the festival sommer.frische.kunst in Bad Gastein.
Foto: Eva Kees

section.a, Co-Kurator*innen, Projektorganisation

The curatorial collective has worked as a flexibly acting team since 2001, developing custom-made concepts for clients from diverse fields. Its strengths lie in the conception of unconventional approaches, in sharpening thematic focuses, and in building and accompanying the teams involved. All considerations are based on the awareness of the complex potential of art. From the very outset, section.a has been part of the core team of the Mahler Forum as co-curator and project manager.
section.a is: Julia Bildstein, Katharina Boesch, Christine Haupt-Stummer, Andreas Krištof, Viktoria Pontoni and Ina Sattlegger.
Foto: Sophie Thun & Mads Westrup

Pamelia Stickney

Pamelia Stickney, born in Los Angeles, started out as a jazz/rock musician. Her knowledge of stringed instruments and her background as a jazz bassist give her playing technique a signature of its own, expanding the instrument’s expressive possibilities. Pamelia is one of the most sought-after artists on the theremin. This has led to numerous performances and recordings with a wide variety of artists worldwide. In addition to her career as a thereminist, Pamelia is also a composer and arranger and has received commissions and residencies, including John Zorn’s National Sawdust The Stone Series, the New York-based saxophone and Mallet percussion duo Odes & Fragments, kofomi (Composers’ Forum), etc.
Foto: Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein

Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein

Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein is a curator, art historian, and professor at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She heads several research projects, such as the Cathrin Pichler Archive for Art and Sciences (CPA) and The Dissident Goddesses’ Network. Her expansive teaching, research, lecturing, and exhibition activities focus on contemporary art, modern art, arts-based research, and feminist theory and art practice. In 2019 she was curator of the Austrian Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. She is a member of the curatorial board of the mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and a board member of Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana. Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein is the author and editor of numerous texts and publications. Together with Morten Solvik she is a co-initiator and artistic director of the Mahler Forum for Music and Society, Klagenfurt.