Dr. Peter Kaiser (Governor of Carinthia)
The pandemic is creating a new use for digitization, which is not without it problems. In its document Our Creative Diversity from 1995, UNESCO had already pointed out that access to digital information varies and thus the difference between rich and poor becomes more pronounced.
However, this difference does not only exist between different regions of the world, it also exists in Austria. In the midst of the pandemic, this can be seen, for example, in digital school teaching. But also in the distribution of goods – some suffer losses, others become crisis winners and increase their personal wealth, which for some is greater than most of the state budgets of this world.
Nevertheless, it was helpful for remembrance that the Jura Soyfer Society began to digitize remembrance work after its foundation in 1988. The 29 Symposion shows that the offer, like the Virtual Soyfer Archive, is also used by artists, scientists, for school lessons not only in Austria but worldwide.
The Jura Soyfer Society would like to expand the quality of its offer in the up coming years. It is not only about hundreds of essays, thousands of documents, pictures etc. , but it is also about new aesthetic approaches – a new way of dealing with 0 and 1. It is about defending humanity in the midst of one of the greatest disasters in Europe since the Second World War. It is about a new, cross-border memory work and cooperation. It is a matter of future plans in the sense of a social democracy.
Translation: Herbert Arlt