The second Mahler Forum for Music and Society, titled A Room of One's Own – Creativity and Space will take place from July 1-2, 2022 and will explore the time-honoured cultural technique of the artist retreat. This year’s theme of creativity and inspiration, particularly in spaces of retreat, is conceptually rooted in Gustav Mahler's Composing Hut in Maiernigg at the Wörthersee.

For two days, visitors are invited to participate in the festival's democratic and open think space, where, together with the panellists, artists and musicians, we will trace, discuss and envision the theme of creativity and space from various perspectives. Informed by music and visual art, literature and philosophy as well as the natural sciences – this transdisciplinary approach helps us in our endeavour to create new versions of future social practices.

Various sources of inspiration serve as our starting point, such as Henry David Thoreau's momentous book from 1854, Walden, or Life in the Woods, which made him the forefather of civil disobedience and an icon of the ecological movement. Or Virginia Woolf and her ground-breaking essay A Room of One’s Own from 1929, which was already highly acclaimed at the time and remains one of the most widely received texts of the women’s movement to this day.
Together, they form the basis of our exploration of creativity, inspiration and the longing for autonomy that comes with it. How can we apply these energies to current social conditions?

The music programme curated by musicologist and Mahler expert Morten Solvik is realized cooperation with the Orchestra for the Earth, mezzo-sopranist Gabriella Noble as well as teachers and students form The Gustav Mahler Private University for Music.

The art installations for Exposition by Dorit Margreiter and Maja Osojnik, curated by Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein and section.a with the title Exposition, were developed in resonance with the site of Mahler’s Composing Hut Maiernigg. The artists created a mapping of architecture, sound, drawing and visual markings which invites visitors to become co-actors as they allow movement in what was believed to be firm knowledge. The presentation of the interventions, an artist talk and the premiere of the silent sound installation will take place at the Mahler Forum on July 2, 2022 in cooperation with the federal state of Carinthia’s Year of Visual Art 2022 → CLOSE(D) FUTURE, at the Composing Hut Maiernigg. The installations can be seen, walked through and experienced as an onsite installation until October 30, 2022.