Kulturpark e.V., Bitterfeld-Wolfen
2022 – 2026
OSTEN is a festival for art and mutual interest in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. Through its artistic and discursive projects, it explores and celebrates “the East” as a landscape of transformation for people, the environment, and community life. At the heart of the festival is participatory work in artistic projects with the people of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, in the spirit of a new “Bitterfeld Way.” At the center of the exploration of the region are the themes of environmental transformation, the transformation of work, the transformation of society, and the transformation of perspectives on “the East.”
The festival is organized through a broad network of institutions from the arts, civil society, and academia. Since its inception, it has collaborated with the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Academy of Visual Arts and Book Arts in Leipzig, the Magdeburg Theater, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the Goethe-Institut, the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, the Bühnen Halle, the Köthen Bach Festival, the Impulse Festival, TD Berlin, LOFFT Leipzig, Spector Books, C/O Berlin, the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, DNT Weimar, Ferropolis, and many others.
Zu den mitwirkenden Künstler:innen gehörten bislang untere anderem: raumlaborberlin, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Sven Johne, Falk Haberkorn, Tobias Zielony, Franziska Klose, Caroline Ektander, Henrike Naumann, Isa Rosenberger, Ron Rosenberg, Stefan Wartenberg, Maryna Makarenko, Martin Maleschka, Paula Erstmann, Lucila Guichon, Anke Heelemann, Studio Urbanistan, hannsjana, Das Helmi, masharu, Anna Zett, Oscar Olivo, les dramaturx, Urbane Dermatologen, Matthias Luthardt, Benjamin Scheuer, Jan Caspers, Kristiane Petersmann, Moritz Nitsche, easy easy, Alison Shea, Isabelle Schad, Fungi Fung, Viviana Medina, Michikazu Matsune, Lili Carr, Angela González, Christophe Meierhans, loeckenfranke, Deborah Jeromin, lynn t musiol, Tanja Krohne, Thomas Heise, Sven Gatter, Lisandro Rodriguez, Wilhelm Klotzek, Dima Levitskyi, u.v.m.
I have been part of the OSTEN Festival team since 2022—first as part of the production team, then as part of the festival’s curatorial team starting in 2023, and as part of the artistic direction starting in 2026.