JETZT & ALLES. Austrian Literature. The Last 50 Years.

A special exhibition organised by the Austrian National Library’s Literature Museum in cooperation with the German Museum of Books and Writing. The show will take place as part of the Austria focus of the Leipzig Book Fair 2023.

Controversial, form-conscious and polyphonic – this is Austrian literature. The exhibition JETZT & ALLES (“Now and Everything”) presents important Austrian authors of the last 50 years, from Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke to Friederike Mayröcker, Christoph Ransmayr and Marlene Streeruwitz. It also includes younger writers such as Ann Cotten and Clemens J. Setz, who testify to Austria’s literary diversity.

JETZT & ALLES tells the stories behind the creation of texts and showcases the materials, techniques and media used for writing: personal writing utensils, drawings, notebooks and photographs are just as much part of the exhibition as selected manuscript sheets and mementos of Ilse Aichinger, Ruth Klüger, Gert Jonke and Florjan Lipuš.

The exhibits illustrate key themes and motifs in Austrian literature since the 1970s: the friction between rural and urban settings and the conflict between the intrinsic and extrinsic. Cultures of remembrance, forgetfulness of history and social upheaval feature just as much as experimentation with forms, media and genres. From brief sound poems or epic narrative arcs, the exhibition presents visual poetry by Ernst Jandl and Gerhard Rühm, dialect poetry by H.C. Artmann and Christine Nöstlinger, extensive narratives such as Peter Handke’s “My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay” and Robert Menasse’s European novel “The Capital”.

It also features materials from the Austrian National Library’s holdings that have never been on display before: objects from the legendary apartment in which Friederike Mayröcker did her work, drawings and drafts by Ernst Jandl, even texts, images and sounds for Thomas Bernhard’s novel “Old Masters”. Polemic collages and critical radio broadcasts and theatre pieces testify to the close connection between politics and aesthetics in Austrian literature. A number of contributions and multimedia works are being created especially for the exhibition in close cooperation with the authors.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Bernhard Fetz and Dr Kerstin Putz (Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library). It will open as part of the 2023 Leipzig Book Fair with this year’s guest of honor, Austria.

An accompanying catalogue will be published by Residenz Verlag.