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.

It really is fascinating how relatively quick and drastic society’s reactions to acute, deadly threats such as the coronavirus can be—and it’s good that this is the case. But when it comes to a more chronic ailment like the climate crisis, which in truth represents a far greater threat to all of humanity, people are acting as if we had all the time in the world.

Fast food, that quick bite to eat in between one thing and the other, is a pleasure that exists strictly in the moment.

“Hey, Travnicek, you hear how they closed the opera, too?” – Yeah, so are you missing it?” – “Naaah … as far as I’m concerned, it can just stay closed...”

This year, the zero-year of 2020, we’re celebrating an important jubilee: the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, that titan who resisted fate’s tragedies with his immortal music.

Back when I was a child, our next-door neighbour was a woman whom we knew simply as Frau Herta. We lived in an block of rental flats that was beginning to show signs of age, as were the majority of its residents.

Researching, questioning artistic practice, probing the unique process of development that it embodies, searching for its highs and lows—for those thresholds that lead to the next lofty height or open up on the next gaping chasm that lies ahead.

An accusation with which artists have been confronted since time immemorial is that they’re excessively concerned with themselves.

There’s nothing more boring than hours spent regarding our own reflections in the mirror. After all, who really wants to be confronted exclusively with their own, already-so-familiar selves?