| In memoriam | Emily Artmann |
1975–2026

In January 2026, Emily Artmann passed away in Vienna. Her work was always shaped by a tender, witty, and intellectually alert approach: as a poet, to poetry; as an editor and filmmaker, to a reality in which people have to find their bearings and express themselves through words. Film and language were her tools – whether in wackelatlas, created together with her cousin Katharina Copony, a sensitive portrait of her father H. C. Artmann, or in her finely attuned volumes of poetry. Diagonale commemorates Emily Artmann, in cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, with this small homage.

der wackelatlas – sammeln und jagen mit H. C. Artmann
by Emily Artmann anf Katharina Copony
AT 2021, 58 min

“I don’t want to paint a picture of life,” says H. C. Artmann at one point in this film, which his daughter Emily Artmann and his niece Katharina Copony shot in his apartment in Vienna in the fall of 2000. A few weeks before his death, we can listen to the great poet and writer in this deeply empathetic final portrait as he reflects on art and his understanding of literary work in a small, sparsely furnished room. “At the beginning of writing there is absolute silence.”