If there’s any one term that’s become more and more popular (and essential) among all of us in the media, recently, it’s this one: “the crisis”. It’s the uncontested leader in the buzzword charts, a constant guest on title pages, and a topic that’s omnipresent among new non-fiction releases. For it does, after all, provide a convenient way of explaining, labelling, and categorising any complex occurrence.

Enroled at the mdw since: 2011Programmes of study: IGP – Percussion (BA) and Cultural Institutions Studies (PhD programme); Instrumental Studies diploma in Percussion completed in July 2020

Virtually no other phrase bears within it as much condescension as does the oft-invoked call to “pick people up where they are”. Be it in the media, in politics, or in the cultural sphere, this metaphor has been flogged to a near-inflationary extent.

Benjamin Harasko, Preparatory Programme in Music Education – Voice; Voice (BA)

Persecution of dissenters, hollowing out of democratic rights, exclusion of people based on their religion, their origins, their skin colour. Whenever an injustice like one of these takes place, is accepted, is enforced, it is the consequence of a long process via which that injustice has been legitimised.

2020 was the year that saw the term “white privilege” truly arrive in our society. It describes the fact that white people enjoy social and economic advantages rooted in colonialism, imperialism, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

In truth, one should be grateful. All one’s acquaintances are healthy—and as for those who weren’t, at least the virus didn’t hit them all that badly. Considering how the ongoing pandemic has now claimed over a million lives worldwide, that’s actually quite something.

We used to call Metternichgasse 12 the Film Academy. There was a semi-basement there that we referred to as the cellar, and in this cellar was a designated office for the department’s student reps that we called the ÖH Room.

It’s not often that one gets to see a new university department founded. And for me, having witnessed the mdw’s enormous development in terms of early music since I began my studies, the founding of this particular department is something that’s very special.

Back when I was a child, my mother never had a babysitter for me and my siblings. But she did have an old record player. And in the afternoon, she’d set it up for us along with a stack of records so she’d be able to work in peace for at least a couple of hours in the next room.