HYBRID Biennale 2024 #SPACE

Photo: NONOTAK - SHIRO

12. – 27.10.2024 Festival for Digital Arts

HELLERAU was founded at the beginning of the 20th century as a joint project of industry, research and art and as a response to industrialisation and changes in working and living conditions. Today, the world is facing new, exceptionally critical phases of global transformation processes, which are characterised not least by enormous and dynamic developments in the field of digitality. HELLERAU, which is now regarded as one of the most important international centres for contemporary dance, music and performance, is therefore establishing HYBRID, an experimental platform for the arts in the (post-)digital age. As a way of approaching the aforementioned transformation processes, international electronic and digital arts projects, try-outs, residencies and symposia will curiously and critically reflect on the concept of the hybrid in its technological, but also political and ecological dimensions, in the principle of “kinship” (Donna Haraway) and its potential for diversity and innovation. 

At the centre of the platform is the HYBRID Biennale, initially planned as a three-part project, which will focus on the themes of BODY (2022), SPACE (2024) and SOUND (2026) each October. The first edition in 2022 with artists such as Maria Hassabi, Cécile B. Evans, Choy Ka Fai, Lamin Fofana, Tai Shani, Sophia Al-Maria and Ryoichi Kurokawa was generously funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony. The international symposium BLACKBOX WHITECUBE XR, which is central to the second edition in 2024 and takes the founding history of the Festspielhaus Hellerau as its starting point to explore how spatial concepts for music and the performing arts – and for a new audience – can and must be further developed in the digital age, is once again generously supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation’s project funding.

As a pre-showing of the HYBRID Biennale 2024, a HYBRID Box project in Dresden city centre and Rotterdam is planned on 14 March in cooperation with PYLON, Goethe-Institut Rotterdam and the new Dresden Kreativ.Raum.Börse for interim use of urban space, followed on 15 March by a concert project by Ryoji Ikeda and Ensemble Modern as well as rastermedia with Frank Bretschneider, XURI and Cleworth in the main hall at Festspielhaus Hellerau.

Information on further collaborations and programme items will follow.

Today:  Thu 28.03.2024