General Education Week

October 8, 2013

- Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?

No (laughing). So I was brought up in a nice, little town in the East of Austria between Bratislava and Vienna. You might easily call it one of the "ends" of the world, because it used to be a place where time stands still (at least before the fall of the Iron Curtain). Summers are hot, winters are cold and you easily get lost between sky and horizon. The appendix of the Eurasian steppe that’s the place where I spent my childhood collecting chestnuts and flying kites running over stubble fields.

After graduating (to be honest already before), I went eastwards. Further and further and finally I ended up teaching at AUCA in Bishkek.

- How long have you been teaching at AUCA and what are the classes you offer?

Ironically, I first visited AUCA right after April 7 in 2010, but I have been teaching here since fall 2010. I teach nuclear physics, (laughs) no, but as a matter of fact I was thinking about studying applied physics though I finally ended up with art and philosophy. So all the classes I teach at AUCA are connected to art (for detailed information see the class schedule).

- Why AUCA, not other universities?

It’s challenging to encourage students to think about art outside the context of an art academy. Of course it’s a difficult task because you always have to deal with questions like "Does art matter?". But I think you cannot ignore these questions because they are – no matter if you take no notice of them by hiding yourself in the ivory tower of art or not – first of all relevant and in the long run nothing but helpful. These questions make you think and bring you down to earth again. And that’s good not only for you but also for art.

- What do you like/do not like about Kyrgyzstan?

That seems to be one of this difficult "koans" (little riddles used in Zen-Buddhism to test students), so I am quite tempted to transcend the question by answering "Mu!" (which might be translated with nothing or without).

Among others, I do like these small, modest sometimes also greasy shashlychnayas, because these are the places, where average men meet and diverge, where parliamentary debates are raised and dropped and where Bishkek evolves and dissolves.

I do not like the state of helplessness in regard to car horns if you walk the streets of Bishkek. There is nothing you can do about, but you want to pay the drivers back. "An eye for an eye..." (laughs) But it’s impossible of course...

- Does art matter?

I can only repeat the words of my friend A. Yusupov: "For the artist, the self-righteous wannabe creator – tyrant driven by self-love, yes. For the bourgeois, the sheepish consumer - oligarch driven by resentment, no. And art itself does not care at all because it transcends this dichotomy with its lazy and knowing smile like the Cheshire cat."

And to complicate things even more: if Novalis (a German poet) and J. Beuys (a German performance artist) are right by saying that "everyone is an artist", then art does not just matter but matters for everyone.

- Tell us about AUCA students. How are they different from students of other universities?

Some do read, some do not. Some do speak English, some do not. Some are interested in art, some are not. Some are participating in extra-curricular activities, some are not.

It’s just I am more interested in the individual than in the sterile and polished sociological category "AUCA students". I think it’s always both tempting and dangerous to rely on such stereotypes seriously because in the end you might easily get lost by losing yourself/ your self. Of course if you play with them it might get a funny game, but only for those who understand.

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