Festival der Regionen 2023
High Time!

23. June - 02. July 2023
, Oberösterreich

The 16th edition of the Festival of the Regions took place from June 23 to July 2, 2023, in the region along the Summerauerbahn railway. Under the motto “Höchste Eisenbahn” (High Time), current future issues were the focus of artistic exploration – from climate catastrophe to societal coexistence. The geographic and thematic starting point of […]

The 16th edition of the Festival of the Regions took place from June 23 to July 2, 2023, in the region along the Summerauerbahn railway.

Under the motto “Höchste Eisenbahn” (High Time), current future issues were the focus of artistic exploration – from climate catastrophe to societal coexistence. The geographic and thematic starting point of the Festival of the Regions was the Summerauerbahn railway line, which winds its way from Linz through the Mühlviertel region to Horní Dvořiště in the Czech Republic.

The Journey as a Metaphor
The railway line, symbolizing a region, served as a metaphor in the 2023 festival edition for a series of challenges. From public and individual transportation to dealing with resources and the boundaries in people’s minds. A metaphor for traversing, shaping, and molding landscapes and societies. For overcoming distances. For places of encounter and dialogue between regions, cultures, and generations. For breaking away and leaving behind. Staying and moving on. For transitions. For deceleration. For stopping and continuing. For something that belongs to everyone. And concerns everyone. For a shared resource.

The train has not left yet
But it is high time to reset the tracks. And it is high time that something changes. That we talk more with each other. Come together again. Work on the future. Break down barriers. Become more open to differences and contradictions and unconventional approaches. It is high time to allow something different and look at our world from multiple perspectives.

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Festival der Regionen 2023: "Höchste Eisenbahn" Eröffnung (Horní Dvořiště, 23.6.2023) Foto: eSeL.at - Lorenz Seidler

OPENING IN 4 ACTS
Event, Opening

For the very curious, there is a TRAIN TOUR starting from Linz Central Station from noon, where you can already take a look at some of the projects along the route. For those who only have time later, there is the INAUGURAL RIDE with the FdR*TRAIN.

FdR Region 2023

Region 2023

The action area of the 2023 festival was the region along the Summerauerbahn railway. From the city of Linz, through the Mühlviertel and across the border to the Czech Republic.

An meinen Haaren möcht‘ ich sterben
Exhibition, Performance, Video

An meinen Haaren möcht‘ ich sterben dealt with being beside oneself, non-arriving, in perpetual travel. In a video work and a performance Peter Kozek, Vanessa Mazanik and Florian Ronc dealt with the ritual of mourning.

Tangible Music
Music / Sound, Performance

As part of the opening ceremony in Horní Dvořiště, students from the master’s program Postdigital Lutherie developed two instruments especially for this year’s festival theme.

Lipno_PostBellum 2

Lipno, zrcadlo historie 20. století
Exhibition

The exhibition is our latest work in the region around Lipno lake and tells the story of a historical switching of the settlers along the border, especially during the first years after the ending of WWII.

Water Research & Water Bar

Together with people from the region, the Sladovna Písek team got to the bottom of the stories of water along the Summerauerbahn railway and also explored performative aspects of drinking.

Es war einmal ein sehr alter Stau
Installation, Public Art

The Mühlviertel tells a long story of trade movement between the Danube and the Vltava, of medieval carts, of the horse-drawn railroad and of the Summerauerbahn railway line. The rural communities in the region were hardly influenced by this, until the agricultural changes and the rural exodus of the past seventy years caught up with them.

30*Mobile Druckwerkstatt
street printing press

Dagmar Höss helped shape and accompanied the Festival of the Regions over the course of many editions, as the head, as an artist, and as a visitor. Her project puts the focus on the titles of every previous edition of the festival.

Eine Bahnreise durch die Filmgeschichte
Film

High Time was the motto of Festival of the Regions 2023, and therefore this seems like a fitting reason for the Local-Bühne Freistadt to pick up on this topic in a cinematographic manner.

Frauentor-Besetzung und Frauengassen-Fest
Event, Happening, Music / Sound, Performance

Frauenpersönlichkeiten sind bei der Namensgebung von Straßen und Plätzen deutlich unterrepräsentiert. Von den rund 190 Straßen in Freistadt sind zum Beispiel zirka 60 nach Männern benannt, aber nur vier nach Frauen. Auf diese eklatante Schieflage macht die Aktionsgruppe Fraustadt Freistadt mit einer Frauentor-Besetzung und einem Frauengassen-Fest aufmerksam.

