Encounter Culture #2: Danube Blues

Encounter Culture is a new initiative to open live debate between European cities, bringing together music with other disciplines that shape and reflect city culture.

Encounter Culture #2: Danube Blues

Capital cities in the Central European Danube region have a special atmosphere of nostalgia and melancholy. Historic centres like Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava are filled with this special atmosphere of decay – moody, crumbling and haunted. These grand locations, once real centres for
culture and learning, start to appear lost and distinctly out of place in the high-tech, fast moving, digitised, glass and steel worlds of the twenty first century. Many original qualities of these cities now only seem to function for a culture of tourist-based nostalgia.

The recent phenomenon of the extreme right in Hungary directly affects the life of artists trying to live and work in the region, it has caused a mass exodus but also an upsurge of new oppositional and creative energy.
The results of this current situation are not only negative, the attempts at oppression are being met with resistance and raising of awareness of the importance of alternative and open forms of cultural expression.

For this special event organised by ausland together with auxxx, four Central European artists have been invited to perform together their own improvised “Danube Blues”. Additionally they will reflect on and discuss their personal experiences of living in and leaving the region...

Rudi Fischerlehner – drums
Kata Kovács - movement
Paul Schwingenschloegl - trumpet, flugelhorn
Zsolt Sores - viola, objects, electronics

Set 1 - live improvised music and movement
Set 2 - open discussion moderated by Mathias Maschat
Set 3 - live improvised music and movement
(each set will last approx. 30 min)