Ready to go

Sabine Kroissenbrunner in conversation with Christian Reder

Ready to go

Difficult times today? Always have been. And always on the move - towards a future of solidarity. On 384 pages, Christian Reder, born in 1944, describes the work experiences, projects and experiments that have always characterised him and the resistance, discussion cultures and political abysses that he, now 81 years old, has encountered. Being uncompromisingly cosmopolitan, but above all remaining so, has turned the trained political scientist into a sought-after analyst, the project consultant into a productive essayist, the world explorer (including Nicaragua, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan ...) into a crisis manager and financier of aid and education projects. His plea for self-determined work has remained a fundamental motto that has rubbed up against the Austrian conditions in politics and business, the media and university life - „worth what“ can be read on the left of the PC keyboard, another question that seems to underlie all his projects. In addition to the large number of books and publications, the RD Foundation Vienna, which he heads, supports political and humanitarian projects: manageable, but focussed and sustainable.

Living in Austria as „project work“ - is that even allowed?

Christian Reder, political scientist, project developer, essayist, author and editor of numerous books on analytical and cross-cultural topics. Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 1985, head of the Centre for Art and Knowledge Transfer, which he established, retired in 2012. The non-profit private foundation founded in 2011 with his wife Ingrid Reder to strengthen civil society, plausible projects and publications. RD Foundation Vienna. Research. Development. Human Rights, also financed the conferences of the Vienna Process for a Democratic Afghanistan, The programme published this autumn specifies alternative perspectives on Taliban rule. His most recent book was published by Mandelbaum Verlag: Ready to Leave. Labour Experiences, Projects, Experiments (2025); Borderland Ukraine. Suppressed potentials. Drastic Experiences of Violence (2022); Daniel Defoe. An Essay on Projects (as editor with detailed commentary, new edition 2022); Mediterranean Urbanity. Periods of Vital Diversity as the Foundations of Europe (2020), Still Years of Unrest ... Ali M. Zahma and Afghanistan (2018; Farsi 2023).

Sabine Kroissenbrunner, Secretary General, Bruno Kreisky Forum

Christian Reder:
Ready to set off. Work experiences, projects, experiments
Mandelbaum Verlag, April 2025; 27,- €