For the past four editions Impulse Theater Festival was especially interested in theater as a public and social space. One in which the relation between art and politics is renegotiated again and again. Some forty guest performances, several site specific adaptations, and commissions for all Impulse cities were accompanied by concerts, conferences and performative discursive formats. The focus of the festival was aimed at cultural influences from all over the world („Under the Influence“, 2013), the question of representation on stage and politically („Gesellschaftsspiele, 2015), on pragmatic utopias and departures („Start cooking… Recipe will follow“, 2016) and the possibilities for artistic and political decision making („Decide or Else“, 2017).
Reflecting, discussion and theory were always part of the artistic practice featured in the festival. And it also made use of the stage that is the program book to bring this to light: Every edition’s program brought keywords („Stichworte“) by artists and theoreticians that were part of the festival. Over the years a glossary of subjective definitions, associations, and positions was collected delineating the playing field of Impulse 2013-2017.
For our farewell we gathered those keywords, accompanied by some impressions of festival photographer Robin Junicke, in a small volume.
With this small volume we take a look back at what was at the core of the festival for the past five years, but we also try to send out impulses for what moves independently produced theater in- and outside of the German speaking world. Most of all the book is a heartfelt thank you to all participating artists, partners, former team members, and all our audience who were with us throughout our search and for our attempts at answers.
„Stichworte. Impulse Theater Festival 2013 – 2017“ was published in Berlin by Alexander Verlag. It can be ordered in every book shop for 10 Euros or directly on the homepage of the publishing house.
With this news post, after four editions under Florian Malzacher’s artistic direction, the current team says goodbye to Impulse Theater Festival. We’re looking forward to the upcoming editions with the new team around Haiko Pfost.
]]>This year’s Impulse Theater Festival came to an end with a long party following the midnight concert by PeterLicht early on Sunday morning, 2nd July 2017. Over the course of ten days an audience of 7,700 people attended almost 100 performances, concerts and parties as well as debates, working meetings and the closing conference. Once again over 90% of the available tickets were sold – the concept introduced in 2015 of a festival whose center would rotate each year between the cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mülheim an der Ruhr has been vindicated.
This fourth and final edition of the festival under the artistic direction of Florian Malzacher again considered what political art might look like today and how it can operate, the relationship between theater and society and the extent to which not only art works but also methods of working and forms of organization can be political experiments. Under the title ‘Decide or Else’ the issue of decision-making in society, politics and art provided the festival’s core theme.
his year’s festival center and one of the principal venues with Dries Verhoeven’s “‘Guilty Landscapes’, ‘Du gingst fort’ (‘You Went Away’) by the Rabtaldirndln, ‘Who cares?!’ by Swoosh Lieu and three monologues by She She Pop, internil and Gintersdorfer/Klaßen was studiobühneköln. Schauspiel Köln’s Depot also presented Boris Nikitin’s ‘Hamlet’, ‘Sorry’ by Monster Truck and ‘Five Easy Pieces’ by Milo Rau and CAMPO. In addition the TanzFaktur was host to ‘Die Erfindung der Gertraud Stock’ (‘The Invention of Gertraud Stock’) by the collective vorschlag:hammer and the Künstler Theater Cologne presented the children’s theatre production ‘DA GEFAHR!’ (‘DANGER!’) by the FUNDUS THEATER.
In his first solo work ‘Sideshow’, Richard Lowdon – founder member, designer and performer with the legendary Sheffield-based company Forced Entertainment – transformed studiobühnköln’s rehearsal space into a magical center where a congenial atmosphere perfectly matched a packed festival program. ‘Sideshow’ was like a pub that had been lost in time: a theatrical installation of togetherness in which audiences and artists could come together every night for the duration of the festival to talk, listen, dance and drink –and for lively performances, concerts and discussions.
The German-speaking productions invited to the festival were framed by three international commissions: the world premiere of the film ‘Germany Year 2071’ caused considerable excitement among the large audience in WDR’s great broadcasting hall with its retro-futuristic vision of a world to come imagined and staged by Nature Theater of Oklahoma from New York together with citizens of Cologne and Berlin and filmed at Impulse and the Foreign Affairs Festival in 2016.
