Collaborative work (Zusammenspannwerk)
About opportunities for participation: become part of the Festival of Regions (FdR).
by Mieze Medusa
Art does not live in a vacuum, it lives in our heads. For over thirty years, the FdR has been a space for encounters. It brings together local artists with national and international positions, often just a short train ride or a click on the internet away. The audience also comes from all over: from Braunau, the Innviertel, from Upper Austria and Salzburg. What’s more, Germany is just a short walk across the Innbrücke. If a few Viennese come along, then the party is perfect. At FdR*25, there are a few fantastic projects that invite us to try out what comes to mind when we are asked to “dream realistically”.
The Braunau seamstress
Lydia Waldhör likes it material. In sewing, people come together. Although it is Lydia who sews. People come by and bring what they find in their households: textiles that have a story. These can be handed in every day at the seamstress’s “workshop” in public space. Say hello and strike up a conversation. Lydia embroiders the person’s initials into the fabric, and the fabric becomes material. In this way, a number of individual pieces become a “common cause”, which is also an individual piece again. Just as our lives are interwoven, linked and connected.
Somnarium – A Place for Lucid Listening and Embodied Dreaming
Maja Renn, Hana Kokšalová, Fabio Don, Savannah Theis, Zaumne and Misia Żurek create an installation for Braunau in which we can dream together. They design a dream space and pay attention to everything: architecture, sound, abstraction and the possibility of being in the middle of it. In short, guided meditations, we enter the threshold state between waking and dreaming. We are invited to draw the things that arise in us. Our pictures become part of the installation, the installation becomes a gallery of our dream worlds. In addition, these dreams are lifted and evaluated in two workshops. What else? The whole thing looks really stylish and is surrounded by greenery. Where? Come to Braunau and see for yourself!
Inn /4 Pride
Speaking of dreams: it’s a dream that comes true, or at least truer. In June 2025, the first Pride of the Innviertel will take place and the FdR will be a stable (and proud) partner. Big plans are already being made in round tables and networking meetings in Ried im Innkreis. Let’s mark June 7, 2025 in our calendars, drive to Ried and celebrate equality in action. Let’s work together to ensure that queer people are visible without being discriminated against. We need utopias that encourage us. We need the visibility of social diversity to be taken for granted.
After that, we’ll be in just the right mood to drive to Braunau and encounter a variety of artistic positions at FdR. Of course, many queer, feminist voices can be found among them. Because Pride is always.
Festival of Encounters
The Festival of Encounters is an institution. The Zimt works all year round to ensure successful cooperation and participation for all people. Once a year, this is loudly celebrated. We are happy that the festival falls within our festival period and that we can enrich it and be enriched by it. What’s on offer? Show dancing, folk dancing, international costumes, singing together, dancing together, eating together, a reading by Emran Feroz, concerts ranging from reggae to rock, e.g. by Kitole Kenda or the Bavarian singer-songwriter Baba Rai.
And of course: hip hop. Look forward to Yasmo & the Klangkantine. It’s almost crazy what I’m writing now: there is an opportunity to go on stage with them.
Writing songs with Yasmo & the Klangkantine
If you’re smart, you’ll spend more than one day at FdR. There’s so much to see, it’s worth staying. Maybe you’re ambitious and think I have song ideas in the drawer, but I can’t get anywhere on my own. It’s a great truth of creative work: we don’t have to do it alone. We can exchange ideas, get feedback, in short: get help. Yasmin Hafedh, Ralf Mothwurf and Tobias Vedovelli want to work with you. There are writing and composition or songwriting workshops and if everything goes well and you want to, you can present the result as part of the band’s performance in public space in Braunau.
Art is great: Poetry Slam
Kunst ist Klasse is a program that brings art to schools. FdR is bringing a great project to the Innviertel region. Katharina Wenty, David Samhaber, Laura Hybner and Pascal Simon are working with students from NMS schools in Braunau, Schärding, Ried and Simbach. The goal: to tell your own stories. Playing with language. Tell us what is important to you and then come on stage and inspire the audience. The students’ texts will be printed in a fan magazine. The students will also come to the Gugg and inspire us with their texts. Later the same day, there will be a poetry slam by the Upper Austrian collective “Wortwerkler” with a brilliant line-up.
Stern*INNen
You can perform more than just texts. And you don’t need a stage for that either. Everything becomes a stage. A street, a park, a bridge, a square… in short: Braunau.
While it is frowned upon to dress up at a poetry slam, in public spaces it is not only fun to design and costume your own body, it also provides insights. About space and our relationship to it. Martyna Lorenc and Adriana Torres Topaga have developed a method that allows us to discover hierarchies in our perceptions. Fatima El Kosht and Luis Gonzaga Hoyos invite you to a workshop and a performance parkour. Sounds abstract? Come by and find out what to expect!
Inspiring togetherness, a realistic dream!
Just as Braunau longs for and deserves a fair and open look, art longs for an inspired and inspiring juxtaposition of perspectives, questions and ideas. In a laboratory of coming together, in the experimental garden of the present, we are looking for sustainable networks: coming together brings a change of perspective, communication brings exchange, no questions no answers, no dialogue no we.