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A contested terrain: immigrants and their descendants in Viennese culture
Wiebke Sievers
To cite this article: Wiebke Sievers (2014) A contested terrain: immigrants and their descendants in Viennese culture, Identities, 21:1, 26-41, DPI: 10.1080/1070289X.2013.828622
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Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2014
Vol. 21, No. 1, 26-41, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2013.828622
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
A contested terrain: immigrants and their descendants in Viennese culture
Wiebke Sievers
{Received 2 July 2012)
Culture in Vienna has become more diverse with successive waves of immigration since the 1960s, but Austrian cultural policies have been slow in picking up this trend. While the federal state has been focusing on maintaining traditional cultural institutions in Vienna such as the Staatsoper, the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the city of Vienna has pushed integration and later diversity in cultural policies since the 1990s, albeit more in discourse than in actual funding. Artists of immigrant origin harshly criticise this dire situation: they claim the place which they have not yet been granted, not only in cultural policies, but also in society.
Keywords: migrants; ethnic minorities; cultural policies; literature; theatre; Austria
Introduction
Vienna is one of the most liveable cities in the world. This is largely due to the great variety of cultural life and the diversity of the local population. After all, a city like this never stops moving. (MA 7 2010b, p. 7)
The above statement made by Michael Haupl, the Mayor of Vienna, combines two discourses that inform current cultural policies. The first is the age-old image of Vienna as a city of culture that has been used in identity formation processes since at least the nineteenth century when major Viennese cultural institutions such as the Staatsoper, the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum were established. This traditional image still underlies cultural policies in Vienna today with a view to attracting tourists (Hatz 2009). The second discourse concerns the diversity of the Viennese population, mostly perceived as being the consequence of several post-war immigration movements. This discourse is of more recent origin, even though the history of immigration to Vienna goes back further than the establishment of Vienna's major cultural institutions mentioned above.
Of course, these two discourses overlap. As a recent project has shown, immigrants and their descendants have launched a large variety of cultural initiatives, including, among others, the regular Chinese New Year's concert, several film festivals, theatre groups, music festivals and ethno-clubbing (Gebesmair 2009).
©2014 Taylor & Francis
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 27
However, it would be wrong to infer from these activities that Viennese cultural life has markedly changed as a consequence of immigration. When we analyse the emerging diversity in the cultural field in the wider context of Austrian and Viennese cultural policies, it becomes immediately obvious that Viennese cultural life does not reflect the diversity of the Viennese population, mainly due to the unbroken dominance of the above-mentioned traditional cultural institutions that receive most of the public interest and funding.
In order to prove this point, I will analyse diversity in Viennese cultural life from both a macro- and a micro-perspective. The focus of my analysis will be on the arts, i.e. classical music, theatre, literature and museums, since these are the forms of cultural expression recognised in public as representing Viennese culture. Of course, immigrants and their descendants also make use of other forms of cultural expression, for example popular music, but these are even more marginalised than the ones described here: they rarely receive public funding and are often invisible to the general public (Gebesmair 2009).
After a brief statistical insight into the size and composition of the Viennese population of immigrant origin, I will focus on the role that immigrants and their descendants play in political discourses on culture in general and in cultural funding in particular, both on the federal state level and in Vienna. Subsequently, I will supplement this macro-perspective with the views that artists of immigrant origin express in interviews and their works not only on Viennese cultural life, but also on life as an immigrant in Austria in general. The analysis will show that the understanding of culture differs between all three spheres: compared to the Austrian state, Vienna may be progressive in its cultural policies. Nevertheless, many artists of immigrant origin feel marginalised and claim the place they have not yet been granted, not only in cultural policies, but also in society.
