Dear Audience
Things remain complicated. Despite all the promises from other quarters, we believe we can assure you that the world has never been simple and never will be. The complexity can be seen in the news and, more graphically, in international encounters with artists, friends and colleagues. Bringing people with different backgrounds and perspectives to Zurich has been a fundamental commitment of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel – since 1980. The international encounter with contemporary art requires openness to other points of view and the courage to examine one’s own. Transformative encounters require generosity and empathy that go beyond our everyday relationship with reality. It is the task of international art festivals to uphold those values. And so, once again this year, we encounter the world at our festival – and with it, very different perspectives of the present. The artistic programme will be accompanied by discussion formats and workshops that also negotiate the role of art in dealing with conflicts and complexity.
The following weekend, Martinican political scientist Malcom Ferdinand will discuss the connection between the exploitation of people and nature from a decolonial perspective. Seven years ago, we began to include pioneering thinkers from different regions of the world in our artistic programme. The Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr was the first guest at this lecture series in 2018. A lot has happened since. Sarr was commissioned by the French government to co-author a report on the restitution of African cultural assets, laying the foundation for a topic that is now being discussed politically in many European countries. Switzerland’s colonial history is also the topic of the exhibition «Dialogue with Benin. Art, Colonialism and Restitution» at the Museum Rietberg, for which we have jointly invited the choreographer Zora Snake from Cameroon. His performance at the museum in the midst of African art deals with the movements of artefacts between Africa and Europe. The large installation by The Nest Collective from Nairobi on the Landiwiese equally focuses on trades between the North and South.
The world keeps moving. In a present characterised by large and small migratory movements, artists across generations continue to question different attributions and the construction of identities. That is also the subject of the stage works by Mamela Nyamza, Rébecca Chaillon and Rebecca Weingartner. In a large atmospheric piece, young director Mario Banushi evokes memories of the country of his childhood, Albania.
Many of our visiting artists work with documentary strategies, others use the fiction of the theatre space to expand realities and make improbable things conceivable, at least for the duration of the performance – such as the establishment of a Taiwanese embassy in Switzerland in the piece by Stefan Kaegi from Rimini Protokoll.
Like many of our artists, we are also interested in combining different disciplines. This year, the Zürcher Theater Spektakel kicks off at the Landiwiese as well as at the Kunsthaus Zürich. Renowned artist Walid Raad returns to the festival with the «Zurich Chapter» of his latest work «Cotton Under My Feet». In an exhibition and a performative walkthrough at the Kunsthaus Zürich, he explores the complex relationship between private art collections and public museums.
The world of the festival is in many ways unifying. This year, we would like to thank the Rote Fabrik as well as Shedhalle, Theater Neumarkt, Tanzhaus Zürich and sogar Theater, where world premieres by Shu Lea Cheang and Dondon Hounwn, Lubna Abou Kheir, Teresa Vittucci and Gosia Wdowik will take place as part of the festival. We are delighted to be able to host contemporary art from five continents together with these partner institutions.
Even at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, the world may be neither easy to grasp nor simple. But it is lively, unruly, sensitive and magical.
The festival direction
Matthias von Hartz, Sarah Wendle, Veit Kälin