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Chemnitz (dpa) - The Chemnitz art festival «Inspections» wants to transform a former freight yard into an area for contemporary art this year. “Leerzeit” was chosen as the motto for the 18th edition of the festival. "The empty train station as a symbol for the idle time in which we are all currently," said the chairwoman of the sponsoring association, Luise Grudzinski. The title actually stands for unproductivity and inefficiency and should be re-cast by the artists. The call for applications begins on this Monday: Artists can submit their concepts and ideas online until the beginning of May.
Since 2003, the festival has presented art in different locations every year - for example in a former prison, in abandoned industrial buildings, a brewery and, last year, in a department store in a residential area that was ready for demolition. This year the disused station has now been selected. According to the information, it went into operation in 1903 and was once a hub for factories in the north of the city. Operations ceased 100 years later.
The festival is scheduled from August 12th to 15th.
The participating artists will be selected from the applications by a jury of experts in June.
With this year's motto, the organizers are referring to the current corona pandemic, which is forcing people to severely restrict parts of their lives - such as holidays and social contacts.
The "idle time" urges people to rethink, to find other ways of living and working and leave time for a search for meaning, it said.
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On the way from Chemnitz to the European Capital of Culture in 2025, the festival is to present itself increasingly in smaller towns in the surrounding area in the coming years, as it is called in the so-called BidBook for the Capital of Culture.
In 2025 it should return to Chemnitz and, according to previous plans, use rooms from the “City on the River” project.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210418-99-250047 / 3
Festival "Inspections" 2021
BidBook on the Capital of Culture 2025