Immigrants and their descendants in Austrian cultural policies
Several post-war immigration movements have contributed to what is currently perceived as the diversity of the Viennese population: the so-called guest workers coming from Turkey and former Yugoslavia in the 1960s and early 1970s, refugees fleeing the war in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, asylum seekers increasingly originating from Asia and Africa since the 1990s, and EU citizens in particular from Germany, making use of their free movement rights since the beginning of this century. In 2011, 33% of the Viennese population were either born abroad or did not hold Austrian citizenship, with the large majority of these originating from Turkey (13%) or one of the successor states of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro: 19%, Bosnia and Herzegovina: 6%, Croatia: 4%). Other major source countries are Germany (8%) and Poland (7%). Seventeen per cent originate from outside Europe, mainly from Asia (12%), and here in particular from China, Iran and India (each less than 2%) (Magistrat der Stadt Wien 2011, p. 69). However, these figures do not include all descendants of immigrants. According
28 W.Sievers
to the data of the first Viennese Migration and Integration Monitor, 28% of the Viennese population was born abroad and 16% had at least one parent born abroad in 2009, which means that almost half of the Viennese population was of immigrant origin at the time (MA 17 2010, p. 35).
Post-war labour immigration to Austria, as in many other European countries, was based on a model of circular migration that never really worked in practice, but long maintained the perception of immigrants as temporary guests who did not need to be included in society, politics or culture. Austria still does not officially recognise the fact that it is a country of immigration, even though it has been described as such by established migration researchers (Fassmann 2007). And whilst integration has become an issue since the 1990s, it is mainly conceived as a duty on the part of the immigrants to become acquainted with the Austrian language and culture rather than as a duty on the part of the state to include these new residents, as becomes apparent from the fact that Austria ranks 24th out of 33 countries in the most recent migrant integration policy index (Huddleston et al. 2011).
Cultural policies have not markedly differed from this approach, but integration into this field has been further hampered by two factors. Austrian cultural policies focus on the arts, including classical music, theatre, art and literature (Knapp 2005). Both producers and consumers of these forms of culture tend to be highly educated. This means that a significant proportion of immigrants and their descendants are structurally excluded from participating in these publicly funded cultural activities, both passively and actively. This particularly concerns immigrants and their descendants from former Yugoslavia and Turkey, among whom the percentage holding post-secondary education qualifications is comparatively low.1 In addition, Austrian cultural policies have been exclusive in ethnic terms. Culture has been used as a means of forming an Austrian identity since at least the end of the Second World War, when all dreams of territorial importance were shattered (Knapp 2005). This process departed from the construct that Austrian culture is German culture made in Austria, despite the fact that the Austrian nation state includes several minority groups whose mother tongue is not German and who were officially recognised as autochthonous minorities after the Second World War, but are still fighting for the implementation of the cultural and linguistic rights following from this official recognition today.2
Discourses
The slow process of including autochthonous minorities in Austrian culture is being replicated with regard to immigrants and their descendants (Wimmer 1995). There is still no agreement on who is included in Austrian culture among the parties currently represented both in the Austrian national parliament and in the parliament of the federal state of Vienna.3 One extreme position is that of the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPO) that in its most recent programme, adopted in 2011, describes Austrian culture as a 'western culture' (FPO 2011, p. 11). In other
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 29
words, the FPÖ excludes what they describe as 'oriental cultures' - a term the party mainly uses to refer to Turkish immigrants and their descendants - from Austrian culture. This discourse has characterised all of the recent FPÖ policies regarding immigration and integration. At the other extreme of the political spectrum, the Green Party opposes any form of 'decreed identity' and instead subscribes to fostering cultural diversity, which includes funding minority programmes (Die Grünen 2001, pp. 44^16).
By contrast, the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the Conservative Party (ÖVP), who have almost exclusively been responsible for cultural issues both on the federal state level and in Vienna since the end of the Second World War, do not seem to regard culture as a term worthy of discussion. At least their most recent party programmes, which are admittedly older than those of the FPÖ and the Green Party cited above, do not contain explicit definitions of culture in the sections dealing with this issue. In other sections, the ÖVP (1998, pp. 4-5) defines Austrian identity as including the above-mentioned recognised autochthonous ethnic minorities, whereas the SPÖ (1995, p. 19) more opaquely speaks of Austria's historically grown linguistic, cultural and ethnic diversity, which could be interpreted to refer also to more recently arrived ethnic groups. True, both the SPÖ and the ÖVP subscribe to 'artistic diversity' and 'artistic plurality' in their respective sections on culture (SPÖ 1995, p. 24, ÖVP 1998, p. 25). However, as the following analysis of their national cultural policies will show, these terms have, for a long time, not included immigrants and their descendants, at least not on the federal state level.
