H13 Prize 2025: Jury Statement

This year's H13 prize winner has been announced. The H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance 2025 goes to the choreographer and performance artist Stina Fors. The H13 jury reviewed 73 applications this year. In the end, Fors clearly came out on top with her project Answer Me, Pythia. In their statement, jury members Dot Zhihan Jia, Carolina Nöbauer und Frederike Sperling write:

"In her two-week performance “Answer me, Pythia”, performance artist and choreographer Stina Fors transforms Kunstraum Niederoesterreich into the Oracle of Delphi. Like the ancient custom in the temple of prophecy, each day visitors can encounter the priestess Pythia, who shall now be summoned by Fors. As legend goes, Pythia announces her prophecies in a drunken state of ecstasy, giving her advice in unpredictable forms of expression and with ample space for interpretation. With a penchant for the absurd and untamed, Fors articulates a contemporary commentary on the post-truth era in this award-winning project: in a world where claims to truth are predicated on emotions and convictions, the artist urges her audience to resort to their own critical faculties. She encourages them to question themselves and each other, even though or precisely because they themselves – and art – do not always have straightforward answers. Wielding methods such as ventriloquism, various vocal techniques, spontaneity, and interaction, Fors’s “Answer me, Pythia” represents an uncompromising commitment to the live moment and the immediate encounters performative art enables."

→ further information on Answer Me, Pythia