Enrolled at the mdw since 2017, Programme of study: Master of Arts in Music Education for Voice and Instruments (IGP) – Piano

Perhaps we really can chalk it all up to the pandemic. After all, we’ve all still got those mantras in our ears. Keep your distance! Whatever you do, avoid getting too close to anyone! Meet nobody from outside your own household!

If there’s any one term that’s become more and more popular (and essential) among all of us in the media, recently, it’s this one: “the crisis”. It’s the uncontested leader in the buzzword charts, a constant guest on title pages, and a topic that’s omnipresent among new non-fiction releases. For it does, after all, provide a convenient way of explaining, labelling, and categorising any complex occurrence.

Enroled at the mdw since: 2011Programmes of study: IGP – Percussion (BA) and Cultural Institutions Studies (PhD programme); Instrumental Studies diploma in Percussion completed in July 2020

Virtually no other phrase bears within it as much condescension as does the oft-invoked call to “pick people up where they are”. Be it in the media, in politics, or in the cultural sphere, this metaphor has been flogged to a near-inflationary extent.

Benjamin Harasko, Preparatory Programme in Music Education – Voice; Voice (BA)

Persecution of dissenters, hollowing out of democratic rights, exclusion of people based on their religion, their origins, their skin colour. Whenever an injustice like one of these takes place, is accepted, is enforced, it is the consequence of a long process via which that injustice has been legitimised.

2020 was the year that saw the term “white privilege” truly arrive in our society. It describes the fact that white people enjoy social and economic advantages rooted in colonialism, imperialism, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

In truth, one should be grateful. All one’s acquaintances are healthy—and as for those who weren’t, at least the virus didn’t hit them all that badly. Considering how the ongoing pandemic has now claimed over a million lives worldwide, that’s actually quite something.

We used to call Metternichgasse 12 the Film Academy. There was a semi-basement there that we referred to as the cellar, and in this cellar was a designated office for the department’s student reps that we called the ÖH Room.