Noit Banai
Noit Banai, Vienna, 22 June 2025
“What is a border?”
Since October 2024, the American art historian Noit Banai has held a professorship in Diaspora Aesthetics at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. In a city that has always played host to encounters between the most varied diasporic life stories and in an era in which migrant movements from all directions and cultural circles have become routine, she navigates a (research) terrain that is rife with controversy. In this conversation in the columned hall of the Academy’s main building, Banai illustrates this in terms of three current research emphases: How does one read the life documents of exiled Europeans in Hong Kong? What options beyond documentation and activism remain to the arts and culture in light of circumstances such as the Ukraine War? And what does it entail for an intellectual if their statements themselves suddenly create the sort of condition that Banai attempted to apprehend in her 2021 essay “Being a Border”?
“What is a border?”
Since October 2024, the American art historian Noit Banai has held a professorship in Diaspora Aesthetics at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. In a city that has always played host to encounters between the most varied diasporic life stories and in an era in which migrant movements from all directions and cultural circles have become routine, she navigates a (research) terrain that is rife with controversy. In this conversation in the columned hall of the Academy’s main building, Banai illustrates this in terms of three current research emphases: How does one read the life documents of exiled Europeans in Hong Kong? What options beyond documentation and activism remain to the arts and culture in light of circumstances such as the Ukraine War? And what does it entail for an intellectual if their statements themselves suddenly create the sort of condition that Banai attempted to apprehend in her 2021 essay “Being a Border”?