Foto: Katharina DubnoMahler Forum
for Music
and Society
für Musik
und Gesellschaft
Foto: Katharina Dubno
Foto: Silvia HödlMarkus 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 ZiegelböckAnna 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 KimIngi 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 SonAlja Klemenc
Alja Klemenc, a Slovenian conductor from Cerknica, is currently pursuing her master’s degree in conducting at the Gustav Mahler Private University of Music in Klagenfurt and her postgraduate studies in contemporary repertoire at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano.As an assistant conductor she had the opportunity to participate in the performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s My Melodies with the Slovenian Philharmonic and in the production of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra. In the season 2024/25 she was invited to collaborate with the Slovenian Philharmonic, when she performed the work Voie by Vinko Globokar with orchestra and choir and conducted works by Slovenian composers for the family subscription program.
Klemenc enhanced her musicianship in international master classes with such renowned conductors as Colin Metters, Douglas Bostock, Michalis Economou, Georg Mark, Günter Neuhold, and others.
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.
Foto: Petra RainerSarah 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 FanturChristine Scheucher
Christine Scheucher is an editor and host in the cultural department of Austria’s public radio station Ö1. She presents the radio features Diagonal, Die Literarische Soiree, and Ö1 Artist Talk. She has 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 has published on the aesthetics of the avant-gardes in digital space. Numerous internships in media and cultural institutions took her to Berlin and London. 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 a member of the artistic advisory board of the festival sommer.frische.kunst in Bad Gastein.
Foto: Gerhard Maurersection.a, Co-Kurator*innen, Projektorganisation
Since 2001, we have been conceptualizing and realizing exhibitions and projects at the intersection of art, society, and science. With a curious and reflective approach, we create spaces for dialogue and new perspectives. Our focus lies on curation and production, from the initial idea to the spatial realization. We collaborate with private, public, institutional, and independent partners both nationally and internationally. But no matter what or with whom – joy runs through all our projects. Over the past 24 years, we have realized more than 145 projects with over 300 artists.section.a is: Julia Bildstein, Katharina Boesch, Christine Haupt-Stummer, Andreas Krištof, and Ina Sattlegger.
Foto: Mahler FoundationMorten Solvik
Morten Solvik is a Norwegian-American musicologist and international educator based in Vienna, Austria. He received a Bachelor of Arts in music and intellectual history at Cornell University and a Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation on Gustav Mahler. His areas of research also include Anton Bruckner and Franz Schubert, among others. He has taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts and played an instrumental role in developing the Department of Music at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna starting in 1999, where he served as Center Director between 2009 and 2022; since then, he holds the positions of Dean and Liaison to the Provost for IES Abroad. He is active as an author, book editor, speaker, host and producer of webcasts, and contributor to productions for radio and television. Solvik serves on the board of the International Gustav Mahler Society and as Vice President of the Mahler Foundation. He is co-initiator and artistic director of the Gustav Mahler Festival in Steinbach am Attersee and, together with Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein, of the Mahler Forum for Music and Society, Klagenfurt.
Foto: Sophie Thun & Mads WestrupPamelia 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