Shift-Change / Slogging away in Ebensee
Festival of Regions 2015
19–28 June 2015
Project submission deadline: 16 May 2014
Ebensee
Austria
The Festival of Regions scouts and conquers a region or town in Upper Austria every two years. Away from urban concentrations and cultural centres, a program with contemporary art and culture as an attractive option for the residents and a broad, curious public is shaped and communicated. Apart from regional, supraregional and international participation by art-makers, collaboration is sought with local associations, institutions and good individual forces to anchor the festival on location and to leave behind traces that are as distinct as possible.
Apart from reinforcing and furthering regional initiatives in the field of cultural work, sensitizing people to current artistic trends is one of the festival’s aims, with the aspects of communication, open dialogue and combining everyday culture with art. Above all, however, a great festival of arts is to be celebrated at which the components of focus on content, artistic substance, humour and cultural community enter into a liaison.
The festival venue, Ebensee
If you ask locals about the region’s identity, you soon get to hear that customs here are a bit rougher than elsewhere. In fact, ‘red’ Ebensee has a long tradition of resistance and a reputation of non-conformity and contrariness, but also of solidarity. The town was founded around 1607 as a workers’ settlement when salt production began; to the present day, the salt-works are the region’s major employer. The location on the southern shores of Traunsee is really idyllic, but it is impaired by the very busy road that cuts the town off from the lake’s shores. The existence of 99 associations indicates that communal cultural life is an important factor.
Useful links:
Gemeinde Ebensee (Ebensee communal authority): www.ebensee.at
Zeitgeschichte Museum und KZ-Gedenkstätte Ebensee (Ebensee Modern History Museum and Concentration Camp Memorial): www.memorial-ebensee.at
Heimatmuseum (local museum): www.museumebensee.at
Vereine (associations): www.ebensee.ooe.gv.at
Kulturverein Kino (Cinema Cultural Association): www.kino-ebensee.at
As usual with the Festival of Regions, public space serves as room for artistic action and a meeting place for hospitality and conviviality. For performances and installations, diverse interior spaces and industrial buildings in the town and environs are available. A few examples can be viewed through a photo tour on the Festival’s website, www.fdr.at.
Shift-change (Schichtwechsel) and slogging away (Hackeln)
These are the mottos for the Festival of Regions in Ebensee. In the vernacular, the term Hackeln means working hard, slogging away. The theme thus circles around all possible facets of working in their meaningful as well as absurd reflections and variations. Does the legendary workers’ culture still exist? Does the working class still exist as an hermetic stratum? Are there still such things as solidarity and sticking together? The Festival of Regions wants to immerse itself in the region, taking up social, urban, cultural themes and dealing with them in the form of artistic interventions. The festival temporarily takes on the cultural shift-work in the region and is looking forward to stimulating artistic work in an intensive, well-salted show of works.
Call for submissions
Project proposals from all artistic areas and genres are welcome. Projects for site-specific works will be given preference, or plans that generally engage with the theme of work or the social and cultural situation in Ebensee. Finished productions without any closer connection with the town or the given theme do not have good prospects.
Details
–Submissions in German or English (maximum seven pages)
–Due by 16 May 2014 at the latest (postmark) by post or e-mail as a Word or PDF file to:
Festival of Regions
Marktplatz 12
A-4100 Ottensheim
Austria
einreichung [at] fdr.at / T +43 (0) 7234 85 2 85 / www.fdr.at
