The Good

Life

or the mild mannered

“Zettelpoet” ( n o t e

poet) Helmut Seethaler, The Good Life

means pasting tiny poems on Vienna’s

trees and subway stations, defending his

right to do so in the Austrian Supreme

Court, and raising three children. He has

earned little from his poetry, and has

paid thousands in fines. He drew poems on

courthouse steps, earning an additional

fine. His biggest successes to date are a

Supreme Court verdict upholding his typed

work as a protected form of art and, finally,

this autumn, a published book of his poetry,

titled Texte für Denkende + gegen das Denk-

Ende (Texts for Those Who Think + Against

the End of Thinking, Hochroth, Vienna

2017), a collection of works challenging

“artificial and harmful thinking,” and decry-

ing “the capitalist motor that renders

unused democracy useless.” Glue is included.

For most people, The Good Life doesn’t re-

quire provoking the law, or publicizing their

thoughts on Gott und die Welt (Austrian

shorthand for “a bit of everything”) in real

space. For artists like Seethaler, it’s the only

way. And he’s not alone in Vienna, which

since the end of WWII has supported an

alternative culture that survives in easy

coexistence alongside the nine-to-fivers and

suburbanites – like the shock-art perfor-

mances of the Aktionists and Drahdiwaberl,

or bordellos open to all. Overturning a

narrow-minded past that led to the destruc-

tion of the city, society and culture required

alternative ways of thinking and living,

fueled by a taste for provocative humor.

The city’s air is flavored as much by

Johann Strauss’ son’s champagne-soaked

Die Fledermaus (“King Fizz the First – that

often makes a nation forget an altercation”)

as by the local rapper Skero’s more beer-

fueled pleasures: “Die anen foahn noch

Ibiza, die aundren noch Udine. Wir bleiben

im Parkbad mochn Party in Kabine” (“Some

go on holiday in Ibiza, some in Udine. We

stay in the public bath and party in the

changing room”).

Artists like Seethaler use our shared pub-

lic space to express themselves as they see

fit, whether it’s to change society or to simply

scream, “I leave my mark on walls, therefore

I exist.” Seethaler’s pasted scraps are not all

that poetic, more exhortations on how to live

better: “Nichtmitmachen, obwohl fast alle

mitmachen, schafft Chancen, dass auch

andere nicht mitmachen, und diese noch

weitere vorm mitmachen bewahren” (“Not

going along, even though almost everybody

goes along, creates the chance that others

won’t go along either, and those will keep

others too from going along”). How one

judges his use of public space, or his work

itself, depends very much on your personal

definition of The Good Life.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

The Good Life (#TGL), or “a” good life, are

concepts about as easy to define as love or

justice. Usually measured by degrees of

happiness, what The Good Life means for

one person might in fact be hell for someone

else. Self-reliance obsessed libertarians can’t

understand the life choices of altruistic

charity workers. Wealthy conservatives look

“Not going along, even though almost everybody

goes along, creates the chance that others

also won’t go along.”

Helmut Seethaler, Zettelpoet (note poet)

Helmut Seethaler writes his poems on

small notes, sticking them to columns and

walls in public spaces so everybody can

see and “pluck” them if they like.