Press release on the Kunstfest Weimar 2023 - Press conference

Weimar, June 21, 2023.
The program of the Kunstfest Weimar 2023 is under the slogan "Remembering creates the future": the artistic director Rolf C. Hemke presented the overall program of the largest East German festival for contemporary arts on Wednesday, June 21, at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar. Around 45 projects with over 150 events from all genres of current artistic creation await the audience from August 23 to September 10, 2023. Even the participatory opening project on Theaterplatz is characterized by shared experience, in order to counteract content-less memory routines. It offers a link to the European Capital of Culture year 1999: Günther Uecker, then as now an important painter and object artist, had erected a "STEINMAL" in the cellar room of the prisoners' canteen of the Buchenwald concentration camp. 24 years later, the installation made of stones from the Buchenwald quarry will be given a new lease of life for one week on Weimar's Theaterplatz: Uecker, who is now 93 years old, hopes that the people of Weimar will participate in the construction.

This installation is one of two projects in the urban space of Weimar with which the Kunstfest commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus exhibition in August 1923. The starting point is the question of what remains of the Bauhaus utopia of a new man and a changed society. In "KRIEGSWEIHE", a multi-day and multi-part interdisciplinary urban space concert, composer and director Marc Sinan conceives music as a form of coming to terms with trauma and overcoming conflict. The various stations will be connected via a procession on September 03 and culminate in the music theater performance "KILL KRIEG!" on the same day in the Großes Haus of the German National Theater Weimar. Jelena Kuljić, protagonist of the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele, will meet the legendary screen and stage actor David Bennent, who will allegorically embody "war", as part of the world premiere of a text by Lydia Haider. The evening will be musically accompanied by the Belgrade ensemble Metamorphosis and members of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra.

Another central festival project in the public space is the author:in reading project "Wir sind Möglichkeiten" ("We are possibilities"), in which 13 positions of the most diverse provenance on the subject of otherness and exclusion will be heard on the Weimar Agora, the Theaterplatz. Among others, with such diverse voices as the Leipzig literature professor Dirk Oschmann, who stormed the Spiegel bestseller list with his reflections on East and West Germany, crime novelist Max Annas, playwright Sivan Ben Yichai or author Josephine Apraku, who is also a trainer for racism-critical educational work.

As in previous years, the Kunstfest Weimar also addresses issues of climate change and ongoing environmental destruction: this is exemplified by the world premiere of the music theater piece "Missing in cantu" by composer Johannes Staud and Thomas Köck in co-production with the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar on Sept. 2, or the world premiere of the anarchic family piece "Fällt alle Bäume" by Belgian performance artist Benjamin Verdonck on the studio stage at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar on the same day.  These projects were made possible by a grant from the Thuringian Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Nature Conservation - with total funding of 30,000 euros. Minister Bernhard Stengele explains: "The importance of art cannot be overestimated. Especially in challenging times of crisis, we need it more urgently than ever. Art offers idiosyncratic perspectives and creates understanding. In art, through art, we experience the uncertainties in the face of rapid change. The Kunstfest raises questions and captures answers: how can we live in a climate-friendly and sustainable way? It is as self-evident as it is important that art is free and must be free. Its answer does not have to please the funders. It should and may be uncomfortable and wild."

The Kunstfest is also represented with several projects in the area: Artistic bus tours to abandoned places revived by installations and performances are organized by the ACC Galerie Weimar together with the Kunstfest under the title "Endland" on each festival weekend. In addition, the audio project "Da lag Preßwitz schräg drinne" offers an imaginary audio topography of the place flooded in the Hohenwarte reservoir - during a rowboat trip on the idyllic body of water.

Advance booking for all events has begun.

 

Contact:

KUNSTFEST WEIMAR

Rathenauplatz 6 | 99423 Weimar

Phone | 03643 – 755 292

Email | marcus.graenz@nationaltheater-weimar.de
kunstfest-weimar@imketramnitz.de