Karl Sczuka Grant Prize 2004

Oswald Egger: tuning, stumm

Stand

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To stand in space, to have time, to enter into both, in general: to be accessible (and able to reach a state from one's position), to be in a hurry, to dwell between phases (and to two both: un-underflowing and overflowing), entering or doing eloquently, alternately completing complements (after escaped interstices), ... Such and similar are paraphrases for the incessant desire to penetrate through (and by) the world in other words, to stand and be in the word everywhere, in processes of eager futilities (ganglia or gaits), which likewise remained standing in space - and promise themselves-in-themselves what fails - remains?

In a sphere akin to a locked-down domain, where syllables resound anew and silence prevails like existential anxieties, words erect barriers and take turns, forming a lattice of whimsicality within the realm of phases. Here, they do more than merely convey information; they conform in an unrestrained dance of phrases.

But how does this space look - and what does it look like? Is this in reality only that - and in truth? half-and-half, in parts, in the meantime, and all at once? The rigid multiplicity of territories is quarried off-terrain ("now") and configures state-spaces incessantly? catchily? transferred? Is Therefore, in reality, only Why? what insists in the radio - is?

Not so this one, unhandedly clinging together acclamation: one configuration slaps and punches the other, and its disfiguration atacts (touches) the senses. Districts of understanding covered sum areal areas, cluster echoes formed each other in the now and intertwined into nows (-sudden, immediately decaying, borrowed meanings), (in the dungeon of reciprocals seized) presences, present tense. - Are configuration and disfiguration embossed figures of their own prefiguration? congealed grids of arrest? supplemented in the everywhere? what can be replaced by nothing? events interlaced here and there, coinciding, yes, but (in discretion) dependent reciprocally, and yet incompetent from what now? emerging àjour? this inversion of silence?

In general: What - happening around me - is?

(There must, must be a reality apart, and the dream's memory of its awakening).

Realization: Oswald Egger
Production: ORF Vienna 2004
Length: 11'47 - stereo
Original broadcast: July 18, 2004 Austria 1, ORF Kunstradio

The author

Born on March 7, 1963 in Lana, South Tyrol/Italy

In 1992, Oswald Egger completed his studies at the University of Vienna with a thesis on hermetic literature (»Wort für Wort. Konjekturen zu einigen mentalen Räumen dunkler Rede oder: ›regio‹ und ›religio‹ einer mutmaßlichen Sakramentalität des Hermetischen«).

As an organizer of cultural events, editor of the magazine "Der Prokurist," and the edition per procura, he was involved between 1986 and 1998 in the Bücherwürmer association in his hometown Lana, promoting contemporary literature and art. Egger writes poetry, narratives, novels, and has been collaborating with composers since 1998, including Burkhard Stangl, Michael Pisaro, and Antoine Beuger (with the latter in 2003 at the premiere of "wort für wort [geraum]" at the Donaueschinger Musiktage). His literary work, internationally disseminated through translations into French, English, Hungarian, Swedish, and Arabic, has been honored with numerous scholarships and awards, including the Austrian State Scholarship for Literature (1995, 2001), the Mondsee Poetry Prize (1999), the George Saiko Prize and the Clemens Bretano Prize (2000), the Meran Poetry Prize, and the Most Beautiful German Books Prize from the Stiftung Buchkunst for "Nichts, das ist" (2002).

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