There is no policy, let alone law, at the Austrian state level that guarantees the adequate representation of immigrants and their descendants in Austrian culture. Culture also only plays a minimal role in the National Plan for Integration, coordinated by the Ministry of Interior and adopted by the ruling government coalition of SPÖ and ÖVP in 2010. The plan refers to culture only once: it states that civil organisations should receive support if they further intercultural exchange and integration. Furthermore, it calls for cultural and artistic institutions to become more active in intercultural dialogue (BMI 2010, p. 35). The document does not specify further what exactly this implies, nor do later documents come back to this point (Expertenrat für Integration 201 la, 201 lb). But the earlier definition of the term 'intercultural dialogue' in the National Plan for Integration makes it clear that this is not a call for giving a voice to immigrants and their descendants in Austrian culture. On the contrary, the National Plan for Integration regards intercultural dialogue as a means of highlighting the limits of cultural expression to immigrants and their descendants. As an example, the document cites the public exposition of religious beliefs (BMI 2010, p. 33). Again, this opaque formulation is not further explained in the plan.
There was a similar silence on immigrants and their descendants in the yearly art reports between 1998 and 2007, regardless of whether the responsible person belonged to the SPÖ or the ÖVP. Over this period of time, immigrants are only mentioned once by Franz Morak (ÖVP) in 2001, when he states that Austria
30      W. Sievers
was important for many artists fleeing from the Eastern Bloc during the cold war. However, this does not serve as an argument to raise the support for immigrants and their descendants in Austrian culture, but to increase funds for intercultural cooperation with eastern European countries with a view to furthering European integration (BKA 2002, p. 8).
Only since 2008 have immigrants and their descendants become an issue in the yearly art reports, albeit not as immigrants, but as artists furthering intercultural dialogue. At the time, the current minister for education, art and culture, Claudia Schmied (SPO) took the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue as an inspiration to introduce two prizes for intercultural dialogue (BMUKK 2009b, p. 6). Schmied continued this policy in 2010 by introducing an outstanding artist award for intercultural dialogue that serves to 'acknowledge artistic and cultural achievements that contribute to dialogue and to the active integration of people of different origins residing in Austria' (BMUKK 2011, p. 6).
Funding
Immigrants and their descendants may long have been ignored in top-down political discourses. However, a bottom-up initiative managed to introduce a funding line into the federal budget for art that explicitly includes 'multicultural initiatives' : the so-called cultural initiatives. Going back to the 1970s, these are privately organised non-profit local and regional bottom-up initiatives that further critical art and culture with a strong focus on audience inclusion. In 1990, these groups were granted their own funding line in the federal budget for art by the Austrian parliament. From the first call for projects in 1991, which aimed in particular at internationalising these decentralised cultural initiatives, multiculturalism has been one of the funding foci (Wimmer 1995, pp. 199-207).
Although this was a major achievement for about 400 cultural initiatives existing at the time, Table 1 illustrates that the funding they are granted is minimal: it constituted less than 1% of the federal cultural spend in Austria between 2001 and 2010 (increasing from 5.2 to 6.5 million euros over the period). This is mainly due to the fact that about 70% of the federal budget for culture is reserved for a small number of traditional cultural institutions, mostly located in Vienna: art and music universities, state theatres and state museums (see also Wimmer 2011, p. 179). True, diversity has also found its way into some of these traditional institutions. A considerable share of art and music students originates from abroad (Educult 2008, pp. 51-57). Moreover, more than half of the artists employed by a sample of Viennese cultural institutions (State ballet, Burgtheater, Staatsoper, Volksoper, Theater in der Josefstadt) hold a foreign citizenship, with a quarter of these being of German origin. However, immigrants and their descendants originating from former Yugoslavia and Turkey, still the two largest groups in Vienna, are under-represented in these institutions (Medienservicestelle 2013). Moreover, a large share of foreign artists does not necessarily imply that the institutions change. As the artists mainly come to Vienna to profit from the
Table 1.   Cultural expenses of the federal state of Austria (2001-2010).
