Salzburg Global Seminar, with support from the Bush Foundation and the McKnight Foundation, is proud to host at Schloss Leopoldskron artist residencies from selected Fellows from the Cultural Innovators Forum, a program that since 2013 has brought together cultural innovators and creative practitioners from around the world.
Artist and Fellow Moira Villiard spent eight days at Schloss Leopoldskron toward the end of 2022, connecting with people from all over the world
I’ll preface this reflection with a note that this is my first year ever traveling internationally, and prior to coming to Salzburg, I spent some time in Mexico City. The trips all blur together, and I think both trips lent themselves to lessons in being seen and unseen for me.
Arriving home in the USA after this trip, I went to check the mail in my P.O. box. There was quite a line at the service counter due to the holidays being right around the corner. I waited patiently and was suddenly inundated with commentary.
“I like your boots! They look warm,” a woman notes. I respond with gratitude and explain that I just got them in Austria.
“Wow, you’re tall; how tall are you?” another person chimes in.
“Do you play basketball? Are you a dancer?” (The latter question makes me laugh; a mulled wine vendor in Bavaria asked me the same thing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a tall dancer, so it’s kind of funny to me that people associate height with this field.)
I responded, “I’m an artist; I paint murals ….”
Another person cuts in, “Oh, you’re the one who did the murals at the Lake Walk! My friend helped with those.” A few eyes light up in the line as folks recognize the small-town celebrity that I am. I wish everybody a happy holiday season and sneak back out to my car.
I stop for breakfast at a local restaurant afterward. The parking lot was inundated with people, and some older man in a Subaru aggressively and unapologetically pulled into the spot I tried to park in. I have a reservation for my table; I make sure he sees me get seated before him. We are wonderful, petty Americans.
At breakfast, I run into another local artist and small-town celebrity, Wendy Savage. I run into her at the grocery store too shortly after, and then a whole host of other locals who welcome me back from my trip.
Not even 24 hours being back in Minnesota, and I feel maybe a reverse culture shock if there is such a thing. A feeling of hyper-awareness around the things that were once so mundane to me. I’m back, and there’s a returning feeling of “standing out” in ways that are different from being foreign - but at the same time, ways that have made me feel foreign to my home my whole life.
I really enjoyed my time in Austria, not being the resident giantess of Duluth, being surrounded by people six feet tall and taller, and being able to blend into the background for a moment. I enjoyed being foreign, having few questions asked about what I am or really where I come from.
I don’t mean to glorify or exotify what it means to be foreign - I more or less am fascinated with the notion of expectations; if you are not from somewhere, it’s often expected that you will be different than everyone else. It’s not as surprising to locals as it is when you grow up among them and are simply different beyond your own control. I’ve felt the latter for so long that the former was refreshing, to say the least. And it’s not just height that we Americans fixate on. I’ve gained a hyper-awareness of how racialized America is, which I’ve always understood to some extent as a mixed-race person… However, I think we take it to another level, one that’s hard to describe here in the USA.
In Austria, I also just got to have a sample of the feeling of “safety” for the first time in my life. I walked late at night to the grocery store and came across other women and even kids with their parents wandering in the darkness. I didn’t think there was a place on earth where you could be outside at night and not have to constantly look over your shoulder in anticipation of getting harassed or hurt.
But I also got a feel for some of the social issues of Salzburg - the cracks in the facade. It’s difficult to pinpoint them, especially when you don’t know the language, but I know they exist.
For instance, I was surprised to take a tour of a local village and have the tour guide laughingly admit that people hate when they bring outsiders there. I asked how the infrastructure has shifted to accommodate tourism in place of the town’s original industries, and he had very little to say in response.
Meanwhile, the mulled wine vendor I mentioned at the very beginning of this reflection took a lot of time to share his thoughts on collectivism, though again, I think the language barrier made it hard for me to understand the full extent of what he meant. I also noted the jobs that immigrants had as well as the “look” of homelessness, and it all really sparked a desire to understand this place better.
How did I get to Salzburg in the first place? I was a part of the 2020 Cultural Innovators Forum cohort, an experience that took place in person at Schloss Leopoldskron. It ended up being an intensive online program, which made it admittedly difficult to make the intimate sort of connections that would normally take place in a room full of artists and storytellers from around the globe.
