H. C. Artmann: Work and Context

The project H. C. Artmann: Work and Context provides the first comprehensive account of the entire work of the Austrian writer H. C. Artmann (1921-2000). Drawing on analytic methodology, the project relates descriptive text- analyses (e.g., with respect to content and form, genre, and intertexts) to various biographic, cultural-political and social contexts, events and trends in Austrian and German-language literature and society since 1945. More than simply adding single isolated readings, the project traces repetitive motifs and structures throughout his work as well as common contextual conditions entering the shape, production, and reception of his work. This procedure also accounts for the fact that his stylistic diversity and single aesthetics of autonomy took on different positions and contextual values in the course of literary and social history, ranging from the gesture of protest against the "Aufbau"-mentality of postwar Austria, against the call for realist and engaged literature in the late 1960s, or against the tendencies of New Subjectivity during the 1970s. The project will yield a monograph of his work (planned also both as a reader-friendly introduction and discussion of Artmann-research), a short biography, an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary literature as well as several articles and conference papers. These publications are partially based on conducting interviews and investigating new or neglected material (e.g. "Teilnachlässe", "Bibliothek H. C. Artmann" in the Wiener Rathaus-Bibliothek) in order to arrive at an innovative survey of his work and to position its role in the course of Austrian and German-language literature up to the present, thus also accounting for the long-term influence of his activities in translating and mediating modernist literature, popular culture and outdated styles such as the baroque.

The 3-year project was located at the Institut für Germanistik at Universität Wien and undertook the first systematic investigation of H. C. Artmanns work and its various contexts, which range from biographic to cultural-political conditions over a period of more than 5 decades. Methodically accurate interpretations of Artmanns texts concentrated on their stylistic variety and radical aesthetics of autonomy, which rendered his work (resp. its evaluation by readers and critics) different significance according to the development of (literary)historical contexts after 1945 in Austria and Germany: as a means of protest against the Aufbau-Mentalität of the immediate post-war period, against the call for engaged realism in the late 1960s, or against tendencies of New Subjectivity during the 1970s. In addition, his work entails early forms of postmodern writing with respect to intertextuality, irony, popular culture, entertainment value, and signs of new modesty. The main work and presentation of project results is reserved for a chronologically structured monograph (to be published in 2015), which combines the advantages of a reader-friendly introduction with those of a handbook and a selective bibliography. The latter, bibliographic function will be adopted in a more complete manner in an annotated bibliography (mediography) of its own. Aside from given papers and published articles, a collection of proceedings (together with original contributions) will appear in late 2014; the proceedings were given as papers at the international H. C. Artmann-conference 60 Jahre acht-punkte-proklamation des poetischen actes (Vienna; Apr. 11.-12. 2013), which was co-organized by the project leader. The project enabled several types of productive and long-term collaboration, be it informally with acquaintances and colleagues of Artmann, with younger researchers and students, with private archives and those of publishing houses, be it formally with accomplished experts from Austria and abroad as well as with the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. Such collaborations will be further enhanced by the recently established Internationale Gesellschaft H. C. Artmann (IGHCA; the project leader functions as vice-president), which is dedicated to the research and communication of Artmanns life and work. Through innovative interpretations and literary-historical connections to tendencies in Austrian und German-language literature, the project succeeded in documenting the outstanding and long-range influence of Artmanns work and personality, which was also fostered through his life-long activities as translator and mediator. A particularly gratifying project result was the abundance of found unknown material from archival holdings, whose complete analysis will provide further knowledge for research on Austrian literature and cultural history, not to mention neighbouring disciplines focusing on issues of translation, image-text relations, and popular culture.