It’s whenever multiple crises play out simultaneously that the key ways in which universities foster lively, society-wide discourse become particularly clear—in light of which the following pages introduce mdw projects that put common ground and dialogue firmly in focus.

Anyone who knows the composer Antonio Salieri merely as a supposed rival of Mozart will have a chance to change this in 2025. In connection with the 200th anniversary of Salieri’s death and his upcoming 275th birthday, we take a fresh look here at the man whom we have to thank for today’s mdw.

In a departure from this year’s large-scale celebrations of Johann Strauss, SALIERI 2025 creator Jürgen Partaj is devoting his 2025 entirely to the (re)discovery of Antonio Salieri. In conversation with mdw Magazine, he revealed his personal SALIERI 2025 highlights, spoke of his research trip to Italy, and pointed out how Salieri even appeared on The Simpsons.

In artistic endeavours, much like it is with other pursuits, urgent issues pertaining to climate change are more and more often coming to play a central role. Artists’ approaches to this theme are myriad.

It’s a mixture of curiosity, enthusiasm, and perhaps anxiety that can often arise when the talk turns to AI technologies’ deployment in our everyday private and professional lives. At home, it might be a robovac that’s supposed to save us work but—How could it be otherwise?—ends up repeatedly needing help. In academic and artistic contexts, on the other hand, it’s about things like questions of authorship, innovation, and inspiration.

Protest has many faces—and today, as in the past, we encounter it in the most varied ways, be it as traffic interventions intended to call attention to climate change or through those frequent news reports that tell of the courageous demonstrators in Iran and highlight the life-threatening consequences that their acts of protest entail.

Autumn 2023 will witness the launch of the new Contemporary Arts Practice (CAP) master’s degree programme.

Artists’ 100th birthdays are eagerly embraced as opportunities to take a renewed deep dive into their oeuvres. In 2023, both on these pages and elsewhere, the mdw is devoting special attention to the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti.

Viele von uns kennen das vielleicht: Wenn sich die ersten Rückenschmerzen im Alltag auftun, wird einem bewusst, dass man einfach nicht jünger wird und ein bisschen mehr Bewegung wahrscheinlich auch kein Fehler wäre.

There are those people to whom, when they speak, we could listen forever—almost no matter what they say; it somehow touches us and sweeps us along. And then there are others whom we can’t follow; sitting in the theatre, we grow restless or can’t quite manage to absorb what they’re declaiming. Why is this so?