Art without meaning

We simply no longer touch and outrage

When Thomas Bernhard's "Heldenplatz" premiered, demonstrators spilled bags of horse manure in front of the Burgtheater. People were still outraged back then.

(Bild: picturedesk.com/Sokol Gerhard, KURIER)

The Vorarlberg writer Robert Schneider on an art and culture scene that primarily promotes itself and is losing more and more of its social relevance.

I'm not writing this out of melancholy, and if I am, I'll only admit it at the end. It has long been clear to me that the train for culture, the left, the semi-left and the silent moderates who were socialized from the sixties to the nineties has left the station. We were standing at the station, yes, we were waiting, but when it pulled in, we forgot to get on. We were so preoccupied with ourselves. Now it has left. We artists are left with a lonely walk home through the autumn forest. Old companions take each other by the hand: "Do you remember back then?" And the leaves fall. The rustling of the leaves can be heard everywhere.