Franz von Strolchen

By the year 2055, the Austrian government has largely abolished public memory. In Franz von Strolchen’s scenario, this is the result of the 2033 “State Concept of History,” a decree that regulates remembrance by organizing official forgetting. Memory is now a strictly private affair: Public monuments have disappeared, and the commemoration of the Holocaust survives only as a semiclandestine hobby kept alive by volunteer enthusiasts desperate to hold on to the past.

It is a future that may not be so far off. In an era without living eyewitnesses, where truth is reshaped by artificial intelligence and political revisionism, remembering becomes an eccentric, almost illicit act. In Austria Demenzia, von Strolchen stages a makeshift memorial service from this amnesiac tomorrow—a darkly absurd ceremony asking what happens to history when state-organized forgetting meets distorted narratives.

Christian Winkler (1981, Graz), also known as Franz von Strolchen, is an author and director. He frequently deals with the boundaries between reality and fiction and the depiction of social dynamics in which the seemingly ordinary can turn into the astonishing. His works have been shown at institutions such as Thalia Theater, Hamburg; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Kampnagel, Hamburg; Schaubühne, Berlin; Luzerner Theater; and MOT Festival, Skopje. Winkler has received the Retzhofer Drama Prize and the Ö1 Hörspielpreis der Kritik, among others. He lives in Hamburg.