//meeting//

Host: Kathrin Deventer, Robert Piaskowski

The meeting will be attended by the directors of several important art festivals.

The meeting will be simultaneously translated.

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Several years ago we participated in the discussion about the “festivaliation” of cultural life. The radicals believed festivals to be harmful to the culture-forming fabric, and their creative impulse to be exaggerated. The proponents of festivals perceived them to represent the potential for development vested in confronting achievements, opportunities for exchange, and attaining quality through variety. Some argued for the primacy of organic work, while others noted the prestige of festivals, which is not immaterial for wider audiences as well as for theatre circles. Have these dichotomies become anachronistic? This discussion must return and resort to a deeper analysis, especially in the face of the post-pandemic crisis. In culture, it means more than just financial shortages and smaller audiences, as it has also triggered the need to set new goals and challenges. What is the current situation of festivals in Europe? Is the pandemic an impulse for development, or does it rather generate stagnation?