The Annenviertel district – where the city’s new residents, migrants and asylum seekers find a host of networks that help them find their way around and settle in Graz. Numerous shops, run by migrants, political and cultural associations, sports clubs, religious gathering places as well as educational and social facilities, allow them to keep up their native cultural and language traditions.

“New Graz” brings together a number of artistic initiatives curated and designed in a collective process and aimed at investigating the conditions met by new arrivals in districts such as Annenviertel and cities such as Graz. Artist Jun Yang, for example, explores the experiences and motives of Chinese migrants, while artist Moira Zoitl deals with the question of how West African women cope with the manifold ways of life in Graz and their native countries. In various ways “New Graz” provides a stage for people who at some point in the past set up home here and their narrations of how they were welcomed by the Arrival City. The projects are set to take place at < rotor > centre for contemporary art and the nearby Volksgarten Pavilion.

Thus “Narratives from the Arrival City” takes a clear stance on the current political situation. Despite all efforts to temporarily seal off the country’s borders, there is no denying that Austria has always been a country of immigration. The emergence of urban spaces and the growth of cities in particular are dependent on foreign migration and the project draws on a wide variety of artistic media to remind us once again of this fact.

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