A poetic and yet statistically clear perspective on the present was provided by the British theater company Stan‘s Cafe on the main stage at Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Using only grains of rice they were able to construct a permanently evolving landscape that provided information about political and social circumstances as well as individual lives. Their spatial theatrical installation ‘Of All The People In All The World’ thrilled over 1,500 visitors. The themes of the project were closely linked with the autonomous knowledge platform Silent University Ruhr that was initiated two years ago and was continued this year with both lectures and animated discussions.
In her durational performative action ‘Delicate Instruments of Engagement’ in spaces belonging to both the Kunsthalle and Kunstverein in Düsseldorf, the Romanian choreographer Alexandra Pirici examined the iconic breaking down of boundaries between art, pop culture and politics some thirty years after Joseph Beuys’ death. In a work specially created for Impulse Pirici conveyed both iconic and less well-known images and events in an amalgam of pop cultural and political gestures. While performance art conventionally declares the body to be a work of art, she turned works of art into bodies and images into reality.
We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the festival’s success in recent years, especially the artists, of course, and our audiences – and we look forward to embracing new
challenges under the artistic directorship of Haiko Pfost, who will take charge of Impulse for three editions from 2018 – 2020. His first edition of the festival will take place in June 2018 with Mülheim an der Ruhr as its principal venue and additional events in Düsseldorf and Cologne.
Impulse: Impressions
]]>Already before tonight’s opening, Impulse 2017 began with a world premiere, for which there is no need to travel to Cologne, Düsseldorf or Mülheim an der Ruhr: At 19:04 h WDR 3 broadcast the first radio drama by the New York theater company Nature Theater of Oklahoma: the radio version of ‘Deutschland 2071’ – a playfully dystopic work of zombie science fiction about art, love and political action filmed (backwards) last year with the citizens of Cologne and Berlin. To listen to the radio play click here.
The film’s world premiere will happen on 25 June, 19:30 h in the big hall of WDR Funkhaus.
The stage program and the festival proper starts tonight on 22 June, 19:30 h in the Depot of Schauspiel Köln with theatre history’s greatest non-decision-maker: the ‘Hamlet’ of Swiss director Boris Nikitin is not Shakespeare’s Danish prince, he speaks barely a word of the famous text and yet he is a prototypical Hamlet for our times. To be or not to be is no longer a question of making a decision – it is a tension that must be withstood. Accompanied by baroque musicians from Cologne the performer and musician Julia*n Meding embarks on a performative tour de force. On the same evening, from 18 h, with ‘state-theatre #4– 6’ the filmmakers Daniel Kötter and Constanze Fischbeck will also show how theater buildings elsewhere have been reused as underground car parks.
Our festival center will then open on Friday, 23 June at studiobühneköln. At 19:30 h in ‘Du gingst fort’ (‘You Went Away’) the Austrian Rabtaldirndln investigate how anyone can leave behind their homeland – the Rabtal! What makes the temptations of urban life so compelling? This performance collective of women from Styria who started life as country bumpkins tracks down those who have left. Afterwards Richard Lowdon (Forced Entertainment), accompanied by Phil Hayes, invites everyone to the ‘Sideshow’, the festival center he has designed complete with bar, stage and garden. Now the party can get going – and it continues on Saturday with ‘7 Promises’ in which – in exchange for vodka – Davis Freeman and Jerry Gillick elicit promises from us to make the world a better place.
The first weekend also sees the opening of Dries Verhoeven’s political and poetic live installation ‘Guilty Landscapes’, that confronts us in a direct and entirely personal form with the images of masses in crisis that appear in the media every day.
If you don’t already have tickets, book them fast! The first performances are already sold out.
We look forward to seeing you!
Movie Trailer online!
The epic retro science fiction film ‘Germany Year 2071’ presents a dark and at the same time quirkily comic picture of a new, old, utopian, dystopian, nostalgic, futuristic city that is clearly reminiscent of Federal West Germany in the years after the Second World War. The film was shot during the Impulse Theater Festival 2016 with many local participants from Cologne and Berlin. One year after this spectacular performative filming event, Nature Theater of Oklahoma return to Cologne to celebrate the film’s world premiere.
Sunday, 25 June, 7:30 PM, Cologne, Funkhaus Wallrafplatz / Großer Sendesaal
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