For twenty-five years Impulse has been the platform for independently produced theater in the German-speaking world.

For the last edition under artistic direction of Florian Malzacher „independent“ for Impulse not only means that the works are produced outside the state theater system. It most notably means that they regard their independence as founded in the artistic possibilities. The works test theater as medium, expand it, question and strain it. They understand art as the space, where to repeatedly start from zero, where to confront the challenge to enact structures, hierarchies, roles, processes, and collaborations as continuation of the topical gesture of one’s work. Independence as freedom of form and content.

This is how independently produced theater sends impulses as to what theater can look like once it is not confined to specific spaces of staging and thinking. It sends impulses to not readily accept boundaries between genres as they are defined by application, market and marketing logics. It sends impulses to also claim the theatrical in visual arts, music, literature, film, theory, and politics as theater. It sends impulses to think theater as an art form differently.

Impulse Theater Festival accordingly regards itself as an interdisciplinary platform for a theater that withstands a doctrine of understanding ruled by the logic of ascriptions and one looking for moments of transgression.

In 2017 Impulse again will present the ten most remarkable independently produced theater pieces from the German-speaking world in Cologne, Mülheim/Ruhr and Düsseldorf.
We invite theater makers and other artists whose lives’ center in Austria, Germany or Switzerland to submit productions and projects to be presented during the festival in Köln, Mülheim/Ruhr or Düsseldorf from 22 June to 1 July 2017: a theater piece, a choreography, a performative installation, a collective performance, a musical sculpture, a public intervention…

This open call complements our ongoing research and screening and allows for a direct insight to current developments of independently produced theater offside the beaten paths. The review and discussion of submitted proposals will be conducted with support of our interdisciplinary advisory board until march 2017.

We are looking forward to surprising, provocative and consistent submittals and positions.

RULES

Proposals may be submitted for finished productions and projects (as touring performance or adaptation), which premiered no earlier than Januar 2016 or that will take place till the end of January 2017.

Please submit only one production per group/artist.

Please exclusively submit the following materials digitally:

- e-mail header: name of the group/the artist – title of the project
- project description of max. 3 DIN A4 pages in German or English *
- if adaptation is necessary please also provide first ideas regarding the feasibility *
- video documentation of the work (to the degree that is possible) as a vimeo link, or an explanation as to
  why the documentation is not possible or meaningful **
- budget proposal (considering possible adaptation costs) *
- contact information **
- vita *
- future performance dates **

Submission deadline is 15 October 2016.

Submissions to: ausschreibung@festivalimpulse.de

**Provide text documents and spread sheets as PDF.
**Provide this more vital information directly in the text body of your e-mail.

“Once again the Impulse Festival is an exciting think tank with many different perspectives.”
(Dorothea Marcus, Deutschlandfunk)

Celebrations lasted into the early hours of Sunday morning at the Festival Center in the FFT Kammerspiele following a concert by Schwabinggrad Ballett and Arrivati to mark the conclusion of Impulse 2016. After an eleven day festival, the leading platform for independent theater in German-speaking countries had gained an extremely positive response: Impulse attracted 5,300 visitors from the region and all over Germany plus an audience of professionals from other countries to over 80 events. Box office returns of 92% also endorse the concept introduced last year of concentrating on one main venue – this year the FFT in Düsseldorf – while collaborating closely with our partners in Cologne (studiobühneköln) and Mülheim (Ringlokschuppen Ruhr).

Under the title ‘Start cooking … Recipe will follow’ Impulse presented remarkable work from the independent theater scene in Germany, Austria and Switzerland operating performance, theater, concerts, installations, lectures and parties. These included well-established and familiar companies such as Gintersdorfer/Klaßen (‘Der Botschafter’), She She Pop (‘50 Grades of Shame’) and Rimini Protokoll (‘Evros Walk Water’), as well as newcomers like Julian Warner & Oliver Zahn (‘Situation mit Doppelgänger’) or Ariel Efraim Ashbel and Friends (‘The Empire Strikes Back: Kingdom of the Synthetic’). Several artists focused their attention on the crisis which is moving ever closer in the Near East, for example Christine Gaigg with 2nd Nature & Netzzeit / Klaus Schedl (‘untitled, look, look, come closer’) or COSTA COMPAGNIE (‘Conversion / Nach Afghanistan’). A similar urgency could be felt in the search for areas in which individuals can be free agents pursued by Boris Nikitin (‘Martin Luther Propagandastück’) and Sebastian Nübling with junges theater basel (‘Noise’).
Impulse also initiated artistic works this year which involved themselves directly in social and political affairs. One of these was the Silent University Ruhr, an initiative by the Kurdish artist Ahmet Öğüt brought to life last year by Impulse and this year embedded in an international summer academy entitled ‘Learning Plays’: here four artist-initiated schools, academies and theoretical platforms came together for a week to exchange ideas at the Ringlokschuppen in Mülheim; the Performing Arts Forum – PAF from St. Erme, the School of Engaged Art by the St. Petersburg-based collective Chto Delat, die Vierte Welt from Berlin and the Silent Universities from London, Stockholm, Hamburg, Athens, Amman and Mülheim.

In her project entitled ‘Make Art Policy!’ Israeli choreographer Dana Yahalomi / Public Movement invited influential politicians from all the significant parties in North Rhine-Westphalia to Düsseldorf City Hall to outline their cultural policy positions while making use of the structural similarities between art and politics, the stage and the civic chamber. While 300 members of the audience watched proceedings inside the chamber, 1,000 more interested viewers followed a live stream of the events and 1,000 more have since watched the archived video. Recordings of other events in the festival were also archived, for example in audio form on Voice Republic.

In Cologne, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma shot a retro science fiction film together with local citizens at a series of locations all over the city, including the building site of the city theater at the Offenbachplatz. Several hundred extras participated with great enthusiasm in the partly public filming at the studiobühne as well as in the city center and the harbor on the banks of the Rhine. The completed film ‘Germany Year 2071’ will be screened as part of the Impulse Theater Festival 2017 in Cologne. Until then a Making-Of will provide impressions of the filming on the website of the magazine Monopol.

We are delighted that for eleven days Impulse was able to become an artistic and social laboratory highlighting the highly diverse aesthetics, strategies and approaches of independent theater. And we’re already looking forward to next year: Impulse Theater Festival 2017 will take place from 22nd June to 2nd July in Cologne.