Next stop: tasting garden

One hour and fifty-one minutes: Linz ->Festival of Regions 2025 (FdR*25) 

If you get on the train in Linz, you have just under two hours to lose yourself in the rolling hills of the Innviertel region before arriving at FdR*25 in Braunau. Every two years, the festival chooses a new region in Upper Austria. The concept of the region is always reinterpreted. The previous edition FdR*23 led along the Summerauerbahn to Horní Dvořiště in the Czech Republic. This time, the festival is heading to the westernmost and youngest district of Upper Austria, right on the border with Bavaria: Braunau am Inn.

One hour and seven minutes- from Salzburg to Braunau

The dominant narrative of this year’s festival location seems so hot that we burn our fingers just looking at it. Because: everyone knows Braunau and yet the town and the region are so unknown. Who has ever been to Braunau?

We have time on the train and ask ourselves how we can deal with the historical charge without oscillating between taboo and excessive medialization. We talk to people from the past and historians, do research, look for approaches – and find no satisfactory answers. Instead, we are faced with even more complex questions with more perspectives and information. We practice enduring not knowing.

Nevertheless, we want to put the attributions associated with Braunau to the test, create a “trial garden” in which we do what the festival does best: Art.

In collaboration with the House of Austrian History (HdGÖ), five artists will develop positions on the material heritage of the birthplace and the associated narratives. The fate of the Geburtshaus was sealed in a highly questionable political process. Today, this future is becoming reality. The house is being restored to its original 17th century appearance. One past is to erase another, but we all know how that will end.

To ensure that not everything disappears with the renovation, the HdGÖ was able to document and salvage various objects and materials from the house, which are now part of its collection. Building on this unusual collection, five artists and a team of educators from the HdGÖ will develop artistic interventions and workshops to engage with the public and ask how they can play a role in collective approaches for the future. 

During the festival, this project and other artistic interventions will ultimately enable critical reflection on what the past means today and challenge prevailing narratives about the house.

A literary debate will also be heard and experienced at the festival: Under the title „Die Testamentsverlautbarung (nach dem Hamdrahn) bei seinem Scheißgeburtshaus“, a will will be announced in the course of a performative reading (spoken by Marlene Hauser): the original will (edited and alienated by Lydia Haider).

Two hours and six minutes – from Munich to Simbach

Simbach on the German side of the Inn and Braunau on the Austrian side are more than just neighboring towns. Residents live on one side of the river and work on the other. Associations operate across borders: one of them is the Bauhoftheater.

It’s a frosty January morning, shortly after seven o’clock at Simbach station. I get on the train and have time to think. I spend the evening and into the night with inspiring ideas and discussions with the Bauhoftheater. An association that does much more than just theater. It is something of a home for committed people from the region. No play seems too complex for them. Old works are skillfully dusted off, interwoven with current topics and brought not only to the stage but also into the regional discourse. That night, we ask ourselves how the FdR*25 can have a lasting impact in the region. The FdR will leave the region after ten days of spectacle, but what can and should the cultural-political impact of an international art festival be? What should echo and resonate? In times when not only budgets but also political support for the independent scene is shrinking, this question is all the more pressing. Making visible, networking and finding synergies between local and supra-regional cultural institutions is more essential than ever. Again, I am practicing the endurance of not knowing. We dream up a festival and yet plan into uncertainty.

Three hours and fifteen minuters – from Vienna to Braunau

The longer we are in the region, the more we realize: The independent arts scene here is lively and extremely diverse. In addition to the Bauhoftheater, local actors such as the “KiK” in Ried and the “Kunst und Kultur im Innviertel” initiative are active throughout the region before, during and after the festival. The festival is well worth a visit, but it is also worth taking a look at the region’s art and culture scene.

We invite you: Set off, take your time: in the trial garden of the present we sow an unknown tomorrow. By cultivating together, the points of friction may reveal themselves and leave us without answers – with experiences that continue to write our memories. To expand, to rewrite.