With Pelin Başeran, Andy Blunden (via Skype), Monika Gintersdorfer, John Jordan, Bojana Kunst, Oliver Marchart, Antanas Mockus, Chantal Mouffe, Milo Rau, Jan Sowa, Marcus Steinweg, Judha Su, Joanna Warsza & Stefanie Wenner

Introductions
Before selected performances

Language GER

Introductions to the program by the Festival Team.

Thursday, 22 June – Saturday, 1 July, 7 PM

Translations

The ability to tour successful productions internationally has long been essential for independent theater companies. And this requires versions in English. Together with the Goethe-Institut, Impulse 2017 will make English versions or surtitles available for most of the works shown.

A corporate project with Goethe-Institut.

Material

Before, during and after the festival, the Impulse website also provides a platform for the question what the independent theater scene stands for today, artistically and structurally, what kind of support and cultural politics it needs, and how it keeps redefining itself. Here renowned authors contribute to a publication in progress, which continues to expand.

See the article here

Bus shuttle
Use our shuttle service.
from Dusseldorf to Cologne
Friday, 23 June, 6 PM
Departure FFT Dusseldorf
to „Hamlet“ (Boris Nikitin) and „Sideshow“
> Return at midnight

from Cologne to Dusseldorf und Mulheim an der Ruhr and return to Cologne
Saturday, 24 June, 2:30 PM
Vernissage Shuttle
to „Delicate Instruments of Engagment“ (Alexandra Pirici), „Of All The People In All The World“ (Stan’s Cafe) and „Du gingst fort“ (Die Rabtaldirndln)
Departure studiobühneköln

from Dusseldorf to Cologne
Friday, 30 June, 6 PM
Departure FFT Düsseldorf
to „Five Easy Pieces“ (Milo Rau/IIPM & CAMPO) and „Sideshow“
> Return at midnight

All buses will reach the performances at 7:30 PM on time.

The bus is free of charge, capacity is limited. Please place your reservations for the bus at bus@festivalimpulse.de and arrive 15 minutes prior departure.

An additional shuttle service will bring you from the Depot to the Festival Centre after all Impulse performances at Schauspiel Köln between 23 June – 1 July. No reservation required.

Independent Theater Archive
Study presentation and discussion

It began with an initial working group set up by Impulse 2013. Now the plan for an Independent Theater Archive has taken a great step forward: after long-term planning a small team coordinated by the University of Hildesheim has spent over a year examining archive material and registering stocks of material throughout Germany. ‘Performing the Archive – A Study Towards Developing an Independent Theater Archive‘ delivers an informed overview of the scale, storage locations and condition of the stocks in question and formulates initial concrete proposals as to how these can be protected, maintained and made accessible. These results will now be presented and discussed as part of the festival along with thoughts about how they might be implemented on the way to creating our own archive.

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University of Cologne, Hörsaal G
Friday, 23 June, 5 PM

The Independent Theater Archive is funded by Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Institut für Kulturpolitik der Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, Internationales Theaterinstitut Deutschland together with Mime Centrum Berlin and NRW KULTURsekretariat together with Impulse Theater Festival.

What we want
– Federal funding on the practical test-bed

The BFDK (Federal Association of the Independent Performing Arts) is presently developing strategies for improving the current federal funding through a series of discussions. A workshop will be held as part of Impulse regarding structural questions about instruments for funding festivals and conferences.

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Festival center / studiobühneköln
Saturday, 24 June, 11 AM – 2 PM
talk series of the BFDK – Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste

Registration necessary until 15th of June 2017: praxischeck@darstellende-kuenste.de
Find more information here

Supported by: the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Seeing the City from the Other Side
A discussion

To mark the conclusion of the video installation ‘state theatre #4-6’ the filmmakers Daniel Kötter and Constanze Fischbeck discuss artistic research and unplannable city planning: what artistic responsibility is there for the public space?

Language GER

Agora below the Mülheim bridge, Schauspiel Köln
Saturday, 1 July, 6:30 PM
„Raus aus der Komfortzone“
With Constanze Fischbeck , Daniel Kötter et al.