	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Total in Mio Euro	699.76	710.77	680.23	700.55	714.26	710.67	742.83	766.24	818.25	811.46
Funding area					in	%				
Museums, archives, research	15.4	15.6	16.5	15.5	16.6	16.4	16.0	16.1	18.0	16.9
Architectural heritage	13.7	18.2	16.1	15.1	14.8	14.0	14.3	13.4	12.9	11.9
Maintenance of traditions	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1
Literature	1.0	1.1	1.2	1.1	1.1	1.1	1.1	1.2	1.1	1.1
Libraries	3.8	3.8	3.9	3.9	2.7	2.7	2.5	2.7	2.8	2.7
Press	2.3	2.2	2.3	2.5	2.2	2.2	2.1	2.0	1.9	1.9
Music	1.7	1.8	1.3	1.2	1.2	1.3	1.3	1.3	1.2	1.2
Performing arts	25.0	24.3	25.5	24.8	25.0	24.7	23.7	23.4	22.2	22.5
Visual arts, photo,	1.2	1.1	1.4	1.3	1.2	1.3	1.2	1.2	1.1	1.1
architecture, design										
Film, cinema, video	2.2	2.0	2.2	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.6	3.0	2.7	2.8
Radio and TV	0.9	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Cultural initiatives, centres	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8
Education, further education	20.8	21.9	22.4	25.3	25.5	26.0	27.9	28.1	28.8	30.9
Adult education	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
International cultural	4.5	4.3	3.6	3.3	3.5	3.7	3.6	3.8	3.2	3.4
exchange										
Major events	5.2	1.6	2.0	2.1	1.9	2.7	1.7	1.7	2.0	1.4
Other	1.2	1.1	0.7	0.6	1.0	0.8	1.0	1.3	1.2	1.3
Source: Statistik Austria 2012.										
32      W. Sievers
reputation of the local cultural institutions, changing these is not one of their primary concerns.
The funding granted to cultural initiatives may be minimal compared to the federal budget for culture, but the share awarded to multicultural initiatives in Vienna is again only a fraction of this sum; as my analysis of the art reports summarised in Table 2 shows4 2-5% of the budget spent on cultural initiatives was granted to Viennese initiatives linked to immigrants and their descendants between 1998 and 2011, with the share rising since the SPO took over culture in 2007. Moreover, in 2008, the EU year of intercultural dialogue, intercultural initiatives in Vienna were granted EU funds of more than 360,000 euros, not included in the art report of the same year, but in the section dealing with EU cultural issues in the culture report (BMUKK 2009a, p. 184).
Of course, artists of immigrant origin can also apply for funds through other funding lines of the ministry. Almost 500,000 euros were spent on Viennese artists of immigrant origin from the funding lines for art, music and performing arts, film and literature in 2010, more than double the amount spent on Viennese cultural initiatives linked to immigrants and their descendants the same year. Nevertheless, the amounts spent on Viennese immigrants and their descendants are minimal: about 730,000 euros in 2010 when the federal state spent 81,146 million euros on culture. True, Viennese artists of immigrant origin may be involved in other projects receiving public funds. However, the funds devoted to immigrants and their descendants are not reported separately, unlike those devoted to women. That is why the above calculations are limited to those initiatives that are clearly identifiable as linked to immigrants and their descendants in the existing cultural reporting.
Immigrants and their descendants in Viennese cultural policies
Viennese politics is strongly dominated by the SPO - the sole ruling party between 1973 and 1996 as well as between 2001 and 2010 and the party of all mayors governing this city since 1945. Similarly, almost all city councillors responsible for culture since the Second World War were SPO members except in the years between 1946 and 1949 (KPO) and 1996 and 2001 (OVP). Over the last two decades, this SPO dominance was mainly threatened by the FPO, the second strongest party in four out of the last five elections, gaining between 20% and 28%. Yet, the FPO has never been in the Viennese government as the SPO preferred to form coalitions with the OVP in the 1990s and with the Green Party in 2010, whose party leader, Maria Vassilakou, is the first Vice Mayor of immigrant (namely Greek) origin.
