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With symposia, concerts, screenings, readings, installations, and performances happening in over twenty-five venues across the city of Graz, this year’s steirischer herbst revived the specters of fascism and its dissenters while addressing important questions about the shape-shifting, contradictory nature of the contemporary commons. Curated by Ekaterina Degot and titled Volksfronten (Popular Fronts), its vast artistic program, which included almost seven hundred participants, disrupted historical and contemporary forms of universality—and their accompanying “

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My visit to Steirischer Herbst—the annual arts-and-theater festival held in Graz since 1968—started with a nighttime taxi tour organized by the local Theater im Bahnhof, a self-described “contemporary Volkstheater (people’s theater).” During this work of “taxi-choreography,” the backseat became my box seat for personal stories told by my designated drivers: Tom, a dedicated punk-rock musician and singer who has been driving since age fourteen; and Ahmet, who acts as a chauffeur for a blind child and writes poetry during his breaks. It was a rather heartwarming