Editorial

Gerhard Kowař

The second issue of KulturKontakt Magazine is devoted to the concerns that have motivated KKA’s activities over its 20-year history. We decided to focus here more on the perspectives than on the retrospectives of an institution that owes its existence to the transformation in Eastern and South Eastern Europe and ultimately, also, in Austria.

Zugvögel

Julya Rabinowich

 „Wir sind Zugvögel, Mama,“ erkläre ich beim Abendessen in unserer Absteige. „Und unsere Briefe sind Schreie."
Sie lächelt nicht.

What is Interculture Really?

Mark Terkessidis

Interculture – often not much more than a fashionable synonym for multiculture. Polemically speaking, many people still associate the term with Turks playing Russian folksongs on Greek instruments, underlaid with hip-hop beats by Nigerian DJs.

What’s it all for?

Quality assurance and the endeavour to achieve sustainability are important aspects of KulturKontakt Austria’s work. In this respect, KKA is in line with developments at the international level.

Change as the Only Constant

Annemarie Türk

In 1992, when I joined KulturKontakt Austria, it was still a very small, very young organisation – but it had all the possibilities it needed to develop and build new things.

Art and Business – Internationality Requires Know-How

Barbara Baum

Art has its own dynamics, which depend on a variety of factors: on the social and political environment as well as on the economic situation and how it develops.

Education is Nourishment for Society

At both the national and the European level, the issues revolving around the participation of various groups in society have been rediscovered by educational and cultural policy. In view of current demographic changes, active participation in societal processes, above all by those who traditionally have been excluded from these processes, is gaining increasing significance.

KulturKontakt Europe…

Wolfgang Petritsch

Entrepreneurial management, like democratically legitimated action in the public sphere, requires a combination of foresight and initiative: In view of the complexity of societal processes, it is first of all essential that foresight not be sacrificed to the achievement of swift success.

KKA as an Innovative and Sustainable Organisation

Gerhard Kowař

In the autumn of this year KulturKontakt Austria is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Established in 1989 as a coordination centre linking artists, cultural institutions and commercial organisations, it was expanded only one year later through the integration of the new “Eastern Fund for Cultural Affairs”.

Art as the Most Sensitive Seismograph of Humanity’s Crisis

Interview with Hildegard Kurt

We can think about what the future may bring and, what is even more important, we can think back from a future perspective to what should be happening now. And through the way we perceive what has not yet happened and accept it as truth, we help to shape it.

Diversity: The Potential Principle

Michael Stuber

Diversity embodies the potential principle, through which different strengths and approaches are consciously and thus purposefully utilised by being appreciated and taken into account.

The Challenge of Diversity

Different social origins and affiliations, gender, age, religion and lifestyle are determining factors for the dynamic development of a modern knowledge society.