Version Feb. 15, 2024 / subject to changes
donaufestival 2024
April 19–21 and 26–28, 2024 | Krems an der Donau
Music, performance, art, film, and discourse. Under the guidance of artistic director Thomas Edlinger since 2017, donaufestival presents audacious aesthetics and vibes in current contemporary art. This year, a programme of around 55 events will take place on two spring weekends (Friday to Sunday) at various locations in Krems.
Community of Aliens
They say only strangers understand the world. Who are these sympathetic strangers and what might they look like? Perhaps like the erratic being in Joshua Serafin’s performance VOID, which is inspired by Filipino deities? Or the “alien collectives” that Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler conjure in their mixed-media project devoted to cosmic diversity?
The 2024 festival revolves around an “impossible” question: How can a community emerge that is founded on the experience of strangeness and (self-)estrangement and a disrupted relationship with nature? How can transformative aesthetic strategies debunk tyrannical forms of “othering” such as racism and sexism?
donaufestival 2024 is in search of transitory figures to mediate between toxic pasts and unforeseen futures. A cast might be found in the futuristic folk music of the exile Iranian-Chilean trio HUUUM, in the new Warholesque work I Want To Be A Machine by singer Jenny Hval, in the Afrofuturistic telepathic speculations of Dopplereffekt, or in the camp cowboys busy welding on stage in the performance Impact Driver by Eve Stainton (live music: Leisha Thomas and Mica Levi). You might feel pleasantly alien in your own head, in your own body, in the midst of the demolition-ball drone of Evian Christ, when faced with the vigorous rap of Aunty Rayzor or the techno animism of Meuko! Meuko!, immersed in the unruly noise of the new Austrian supergroup EAERES or in the purist darkness of Autechre’s soundscapes The alien music of the gospel, soul, and R’n’B atomizer Dawuna or the Black techno act Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown, Jr.), the radically queer visual inventions of Johanna Bruckner, or the parallels between robot uprisings and the historical riots in 1981 South London uncovered in Kibwe Tavares’s video point in the right direction, too.
Community of Aliens summons a “community of the unchosen” (Sabine Hark), planetary alliances that can counter the renaissance of imperial violence and new political hostilities. It is also about what such future-oriented affiliations want to prevent: Candice Breitz satirises the claim of racism against whites in her video installation Whiteface at Kunsthalle Krems, reciting the discourse on “whiteness” like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The artist’s zombiesque eyes plunge the fictions that legitimise and perpetuate white supremacy into the genre of horror. Christian Guerematchi’s spectral figure named Blaq Tito, for instance, reminds us of the politics of the non-aligned states. His video installation echoes the relationship between former Yugoslavia and Ghana, illustrating what Frédéric Neyrat calls the “communism of the strange.”
Version Feb. 15, 2024 / subject to changes
www.donaufestival.at
Julian Hetzel & Ntando Cele speculate about an absurdity called “liquid empathy,” a drink distilled from African tears. Eglė Budvytytė & Marija Olšauskaitė present shape-shifting bodies that “compost their fear ” The media guerrilla group Total Refusal smuggles its message about the storming of the Capitol into a video game, while the frenetic hip-hop trio Clipping. beats the brutalisation of the world with their own brute force.
Already on the opening day of donaufestival 2024, when The Jesus and Mary Chain bring the sweetest melodies of feedback noise to Krems, the harsh AV work Rybachka by Syrian-Ukrainian visual artist Diana Azzuz and Iranian artist Nazanin Noori contends with the creeping habituation to war and an increasingly accepted politics of violence. On the second weekend, Berlin-based musician Andrey Guryanov meticulously deconstructs Soviet and Russian national anthems in his compositions fed, for instance, by the sounds of explosions from the invasion of Ukraine. On her new album Polygon, Galya Bisengalieva manipulates the chilling reverberations of hundreds of nuclear bombs at a devastated test site in her native Kazakhstan, while Mayssa Jallad’s enchanting songs recall the fractured history of Beirut and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop & Anika immerse us in an intimate new rendering of the legendary Nico album Desertshore.
