Editorial 23

ECLAT 2023 is more than ever a festival of co-productions and inhouse creation, created together with artists whose ideas can unfold free of predetermined themes or even ideologies. On seven different stages in Stuttgart’s Theaterhaus, diverse concertante, theatrical, installative, immersive, hybrid and multi-perspective projects can be experienced: a 5-day journey of discovery that brings us closer to positions of today’s artistic creation.

 

The examination of language and its semantic and sonic content runs like a fine thread through the projects: in a multifaceted encounter between poets and composers, as monological stakes in a Greek tragedy, as a communicative meta-level in scenic instrumental works, and in a fast-paced, stirring dream narrative in which the boundary between language and music dissolves in the interaction of speech, electronic music and jazz. Thus, jazz and improvisation also become connecting elements between individual works.

 

A special collaboration has linked us for several years with Eastern European artists who, threatened by the aggression of cynical autocrats, live in exile and not only fight for residency status in the free West, but also demand our attention. The digital platformB, which will be launched at the festival, invites free artistic development beyond national appropriation, instrumentalization and »politically correct« restriction. Despite all the contrasts, contradictions, abysses and longings, despite all the pride and fragility, the platform is characterized by mutual respect. Thus we experience art as a place of self-assurance and empathy, and perhaps also as a stability factor in polarized fracturing societies.

 

Christine Fischer
Artistic Director