Florian Neuner has already grazed the world. Cleveland, the Ruhr area, Berlin. But the avant-garde writer is never drawn to old towns. Rather, he keeps an eye out for industrial chimneys, for large halls on the periphery. He lets himself be carried along, surprised, driven by curiosity about what could surprise him around the next corner.
A later text usually begins with a visit to a tavern, a pub or an inn. “If you order a beer, that’s the legitimacy to sit down and start a conversation,” says the native of Wels, who has now been awarded the Republic of Austria’s “Outstanding Artist Award for Literature”, which is endowed with 10,000 euros. What does the 49-year-old himself find “outstanding” about his work? “Abstract approaches play a major role for me. I am in favor of modernist literature, against traditional storytelling. You have to arm yourself aesthetically differently today than for a 19th-century novel,” says Neuner, who freely admits that he “can not escape from the Ruhr area”.
Rust, Ruhr text, junk
What sounds abstract gets a plausible face in his books called “Rost”, “Ruhrtext” or “Ramsch”. At the moment Florian Neuner is geographically quite atypical. As the town clerk of Graz, he resides at the top of the Schlossberg-Schlössl. Of course, he has long since explored the industrial zone of the Styrian metropolis.
Florian Neuner’s vita is paved with awards, but also with project and work grants. Precisely because what he does is linguistically demanding and thus allows new perspectives. The Berliner by choice also recommends his literature as a different kind of travel guide: “You can see it that way. On the other hand, my texts are contemporary documents because so many details, such as the names of shops and restaurants, change surprisingly quickly. You can find a lot of it Not at all in a few years.”
Source: Nachrichten
