Humans and Demons: Dissecting Evil in Evil Times

The discourse of crisis has recently been replaced by the discourse of evil. The crimes and human tragedies in Ukraine or Israel-Palestine have prompted us to point to monstrous, singular evils, yet we forget that evil lives among us. Even in our polarized world, there are vast moral gray zones, that authoritarian forces could weaponize. The 2023 edition of steirischer herbst, Humans and Demons, explored how people negotiate such gray zones, how to confront evil, and how ethical judgments can still be made. In a combination of essays and shorter literary texts, the festival reader further examines the return of radical evil.

Every year for a month, STEIRISCHER HERBST, the oldest interdisciplinary festival of contemporary art in Europe, turns the city of Graz and the province of Styria in Austria into a parcours of installative and performative works. Since 1968, the festival has offered a platform for public debates, critical positions, and dialogues between the arts.