Gallery Puzić cordially invites you to a panel discussion on autobiography and autofiction, in the presence of several authors, artists and literary scholars who will discuss the question of why autobiographical writing seems to have achieved such high cultural status in recent times. Autobiographie und Autofiktion, in Anwesenheit mehrerer Autor*innen, Künstler*innen und Literatur-wissenschaftler*innen, die über die Frage diskutieren, warum Autobiographisches Schreiben in jüngster Zeit solch einen hohen kulturellen Stellenwert erreicht zu haben scheint.

Why are we interested in the lives of others? Or rather, why do authors like Annie Ernaux, Karl Ove Knausgård, Frank Witzel, Didier Eribon, Anne Rabe, Deniz Utlu (and many more) write books that open up insights into the archives of life, of experiences lived individually and collectively, of a family history, a personal, conflict-ridden career, a fate in exile, a remembered, perhaps only imagined childhood, or the time of growing old and dying?

The Lives of Others? – Is it like our own, i.e. do readers always make associations and relationships, look for something similar? Don’t they also fear the informers, devoted IMs (unofficial collaborators) who, like passionate lovers, give everything they can? Are autobiographical stories, as Uschi Schmidt Lenhard (co-editor of the anthology «Andere Menschen sind anders» [Blattlaus Verlag 2023]) suggests, perhaps even superior to literature? Are autobiographies presumptuous, if you compare, for example, what Daniela Strigl claims with regard to two biographies - about Alma Mahler and daughter Anna Mahler: "Writing a biography is always a presumption." Is this presumption what we are looking for, this exaggeration or submission to that Sentimental, the nostalgic aspect of memory?

One can perhaps think similarly about constructed autofictions, and aren't there also many examples from the visual arts where one might assume - this is an autobiographical performance, a self-portrait? What does Yoko Ono do in the “Cut Piece” (1965) performance? What drives Rebecca Horn to become a unicorn in one of her sculptural performances? What do we learn from the major exhibition “Self-Portrait” by the Viennese performance artist Valie Export (Berliner Fotogalle C/O)? Why does Isabelle Cridlig draw infinite lines of an intuitive tree geometry of liquid lifespans (“durée”), which she spreads out in the morning of the discussion forum, on almost 30 meter long strips of paper? What does autobiography have to do with art?

Photos courtesy of Mirsad Puzić & Johannes Birringer