One of the reasons not to work with the FPO has been the big divide in integration matters. Compared to the federal state, Vienna has a long tradition in furthering immigrant integration, with first initiatives going back to the late 1980s. In 1992, the city of Vienna established the Viennese Integration Fund that managed all integration projects in Vienna in the 1990s, with the focus being on
Table 2.   Immigrants and their descendants in cultural initiatives (1998-2011).
Associations linked to
			Percentage of			immigrants and	Percentage of	Percentage of
	Cultural		cultural	Associations	Percentage of	their descendants	associations	cultural
	initiatives	Associations	initiatives	in Vienna	associations	in Vienna	in Vienna	initiatives
1998	4.250.790	3.967.864*	93%	762.265	19%	67.586	9%	2%
1999	4.285.198	3.900.531	91%	852.743	22%	75.943	9%	2%
2000	3.778.348	3.489.310	92%	708.560	20%	81.030	11%	2%
2001	3.693.777	3.599.555	97%	562.487	16%	86.844	15%	2%
2002	3.897.109	3.710.785	95%	671.616	18%	88.574	13%	2%
2003	4.223.570	4.080.245	97%	635.471	16%	109.500	17%	3%
2004	4.303.179	4.147.203	96%	571.356	14%	96.100	17%	2%
2005	4.347.000	4.172.429	96%	577.436	14%	99.000	17%	2%
2006	4.247.000	4.089.630	96%	476.963	12%	64.963	14%	2%
2007	4.472.000	4.016.865*	90%	485.340	12%	68.200	14%	2%
2008	4.736.600	4.275.667*	90%	664.030	16%	129.800	20%	3%
2009	4.986.095	4.792.542	96%	685.600	14%	226.600	33%	5%
2010	4.994.970	4.748.588	95%	704.500	15%	234.200	33%	5%
2011	4.995.000	4.707.975	94%	663.178	14%	208.700	31%	4%
Note: *Excluding funds granted to free radios.
Sources: BKA 1999, pp. 182-185, 2000, pp. 92-95, 2001, pp. 88-91, 2002, pp. 85-88, 2003, pp. 83-85, 2004, pp. 88-90, 2005, pp. 84-86, 2006, pp. 83-85, BMUKK 2007, pp. 76-78, 2008, pp. 78-82, 2009b, pp. 80-83, 2010, pp. 84-88, 2011, pp. 113-117, 2012, pp. 127-132. Author's calculations.
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34      W. Sievers
German language courses and vocational training. Since the turn of the century, the Viennese government has slowly moved towards combining their integration policy with a diversity approach. This means that in addition to decreasing social and structural barriers and minimising discrimination, the city now intends to support potential and diversify politics and administration. This new policy concerns all political fields, including culture (Waldrauch and Sohler 2004, pp. 116-125, MA 17 no year).
Discourses
In accordance with this political stance to integration, immigrants and their descendants have always featured in the Viennese art and culture reports over the last 15 years, regardless of the party affiliation of the responsible city councillor. In 1998, Peter Marboe (OVP) mentioned the Hallamasch festival of cultures as signalling 'the close relation between culture and multicultural coexistence' (MA 7 1999, p. 3). Also in 1998, the department for culture in the Viennese magistrate introduced a division for intercultural and international activities that served, among others, to support cultural activities for and by migrants (MA 7 2000, p. 28). Again, like on the state level, the official focus of this division has not been on funding immigrants and their descendants as such, but on funding intercultural activities: 'We need to find an intercultural approach that emphasises cooperation, mutual enlightenment and correlation, encounter and dialogue of cultures'. (MA 7 2000, p. 28). In particular, between 2000 and 2007, when the OVP-FPO coalition ruled Austria and the SPO was the sole ruling party in Vienna, the new city councillor, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny of the SPO used this new approach in Viennese cultural policies to stage Vienna as multicultural in opposition to the ruling Austrian government. This stance becomes particularly clear in an article describing his take on cultural policies in Vienna:
The enormous cultural input that Vienna has received through immigration should be understood as part of the wealth of this city and should not be used as a basis for creating resentment against the foreign. In this area, we have to continue establishing Vienna as a counter model to regularly emerging tendencies against anything non-Austrian. (Mailath-Pokorny 2002, p. 616)
In his introductions to the Viennese art and culture reports, Mailath-Pokorny accordingly describes Vienna as a city that 'has always been a melting pot and a European centre of different cultures' (MA 7 2001, p. 4), a city 'where more than 100 ethnic groups reside' (MA 7 2006, p. 12), a city of 'cooperation, dialogue and encounter' (MA 7 2007, p. 12). In this city, culture should be 'a language that overcomes borders and builds bridges', thereby supplying an 'enriching image of Vienna - an image that is as diverse as the people living here' (MA 7 2011, p. 7). However, suggestions how to reach this aim remain vague: Vienna should make 'use of the inconceivable creative potential brought about by the encounter of different people' (MA 7 2001, p. 4); it 'should make visible the cultures of
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 35
different ethnic and linguistic groups' (MA 7 2003, p. 5); or 'it is the explicit aim of the city's cultural policy to increase intercultural dialogue in all areas of art and culture' (MA 7 2006, p. 12).
