Editorial by the festival direction

We are very happy to meet you again at this year’s display of international art – with all of us together on a meadow in the middle of Europe. While we are happy, we have nevertheless imagined this year differently. We were curious to see how society would transform itself. Maybe this was naive. There was an unspoken hope that there would be a turning point and that climate change, Black Lives Matter and the pandemic would at least entail some modest social changes. Be careful what you wish for: the turning point has come. Who would have thought that it would bring about an aggressive war against civilians and the subsequent – mostly not discussed – armament of many European states?

While war, escape and displacement may be perceived in Europe as the return of a historic era thought to be over, for many of our artists they are part of their daily lives. There was probably not a single Theater Spektakel in the past, in which those themes were not present on stage. And war is not the only issue that has come closer. The productions in this year’s festival focus on nationalism, the ends of the world, the idea of Europe, post-pandemic societies but also deal with moving fates in a confusing world, with hope, closeness and love. They take place on North African markets and in families, on Babylonian towers and in a huge cardboard box, at the lakeshore and deep under the ocean surface, in computer games and in many other places from where the world looks differently. The encounter of different perspectives in a postcolonial reality continues to be a central concern of the festival. Against a backdrop of increasingly worrying events hitherto thought impossible, the surprising perspectives and fantasies of international artists seem more important than ever.

Two topics run through several projects like a thread. In different ways, water features as a medium and a resource – be it in very concrete experiments with singing or dancing in the lake, a documentary theatre on deep sea mining or in stories about water as a fought-over resource at the Great African Lakes. A similarly varied approach is represented in the feminist perspectives of the programme: the grand and potent images of Phia Ménard, the rather subtle biographical Short Pieces and the thoughts of the anthropologist Rita Segato on explicitly political works. This year, we have invited three artists who regard their work as activism as well as art. The Chilean collective LASTESIS has developed a theatrical form of protest at violence against women, which has been imitated all over the world. Belarusian artist Igor Shugaleev’s performance reacts to the increasing number of political prisoners in Belarus and elsewhere. And Pussy Riot, who – after the last band member escaped Russia to avoid arrest – have immediately started a European tour.

Several productions have been created in Zurich, some of them even site-specifically for Saffainsel. The choreographer Meg Stuart is rehearsing with international collaborators and with performers of the Zurich-based collective The Field, in the water, by the water and on floating pontoons. The composer and performer Lina Lapelytė collaborates with the Seefelder Kammerchor on a musical project in the lake and the visual artist Ragnar Kjartansson has sent us drawings we use to build a little cabin for his performance on the islet. Following many remote projects created during the pandemic, we now produce those works in Zurich virtually as local-international hybrids. Furthermore, we have co-invited an unprecedented number of groups with other European festivals and have endeavoured to make their stay more sustainable through other follow-up projects. Those are certainly not the ultimate answers to how post-pandemic international art can be produced and presented in more ecological ways. Nevertheless, they are attempts, and that is the minimum we must do as long as we hope for a transformation.

And so, since the beginning of June, we have been in the wonderful company of international artists during the creation of their works for Zurich, and can already anticipate what is to come. This year, we can again set up the majority of our venues and restaurants and we are very much looking forward to three weeks of exceptional art from the world together with you – on a meadow in the middle of Europe.

The festival direction
Matthias von Hartz, Sarah Wendle, Veit Kälin