Discussion within the framework of the district project „Die Stadt von der anderen Seite sehen“ by Schauspielhaus Köln

Silent University

Two years ago the Impulse Theater Festival together with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and Urbane Künste Ruhr helped to found a Mülheim branch of the Silent University initiated by the Kurdish artist Ahmet Öğüt in 2012: an autonomous knowledge platform whose teaching faculty consists of refugee academics who are unable to pass on their expertise here as they lack work permits, their qualifications are not recognized or for other reasons. The Silent University Ruhr has since developed into a place of continuous learning and encounters. During the festival period the Silent University invites visitors to a lecture and is also involved in the conception and implementation of ‘Of All The People In All The World’ at Ringlokschuppen Ruhr.

The book ‘The Silent University – Towards a Transversal Pedagogy’ published last year is still available.
www.sternberg-press.com

Mülheim an der Ruhr, dezentrale
Tuesday, 7 June, 6 PM
Gespräch „Where are we now? Perspektiven der Silent University Ruhr“

Mülheim an der Ruhr, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
Tuesday, 27 June, 7:30 PM
Talk „Politische Partizipation von Geflüchteten und MigrantInnen in Zahlen“
with Justin Fonkeu (Silent University Ruhr), Matthias Frense u. a.

Mülheim an der Ruhr, dezentrale
Friday, 30 June, 5:30 PM
„Cardiopulmonal Reanimation – an international comparision“
Lecture by Amrou Al-Mahaini (general practitioner from Syria)

International Visitors

Around ten artists, curators, theoreticians and activists from all over the world will accompany this year’s Impulse at the joint invitation of the Goethe Institut’s “Be My Guest” program, the NRW KULTURsekretariat’s international visitors’ program and the Impulse Theater Festival. While the 2017 festival is dedicated to the fundamental question of how we can still arrive at decisions in both politics and art in times that are apparently “post-democratic” and “post-factual”, the international guests program examines the criteria for such choices.

With Antonio Araújo (São Paulo), Pelin Başaran (Istanbul), Anne Breure (Amsterdam), Ifeoma Fafunwa (Lagos), Malik Gaines (New York), Yi-Wei Keng (Taipei), Helly Minarti (Jakarta), Antanas Mockus (Bogotá), Judha Su (Bangkok)

A coproduction of Impulse Theater Festival together with „Be My Guest“-programm of Goethe-Institut and the International Visitor-Programm of NRW KULTURsekretariat.

In talks, discussions and workshops, artists, theorists, activists that have widely been connected to the festival in different ways for some time meet the interested audience.

All theory events will take place at the festival center in studiobühneköln and are free admission.

Reclaim the Words
A working meeting

Language is also a tool in the political struggle. It is currently easy to observe how effective repurposing concepts can be: left and right are spinning in confusion and one wonders how language can be defended.
Literature, theater and visual arts are confronted with a particular problem here – after all other truths were always their domain. But what can be done when alternative facts influence political reality?
Reclaim the Words’ brings together artists, theoreticians, activists and journalists who will tackle this question incisively – to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Heinrich Böll, who decided to “look for a language we can live in in a country we can live in” after years of National Socialist rhetoric.

Language GER

Please register up-front
reclaim@festivalimpulse.de

Sunday, 25 June, noon-5 PM

With Jörg Albrecht & Gerhild Steinbuch (Nazis & Goldmund), Arne Vogelgesang (internier), Alexander Karschnia (andcompany&co), Christine Gaigg (2ndnature), Ulf Aminde u. a.

A production of Impulse Theater Festival and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung within the framework of the programm „100 Jahre Heinrich Böll – Die öffentliche Rolle der Kunst”.

Exchange for Change
Discussion and workshop

Experiences are now chiefly exchanged digitally and often at high speed. In such a context the desire grows for intensive, continuous and above all direct contact. But when it comes to live experiences the performative arts have the best expertise. ‘Exchange for Change’ is an invitation to exchange about exchange. It introduces familiar and less familiar communications formats from speed dating to pecha kucha alongside specific concepts for an intensified exchange between artists in North Rhine-Westphalia. The public workshop that follows will serve as a reality check and test our spontaneous capacities to recognize the creativity of others without envy.