Funding
This lack of clear programmatic statements is also mirrored in the limited funding granted to immigrants and their descendants in Vienna. As mentioned above, the magistrate division responsible for culture in Vienna established a specific subdivision for intercultural and international activities in 1998. This subdivision manages the budget devoted to international cultural exchange and integration which constituted about 0.5% of the Viennese funds devoted to culture between 2003 and 2010 (see Table 3) - again a minor share compared to what is spent on performing arts, music or museums. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to assess how much of this money was granted to initiatives by or for immigrants and their descendants. While Table 3 shows that the majority of the budget was always spent on integration, the more detailed figures, available for the years 2009-2011 only, show that integration initiatives include associations linked to autochthonous minorities and associations furthering exchange between Austria and other countries or regions. When we exclude these, the total sum spent on associations linked to immigrants and their descendants in Vienna runs to an amount between 400,000 and 450,000 euros in the years 2009-2011 under this subcategory. This constitutes about 0.2% of the total budgets presented in the three art and culture reports. Of course, this is much more than that spent on such activities on the federal state level. However, considering the extensive Viennese discourse, it is a rather small sum.
To be fair, Vienna has always spent some funds in other funding lines of the cultural budget on cultural activities involving immigrants and their descendants. However, as a detailed analysis of the funds spent on performing arts shows, these constituted only about 1% over the period under discussion here, with a peak of 1.6% in 2010. In real terms, this was 1.4 million euros, more than half of which was invested in a new theatre, GarageX discussed in more detail below. Moreover, the 2010 Viennese Government programme describes migrant mainstreaming and interculturality, i.e. the active inclusion of all cultural identities into Viennese cultural life, as an important task of future cultural policies (SPÖ Wien and Die Grünen Wien 2010, pp. 48-49). Whether this new programming will change the views of artists of immigrant origin remains to be seen. As the following will show, their views clearly differ from the official image of Vienna being a city cherishing its diversity also in the sphere of cultural life.
The view of the artists
Despite the low amounts of funding granted to immigrants and their descendants, several new artists of immigrant origin have entered the Viennese cultural arena over the last decade. In particular, the literary field has become more diverse
Table 3.   Cultural expenses of the city of Vienna (1998-2011)*.