It was magical for the time that it was, but I did feel like I had missed out on the type of experience I was looking for when I had initially applied (and that’s through no fault of the organizers, they did an incredible job under the conditions we were working under).
This is why then I was presented with the opportunity to come to Salzburg this year and pursue an artist residency. I jumped on the opportunity. It ended up leading to the sort of connections I’d hoped for the first time around in more indirect ways.
Before landing in Austria, I also had the opportunity to take a trip to Mexico City for a more self-guided artist residency. Before this year, the only international travel I’d ever had the privilege of experiencing was a trip to Toronto, maybe a year or two before the pandemic.
Actually, as a kid who grew up on a tribal reservation in a home that was financially, socially, and geographically isolated, my trip to Canada was a huge wake-up call in the way of what international travel consists of, even if it is just next door.
On that trip, I had no cell phone plan because I could only ever afford the prepaid services and brought only my debit card, which didn’t work in Canada or at my hotel check-in (because credit cards are a privilege to have and understand). I couldn’t venture off from my group because I had no money or communication.
The impact of growing up the way I did - poor and underexposed to much of the world outside of the welfare system - became extremely apparent to me during that trip and influenced how I pursued traveling this year.
I have so much to process from my time in both Austria and Mexico, and what I learned from both places was heightened by the fact that these trips were back-to-back. I came prepared with cash and credit cards this time around and needed to upgrade to a different cell phone service, breaking my lifetime relationship with cheap prepaid lines.
I’ve been reflecting heavily on what it means to have this privilege of travel at this point in my life, after two decades of existing in one place, one social class, and one way of thinking.
Besides understanding myself in terms of class and where I come from, this trip also was marked by collaborative reflection with other people. Through the Upper Midwest cohort, I became acquainted with another Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow, Shaina Brassard, who’s partnered to support some of my projects in Duluth. She utilized the same opportunity to travel this year and offered to carpool to the airport together, which was the beginning of a long list of personal interactions that culminated during this trip.
Before coming to Salzburg, Adrienne Benjamin (another Fellow) had reached out and asked if we could coordinate our residencies to take place at the same time. I knew of her work but hadn’t ever met her in person before …. And just as a huge fan of hers, I was really excited that she would want to work together. I agreed, and we planned to connect during our residencies.
We spent our residencies creating art together, sharing stories and experiences, and had what her daughter would refer to as “talk time” after dinner. We spent time reflecting on the socio-political context of our community and what it means to have grown up on the rez and to suddenly be plunged into this other world - to have these conversations in an ornate palace so far removed from where we come from, and to be not just Americans, but Indigenous Americans abroad.
Upon arriving in Salzburg, I was connected with Dina Mousa, who would be my roommate for the duration of the trip. (I will say I was nervous to share space with somebody I’d never met before, but she was an absolute delight!) We had similar “talk time,” reflecting again on social class and gender and identity, on what it means to be in this part of the world as foreigners rather than globs of intersectional identities that get picked apart back in the USA.
On social media, I connected briefly with yet another Fellow, Carl Atiya Swanson, for recommendations on things to do and experience in Salzburg since he was here just weeks before me. Like Carl, I also got to meet people like Richard Schabetsberger for a photo shoot and chat with him a little about his art and life in the region.
I met with another Native American woman living in Germany who came to visit me as well (we were friends on social media beforehand). I spent the day showing her around the Christmas markets in the Old Town, and we spent a good portion of time talking about our identities as Indigenous people and how context and place impact how we’re seen in the world.
Additionally, there were two programs on Education happening at the Schloss Leopoldskron during my residency, and I was able to connect with so many of those program participants as well throughout my stay.
I want to name these folks in this reflection because the relationships built through this residency were very much a part of what I’d hoped to gain in this experience. In my work, I often refer to my medium as “space” and the people in it - I create public art, animations, digital and traditional work … but the effectiveness of what I do as an artist relies on the context this work is placed in and the people who collaborate with and who interact with it.
I initially came here with the expectation that I might create new work or conduct some sort of public event, but I think as soon as I arrived, I felt the need to pivot and practice the art of being present and being foreign - of connecting with people from across the world and removing myself, for a moment, from familiarity.
I’m so grateful - as someone who grew up with so little, I feel so privileged to have had this opportunity and to be connected to many insightful humans.
I carry with me knowledge and questions all the same, and I am excited to continue my work as an artist exploring all of the conversations and experiences I had through this program.