The 33rd KUNSTFEST WEIMAR has been history since last weekend: in 2022, about 140 events took place in about 30 venues in Weimar and throughout Thuringia, among the 45 projects were 17 premieres and first performances. Under the heading "Longing for Tomorrow", around 26,000 spectators visited the KUNSTFEST between August 24 and September 10 - according to the preliminary results - with around one third fewer events than in the previous year. Due to the capacity-limited indoor events in the past two years, the range of free projects in public spaces was even greater in 2020 and 2021, so that the decrease of 1,000 visitors:inside in the total number of visitors is small. In contrast, ticket sales (with seats full again for the first time) increased by about 25% to 6,650 tickets, which is in line with pre-pandemic results. Accordingly, the KUNSTFEST WEIMAR - which was the only major German summer festival that could also take place in full analogue throughout 2020 & 2021 - came through the pandemic largely unscathed.
Festival hits '22 were the opening production "The Olive Grove" by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau and choreographer Nir de Volff. The two South African dance guest performances with choreographies by Gregory Maqoma were well received, as was the jazz concert "4 Wheel Drive" by jazz stars Nils Landgren, Michael Wollny, Lars Danielsson and Wolfgang Haffner. And the final concert "Weimar I Babylon" in cooperation with Achava Festspiele and Jazzmeile Thüringen also delighted the audience. The exhibition "Angel of history" by Aura Rosenberg at the Bauhaus Museum Weimar and the performance and exhibition project "Dirty Talking - Thuringian Seductions", which covered the whole of Thuringia and featured star actor Dominique Horwitz, whom the Süddeutsche Zeitung described as a "hotshot", were also very well received. The music theater premiere "Welcome to paradise lost" by Falk Richter and Jörn Arnecke and the enhanced reality project "Animate" by Chris Salter in the KET Hall were completely sold out, "Animate" was celebrated by the FAZ as a forecast "for the theater in ten years".
Further press reactions to KUNSTFEST WEIMAR 2022 ranged from Thuringia to the USA and were diverse and mostly positive to euphoric. The New York Times attested to the KUNSTFEST's "clever curation" and reported enthusiastically, among other things, on the KUNSTFEST projects "Werewolf Commandos" by Marie Schwesinger, the Rosenberg exhibition, and the world premiere of Thomas Köck's "Solastalgia" in co-production with Schauspiel Frankfurt. The Süddeutsche Zeitung attested to the "top theater playwright" a "magnificent" text that was "furious, indignant, and perhaps never so horrified and sad. The Deutschlandfunk found the opera project "Aria di Potenza" by the young Polish director Krystian Lada to be a "grandiose, highly topical and precise evening. Poland's second-largest daily newspaper Rzeszpospolita described "this year's Kunstfest Weimar as an unqualified success". Festival director Rolf C. Hemke said: "Artistically - I think - we can be more than satisfied, as the audience response but also the local, national and international press response let us feel. KUNSTFEST has thus once again proven that it can show current, contemporary art with great appeal, which also reaches audiences throughout the Free State."
Next year, from August 23 to September 10, 2023, the KUNSTFEST will be dedicated to the theme of 100 years of the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar, among other things. The festival will then kick off with the premiere of Alfred Jarry's "King Ubu" directed by US star director Robert Wilson.