	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Total in Mio Euro	153.76	170.54	171.39	162.28	160.73	161.35	170.83	177.15	189.6	202.93	207.74	219.89	225.17	217.49
Funding area							in	%						
Museums, archives,	11.5	17.1	19.5	10.7	10.5	12.7	13.7	12.4	11.9	14.9	11.0	16.6	16.0	15.6
research														
Architectural heritage	6.5	5.8	4.5	4.9	3.9	4.1	5.5	4.0	4.9	4.0	3.5	2.0	3.3	3.0
Maintenance of traditions	1.6	1.5	1.5	1.5	1.6	1.6	1.4	1.3	1.4	1.5	2.6	3.3	3.5	3.4
Literature	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.8	0.6	0.7	0.8	0.7	0.5	0.5	1.2	1.1	1.1	1.2
Libraries	1.2	0.6	0.4	0.5	3.6	1.3	0.9	0.9	0.7	0.4	0.5	0.4	0.4	0.3
Press	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Music	17.7	15.3	10.6	11.9	12.0	12.4	10.5	9.8	10.0	9.6	9.5	10.8	10.6	11.0
Performing arts	29.7	29.6	29.9	33.8	34.2	33.5	36.2	40.8	38.3	40.7	44.2	40.7	39.5	38.7
Visual arts, photo,	4.1	3.4	4.6	6.0	4.4	3.9	5.4	4.7	4.5	4.4	3.9	4.1	4.0	3.9
architecture, design														
Film, cinema, video	4.7	5.1	6.3	7.0	7.3	7.2	7.0	6.6	3.3	6.0	5.7	6.7	7.1	7.4
Radio and TV	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Cultural initiatives, centres	0.8	0.8	0.7	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.7	0.8	0.7	0.7	0.5	0.6	0.7
Education, further	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1
education														
Adult education	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
International cultural	0.1	0.1	0.3	0.9	0.3	0.4	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.4	0.5	0.5	0.4
exchange, integration														
Of this: Integration**	42.6	18.8	18.1	91.2	74.4	96.3	80.1	79.1	80.6	77.4	80.6	57.2	59.5	67.2
Major events	11.6	11.2	11.7	12.3	11.4	11.4	7.9	7.5	13.6	7.4	6.8	5.1	5.0	5.1
Other	9.6	8.8	9.2	8.8	9.5	10.0	9.6	9.9	9.5	9.4	9.9	8.2	8.4	9.2
Notes: *These figures are based on the Viennese art and culture reports, which do not include all cultural expenses of the city of Vienna, as Caroline Konrad (2010) has shown for the year 2009.1 nevertheless resorted to these figures, since these are the only figures available for all years under discussion here. ** 1998-2002: my own calculations. 2003-2010: based on the figures for the new subcategory 'intercultural activities'.
Sources: MA 7 1999, p. 46, 2000, p. 91, 2001, p. 104, 2002, p. 104, 2003, p. 122, 2004, p. 165, 2005, p. 119, 2006, p. 99, 2007, p. 109, 2008, p. 105, 2009, p. 122, 2010a, p. 181, 2011, p. 211, 2012, p. 229.
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 37
due to the work of the verein exil (exile association) that has been furthering literature written by authors of immigrant origin for more than a decade and has been the springboard for writers such as Dimitre Dinev, Anna Kim and Julya Rabinovich (Sievers 2008). Similar developments can be observed in the field of theatre. Several new multicultural theatre groups have emerged in Vienna over the last decade, among these Emel Heinreich's Cocon and Ash Ki§lal's Daskunst. In 2005, Hans Escher and Bernhard Studlar established wiener wortstaetten, an intercultural theatre project supporting playwrights of immigrant origin. In 2011, the city of Vienna provided the emerging theatre groups and playwrights with a stage in the city centre, the theatre Garage X directed by Harald Posch and Ali M. Abdullah.
Many of these new voices in the Viennese cultural field criticise Viennese cultural life as exclusionary in terms of ethnicity. Ash Ki§lal makes this point regarding Viennese theatre in 2007: 'If we consider the number of "foreigners" in Austria and Vienna, there is almost nothing there. The dimensions are not appropriate. A large part of the population is not taken seriously, not taken into account in the field of art'. In the same interview, she mentions the racism she experienced at a drama school in Vienna where colleagues described her German as inadequate and her movements as not European (Vikoler 2007). Like many other actors, Ki§lal points out in another interview that she is often asked to play cliched roles, such as the guest worker or the Turkish cleaning woman (Riebler 2008). In addition, the playwright Emel Heinreich complains that the existing funding mechanisms force her as a member of an immigrant group to focus on migration (Dogan 2010, p. 37). Similar points of criticism are raised by writers of immigrant origin, who are often discussed as migrant or migration writers - a label they reject as a way of separating their works from mainstream literature (see among others, Beiglbock et al. 2010, Disoski 2010).
