Pencil, Notebook & Laptop. 10 Positions in Contemporary Writing

The first special exhibition in the Austrian National Library’s Literature Museum shows a lively image of contemporary Austrian literature. Ten writers present themselves, their work and their approaches to writing, providing fascinating insights into the creation of texts, into author biographies and the “workshops” of modern authors.
There are also many references in literature to other fields of art, to fine art, photography or film. Brigitta Falkner, for instance, uses works of graphic art, film and three-dimensional objects to expand the conventional idea of literature. The relationship between text and image is also a concern of Hanno Millesi’s photographic collages, while his prose works address the displaced perception of (everyday) reality. Richard Obermayr’s novels deal with memory landscapes and the recording of time, a role that can also be carried out by the medium of photography. For the writer and artist Teresa Präauer, texts, drawings and paintings relate directly to each other. In her theatre and radio plays, novels and cinematographic works, Kathrin Röggla documents today’s world of work, while Anna Weidenholzer’s prose deals with work and its loss. Ferdinand Schmatz’s experimental texts reflect an interest in linguistic structures and the laws of writing. Clemens J. Setz for his part writes absurdly comical, fantastic and cryptic texts; Thomas Stangl’s novels, both poetical and researched to the tiniest detail, investigate towns and top-ographies. Gerhild Steinbuch’s plays, finally, take up topics from pop culture and Hollywood films.