Language GER

Monday, 26 June, 6:30-9:30 PM
Subsequent, open end at the bar

Kick-off to a series by NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste und Teil von „On the Road – Eine Akademie des Bundesverbands Freie Darstellende Künste“. With support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Showing the Invisible
Conversation

The flood of images has increased rapidly in the last 20 years. Frequently they determine what becomes news and what doesn’t, what is seen as true and what is seen as false. The photographer Christoph Bangert uses a camera to document war and crisis zones – thereby taking part in decisions about what we get to see and what we don’t. A conversation about what can be shown, what should be shown – and what can only be seen indirectly.

Language GER

Tuesday, 27 June, 5:30 PM

With Christoph Bangert
Moderation Hannah Neumann

A conjoint performance of Impulse Theater Festival and the theme week of the Institute for Medienkultur und Theater.

New Spaces for a New Theater
WDR 3 Forum

Theater is proud of only existing in the here and now, of being ephemeral, fleeting. But can constant change be combined with the need for continuity, and in one place? Together with the WDR 3 Forum Impulse invites you to a discussion about flexible spaces, stable structures and utopias for a transient.

Language GER

Tuesday, 27 June, 7:30 PM

Moderation Peter Grabowski
Recording for WDR 3 Forum

Date of broadcast:
Sunday, 2 July, 7:04 PM

And what is Art? (Und was soll Kunst sein?)
Conversation

Making decisions requires criteria. But what aesthetic and political rules are valid in a globalized world? Which (pre-)judgements are determined by western hegemonic discourse and demand scrutiny? Who is trying to insist on what? Theater-makers, curators, theoreticians and journalists from different parts of the world accompany this year’s Impulse in order to investigate art and society’s scope for aesthetic and political action – and to contextualize the festival, which traditionally invites works from German-speaking countries, through their experiences.

Language ENG

Thursday, 29 June, 7:30 PM

With Ifeoma Fafunwa, Malik Gaines, Keng Yi-Wei, Florian Malzacher, Hely Minarti
Moderation Anne Breure

It is possible to follow the discussion via Live-Stream.

Within the framework of the guest programm of Impulse Theater Festival in coproduction with the “Be My Guest“ programm of Goethe-Instituts and the International Visitor Programm of NRW KULTURsekretariat.

What are the stories about freedom and decision-making that can still be told after Trump, Brexit etc? Which aesthetic tools and meanings can we reclaim? Which fictions can we defend?
In collaboration with Impulse, WDR 3 presents one week of radio plays by artists working in the spirit of the festival, whose content and aesthetics engage with the act of decision-making. And thus perform on another of the independent theater’s stages, in the ether.

Illegale Helfer
Maxi Obexer

Can help be illegal? This radio play takes a complex look at the role of those who help refugees – and involves us in issues of morality, naiveté and humanity.

WDR 5, Sunday, 25 June, 5:05 – 6 PM
WDR 3, Monday, 26 June, 7:04 – 8 PM

Die Unmöglichen
Paul Plamper & Julian Kamphausen

Progress in medical science demands that many parents-to-be or would-be parents-to-be make irreconcilable decisions about life or death. In ‘The Impossibles’ three in-vitro embryos speak and lead us into an endless loop of decision-making.

WDR 3, Tuesday, 27 June, 7:04 – 8 PM
1LIVE, Tuesday, 27 June, 11 – midnight

TurboGermany
Leif Randt

TurboGermany is a movement, only what is it trying to achieve? Journalists, bystanders, activists are all grappling for a definition. The only thing that’s clear: it’s about a feeling of being alive, about a new attitude – to the others. To the world. And to Germany.

WDR 3, Wednesday, 28 June, 7:04 – 8 PM

Die Riesenfaust
Anne Lepper

Bonnie tears herself away from her previous life. But rather than the theater where she wants to be she ends up in a police choir that governs a very eccentric state through song.

WDR 3, Thursday, 29 June, 7:04 – 8 PM

Afterhearing and download via hörspielspeicher.wdr.de (available from the start of the Festival)

All radio plays are available for listening at the Festivalzentrum.