However, the artists do not only explicitly criticise Viennese cultural life for being exclusionary. Their works illustrate that racism and exclusion are daily experiences in the lives of immigrants and their descendants in Vienna. Vladimir Vertlib (2005) describes experiences of discrimination of a Jewish Russian immigrant in Vienna in his novel Zwischenstationen (Transit Stations). Anna Kim's (2000) short story irritationen (Irritations) portrays the racist discrimination of a young woman of Asian origin. And Dimitre Dinev's (2003) novel Engelszungen (Angel's Tongues) describes the continuous exclusion of immigrants already in the country through the introduction of new laws turning them into illegals.
Often, the artists use strategies of what in post-colonial studies has been called 'writing back' (Ashcroft et al. 2002): they re-read representative culture from the position of those excluded from this culture with a view to questioning the self-proclaimed superiority of this culture and making their voices heard within it. For instance, Ljubomir Bratic, Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Lisl Ponger, Nora Sternfeld and Luisa Ziaja used the Mozart year in 2006 to re-map Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute, both still very popular today, in an exhibition that focused on the uncritical depiction of Black and Oriental
38 W.Sievers
others in these two works. This not only served to highlight how deeply rooted stereotypes of the Black and Oriental others are in Austrian culture, but also to reintroduce Black voices into Austrian history (Bratic et al. 2006, p. 126).
Similarly, the play Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood), co-produced by Ash Ki§lal's daskunst and Hubsi Kramer's SHOWinisten, is a persiflage on a well-known Austrian operetta of the same name composed by Johann Strauss. When the FPO called for protecting Viennese blood from foreign influences in the 2010 Viennese elections, the two theatre groups decided to respond to this racist slogan in a play set at a time when the FPO had taken over the responsibility for cultural agendas and cleansed all Austrian culture of foreign influences. Threatened by deportation, all artists of immigrant origin are forced to learn to waltz and sing and to use these new skills in a performance of the operetta Wiener Blut - a performance that will decide on their deportation. So, the artists express their claim for inclusion by writing their voices into the well-known Austrian operetta, while at the same time, highlighting exclusion in current Austrian society.
Conclusion
The Viennese population and Viennese cultural life have become far more diverse over the last 50 years, but cultural policies have been slow in picking up this trend. Immigrants and their descendants have long been ignored in cultural policies, both on the federal state level and in the city of Vienna. On the federal state level, this has only been changing since 2008, when the ministry of culture introduced two prizes for intercultural dialogue granted to initiatives addressing immigrants and their descendants. Since then, funding for initiatives linked to or including immigrants and their descendants has increased, but is still minimal compared to the overall state support for culture. In the city of Vienna, immigrants and their descendants were recognised much earlier in cultural policies, both in discourse and in funding. Like on the federal state level, the discursive focus has always been on furthering intercultural activities, dialogue and encounter rather than on immigrants or specific ethnic groups. This discourse increased in response to the FPO entering the Austrian Government, but concrete programmatic measures were rare and funding remained more or less the same.
Despite the minimal funding invested in the cultural activities of immigrants and their descendants, the visibility of artists of immigrant origin has increased in Vienna over the last decade. These new artists have explicitly criticised Viennese cultural life for excluding immigrants and their descendants, both as artists and as audiences. In addition, they feel that their artistic works are being marginalised. However, the artists do not limit this criticism to the cultural sphere. Many of their works illustrate that discrimination and exclusion are part and parcel of the daily lives of immigrants and their descendants, thereby highlighting that only a more fundamental change in the understanding of migration and diversity in Vienna and Austria will bring about a real change in cultural life. Often their works envisage such a change by including multicultural teams of artists and re-writing Austrian culture to also include the voices of immigrants and their descendants.
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
39
Notes
1. I would like to thank Theodora Manolakos for providing me with data on the educational level of the Viennese population.
2. The following ethnic groups were recognised as autochthonous minorities in Austria after the Second World War: Slovenes, Croats, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Roma and Sinti.
3. Vienna is both a federal state and a commune.
4. I have not analysed the whole budget dedicated to cultural initiatives, but only the funding awarded to associations, which constituted more than 90% of the budget in all years analysed here (see column 4 in Table 2). I have categorised those associations as linked to immigrants and their descendants that are immigrant associations or whose projects are devoted to members of immigrant communities.
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WIEBKE SIEVERS is researcher at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
ADDRESS: Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Postgasse 7/4/2, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Email: wiebke.sievers@oeawac.at