Free Stock Sport
Intervention, Partizipation by Clemens Stöttinger

Eine virale Kampagne behauptet in Anlehnung an Graffiti-Kultur, Skater-Szene, Free-Techno und illegale Autorennen das Aufkeimen des Asphaltstocksports in der Subkultur. Eine Intervention in der Freistädter Salzgasse unterzieht diesen selbst generierten Mythos einem praktischen Realitätstest.

Garden_Networks
Performance, Workshop

The goal of the project was the activation and strengthening of online networks between gardeners and bio laboratories, food networks and knowledge networks, and networks of our surroundings and networks of our knowledge.

HYPER TASTE
Happening, Music / Sound, Workshop

Based on traditional dishes from Austrian and Czech cuisine, 30 participants developed their own recipes during a one-day workshop and then cooked them together with chefs Martin Parzer and Maximilian Wagner.

Landgänge 2023: VOR > BEI
Event, Music / Sound, Partizipation, Prozession

After a concert in the Salzhof Freistadt, the audience had the opportunity to walk together along musical signposts to St Peter. Two further concerts followed in the Kalvarienbergkirche and the Filialkirche.

VegLab
Laboratory, Workshop

VegLab is a platform that allows people to deal with growing vegetables without any necessary previous experience. Those interested will be confronted with crop plants that grow in our region and will learn what it is that they need in order to prosper. The core of the vegetable laboratory is a geodetic greenhouse that measures eight metres in diameter.

verflechtn
conference

Varied exchange formats for a new perspective on art and cultural work in rural regions.

Baugerüst
Installation, Public Art

Decoupled from any building structure, the functionless scaffolding stood alone in the outdoor space and also appears to have partially toppled over. The imposing and equally fragile construction leans at one end until it lies flat on the ground.

Indigo Hyphae
Installation

Culture is never static. It breathes, grows and adapts with the people living at the time. Today, we live in a time where we have access to various „making techniques“ originating in different locations and societies.

Organ/Orgel
Installation

Inspired by the interior of the parish church in Kefermarkt, Tom Bogaert developed a site-specific installation of inflatable objects. Organ/Orgel is part of a series of similar works in which church architecture is combined with contemporary forms and materials.

PLASTICPHONIA
Music / Sound, Partizipation

The musical art project Plasticphonia deals with the internationally relevant topic of a throwaway society, and particularly with the contamination caused by plastic.

A reminder of being constructed
Exhibition, Installation

Two cubic objects were placed at the railway station in St. Georgen and on the way to the former Gusen III concentration camp, reminiscent of memorials despite their industrial materiality and aesthetics.

Dead Monster Game
Exhibition, Video

Dead Monster Game combines sculptural objects that are reminiscent of the limbs of monsters with photographies and videos that show children playing with these monster limbs.

In Zeiten wie diesen
Exhibition

An exhibition at Gaisbach-Wartberg railway station showed artistic works that dealt with war and flight – and the associated waiting for better times.

turn | table | tennis – On The Track
Event, Music / Sound, Partizipation

turn | table | tennis is an event format that playfully combines societal concerns with artistic and cultural aspirations – in the form of table tennis.

Zug/Ende
Installation, Public Art

For the piece Zug/Ende a stage-like reconstruction of an old passenger train was created, cut off after three meters and placed at the train station in Gaisbach-Wartberg.

GIVEAWAYS/HIDEAWAYS
Exhibition

The concentration camp Lungitz-Gusen III was close to the train station Lungitz. This central point of their roject is approximated by Antoine Turillon and Seth Weiner in “Giveaways/Hideaways”.

Geschichte im Gespräch
culture of remembrance, mediation, Workshop

The workshop was based on personal references to Nazi history and presented a didactic approach that related directly to historical sites.

Die Zukunft beginnt Heute
Exhibition, Partizipation, Performative Intervention, Workshop

A shared and sustainable use of space, energy and food – was part of the project.

Kollektives Warten in Extremwetterlage
Installation, Public Art

Travelling and waiting go hand in hand. And weather conditions can force us to wait while travelling. While people wait alone in their cars, in trains the wait becomes a collective experience that holds a certain potential.

Manifesting Earthly Survival
Installation, Video, Workshop

The Manifesting Earthly Survival project aimed to devise and realise speculative fables for the survival of our planet.

Grandmothers Favorite
Music / Sound

Postmodern Sudoku-Jazz.

“To mistake is the only chance for something new to happen and therefore it isn’t a mistake.”