Finding someone on the shores of a desert: last but not least, the notion of a Community of Aliens encourages us to connect our no to the exclusion and denigration of others with accepting the otherness of these others. Here at the festival. In front of the stage, while dancing, in conversation. Bertolt Brecht, the inventor of the anti-illusionist alienation effect in theatre, once wrote: “For all creatures need help from all.” (Thomas Edlinger)
Version Feb. 15, 2024 / subject to changes
donaufestival 2024
Weekend 1
Sound
April 19
www.donaufestival.at
Mariana Berezovska presents Rybachka with Diana Azzuz (Video) & Nazanin Noori (Live) / Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, Victoria Shen / EAERES / The Jesus And Mary Chain / Deena Abdelwahed (AV Live) / Meuko! Meuko!
April 20
Grand River / Dawuna / Jenny Hval – I Want To Be A Machine / Gazelle Twin / Clipping. / Föllakzoid / Aunty Rayzor
April 21
The Necks / Mayssa Jallad / Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop & Anika present Nico: Desertshore Performance
Silvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler: Like a Ray in Search of its Mirror (performance: April 19; installation: April 20–21)
Eve Stainton: Impact Driver (April 19–21)
Eglė Budvytytė and Marija Olšauskaitė: Song Sing Soil (April 19–21)
Jefta van Dinther: Unearth (April 20–21)
Theory & Talk
Stefan Moos: East of Representation, lecture (DE) (April 20)
Candice Breitz: Some of My Best Friends are White, lecture (EN) (April 21)
Film
Se ti sabir, dir. James Bridle / The Exiles, dir. Kent Mackenzie (April 20)
Anhell69, dir. Theo Montoya (April 21)
Weekend 2
Sound
April 26
Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown, Jr.) / Kenji Araki / SØS Gunver Ryberg & Sybil Montet present Weaving Fields (AV Live) / NAH / Ben Frost Scope Neglect ft. Greg Kubacki & Tarik Barri / 33EMYBW & Joey Holder (AV Live) / Evian Christ
April 27
Andrey Guryanov / Galya Bisengalieva / Maya Shenfeld + Pedro Maia / ZULI & Omar El Sadek / Autechre / Kabeaushé / PÖ
April 28
Joe Rainey / HUUUM / Dopplereffekt
Press Information
Version Feb. 15, 2024 / subject to changes
Performance
www.donaufestival.at
· Silvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler: Like a Ray in Search of its Mirror (installation: April 26–28)
· Studio Julian Hetzel and Ntando Cele: SPAfrica (April 26–28)
· Joshua Serafin: VOID (April 26–28)
· Total Refusal: Sons and True Sons (April 27–28)
Theory & Talk
DeForrest Brown, Jr.: Spaceship Earth 2.0, lecture (EN) (April 27)
Film
SPK Komplex, dir. Gerd Kroske (April 28)
Weekends 1 & 2
Permanent Art Projects and Installations
Candice Breitz: Whiteface (2022)
Jonáš Gruska: Zvon [Bell] (2024)
Christian Guerematchi: CRNI TITO (Blaq Tito Addressing the Parliament of Ghosts) (2023)
Theaster Gates: The Flood (2023)
Johanna Bruckner: Body Obfuscations (2023)
Yein Lee: The Rate of Regenerating in Decay Process (2022)
Kibwe Tavares: Robots Of Brixton (2011)
Note:
The programme on both Sundays ends after three highlight concerts in the Minorite Church (no programme at the festival grounds). As usual, there will be talks, films, and performance events during the day.
· The day or multi-day passes are valid for all events on the respective days.
· Due to limited capacity, free numbered tickets will be issued for some performances.
· Once again, there will be a shuttle bus to Vienna after the end of the last concert.
Venues:
Festival Centres: exhibition halls and Stadtsaal, Utzstraße 12; Klangraum Krems
Minoritenkirche, Minoritenplatz 5.
Others: Kunsthalle Krems, Forum Frohner, Kino im Kesselhaus, Dominikanerkirche (see website for addresses); all: 3500 Krems a.d. Donau.
Press photos
Sound:
https://celum.noeku.at/pinaccess/showpin.do?pinCode=sound2024
Performance, Art, Film, Talk:
https://celum.noeku.at/pinaccess/showpin.do?pinCode=performance
All details available from March 5 on: www.donaufestival.at