Steel Rings
Installation, Public Art

The artistic work Steel Rings reproduced several sections of the decommissioned Trans-Arabian Pipeline. Sculptures made of the same material each represented one kilometre of the original on a scale of 1:1.

30 Jahre Festival der Regionen
Exhibition

For the 30th anniversary of the Festival of the Regions, the system analyst and diagram researcher Gerhard Dirmoser created a study of every festival project that took place between 1993 and 2023. The results of this study were then transformed into a spatial installation by the artist and designer Gerald Priewasser-Höller.

Hijab Offline
Performance

Hijab Offline is based on the autobiographical experiences of artist Shahrzad Nazarpour and the official racism report of 2020. The dance performance was about life in Austria, about discussions and violence in digital and public spaces, about exoticisation and sexualisation, and about anti-Muslim racism in relation to the hijab.

KLANGfestival
Event, Music / Sound

From 30 June to 1 July 2023, the KLANGfestival enchanted the Alte Hallenbad in Gallneukirchen with unique sounds, performances, installations and surprises.

Skills & Tools: A Guidebook
Installation, Performance

The starting point for their performance was elements from folk dance, in particular from skill and advertising dances, which were originally almost exclusively reserved for men. In the traditional context of folk dance, role models and movement patterns are assigned in a strictly binary way and sometimes charged with sexism.

We will live forever
Partizipation, Performance

We Will Live Forever was a project by anGie seah in collaboration with “Die Kunstwerkstatt | Theater Malaria”. Together with the artist, the participants crossed the boundaries of spoken language.

Endstation
Installation, Music / Sound

What do the tracks of gastronomy – starting from the horse-drawn train between Linz and Budweis to the later Summerauerbahn railway – tell us about the social junctions and changes in public spaces tell us? The audio installation Endstation explores these questions.

Time Play
Partizipation, Performance

JUMP, STOP, HIGH, WOW! Time Play is a site-specific performance in which two dancers playfully challenge each other and also the audience. Inspired by various children’s games, a ping-pong duet of words and movements is created. Back and forth, from front to back and over and over again.

Festival Trailer
Video

The trailer for the Festival of Regions 2023 was created by artist Sara Piñeros, who was inspired by the ride on the Summerauerbahn railway. Her film Höchste Eisenbahn floats between the different realities of physical and social landscapes – and also questions the boundaries between the natural and the artificial.

Mind the Gap
Film

Every day the railway transports people, the machine keeps on running and running and running. But when is it time to throw a spanner in the works, chart a new course, or even pull the emergency break?

N_ONSITE
Exhibition, Partizipation

N_ONSITE was a studio, place of interaction and exhibition space on rails. The project by Susanna Melem and Severin Standhartinger saw itself as a fusion of artistic field research and participatory intervention in a public transit space.

Print & Glory
street printing press, Workshop

From the choice of motif to the signature on the sheet, Marek Borsányi produced his prints on site.

Wir sind am Zug
Media, Partizipation, Video

Public transport does not only move our bodies from point A to point B, but opens the possibility to also move forward on a thematic and societal level through encounters. To hop on a train could also refer to a train of thought and can mean to openly discuss urgent questions together.

ZUG um ZUG, der erste Zug!
Prozession

Zug um Zug, the first train! wanted to draw attention to other mobility options in a rural region characterised by automobile traffic. The project questioned individual transport in order to initiate new ways of thinking and discourse.

Zügige Visionen
Partizipation

Dive into the surreal in a short journey on the train. The artists Alja Piry, Regina Picker, and Lucie Kaiserová invite audiences into their train compartments in order to experiment with surrealist techniques and games, guided in German, English, and Czech language.

FDR_2023_c Jürgen Grünwald

Comments

Creativity and sustainability are key elements of a sustainable society.

THANKS & Team 2023

* High time to say THANK YOU
Even after 30 years, the Festival of Regions has never tired of promoting experimental, innovative art and cultural projects, developing them in the region and providing surprises.

Festival der Regionen 2023: "Höchste Eisenbahn" Eröffnung (Horní Dvořiště, 23.6.2023) Foto: eSeL.at - Lorenz Seidler

Participants 2024

A – C Nika Autor’s (In Zeiten wie diesen – Newsreel 63 – The Train of Shadows) artistic work includes experimental videos and documentaries, film essays, video installations, photographs, collages and drawings. Her focus is the exploration of invisibilities and inaudibilities in relation to hidden themes of the forgotten past and a silenced present. Nika […]