Art Festival Begehungen 2024

There is unrest in the region 35 years ago. What started small soon grew into a major movement. Protests break out across the country, society wavers between fear and awakening. Is the situation tipping over? Or will the forces balance out and calm return?

The 21st edition of the Begehungen art festival will take place at a location that is closely linked to the protests in the GDR 35 years ago: back then, a group of citizens came together to change the GDR's education system, among other things.
Although the GDR was soon history, the idea took shape surprisingly quickly. On 1 September 1990, the new Chemnitz school model was opened as a place for progressive learning and teaching. It still exists successfully today, now at a new location.

The founding building at Charlottenstraße 52, formerly the Albrecht Dürer or Charlottenschule, was abandoned in 2012 due to structural defects - and now forms the authentic setting for the 2024 festival entitled "KIPPELN".

An exhibition will bring together 20 - 25 works by international contemporary artists and a festival programme with concerts, readings, lectures and performances will be offered.

The aim of the festival is the artistic examination of different forms of protest and resistance as well as the visualisation of protest movements in the present day, but also of past decades across the globe.

The international call for entries starts on 8 April and is looking for works of art that deal with the theme of protest on various levels. The exhibition is open to all genres of visual art.

The call for entries and conditions can be found under this link.

After the end of the application period on 30 April, an expert jury will select the works invited to the exhibition.

This year's jury consists of Dr Claudia Tittel (curator, artistic director of the exhibition), Irini Mavromatidou (artist, participant in the Begehungen Festival 2014), Carl Geißler (actor and former pupil at the school) and a voice from Begehungen e.V..

The artists involved in the exhibition and programme will be announced at the beginning of June.

The festival was founded in 2003. In the first edition, twelve empty shops in the Sonnenberg district of Chemnitz were the venues for a photography exhibition. In the years that followed, the festival moved to Brühl for several years, a shopping boulevard that was largely abandoned at the time, grew continuously and opened up more and more to other areas of art. The art festival has changed its venue every year since 2010.

Since then, a former prison, empty cultural centers, abandoned allotments, an old brewery, disused department stores, a drained water park, an orphaned museum or an overgrown train station have been the festival's locations. In 2022 and 2023 the festival took place outside of Chemnitz, in the small towns of Thalheim and Lichtenstein.

The exhibition is open to all genres of visual art. An extensive festival program, consisting of lectures, talks, readings and concerts, is an essential part of the festival.

The visits are seen as an inclusive and barrier-free festival. Admission to all program items and the exhibition is free. The festival is largely created through voluntary work by the members of the Begehungen e.V. and many helpers.

The Kunstfestival Begehungen are an official part of the program for the European Capital of Culture 2025 Chemnitz.

The Begehungen art festival is an official part of the program for the European Capital of Culture 2025 Chemnitz. In a process leading up to the Capital of Culture year, the festival will take place between 2022 and 2024 in the cultural region around Chemnitz. In 2022, 12,000 people visited the former Erzgebirge baths in Thalheim for the premiere of this format.

Stefan Schmidtke, Program Director European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH: “The art festival Begehungen contains everything that is European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 – and has been for 20 years. "C the unseen", the motto for the program of the Capital of Culture year, is also programmatic for the Begehungen. The festival uses unusual places and makes them visible.

It invites international artists and the local neighborhood to discover these places and engage in conversation. The Begehungen open up spaces and new perspectives. This is also what the Capital of Culture stands for: encouraging people to get involved, creating access and breaking down barriers. As a project of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025, the art festival Begehungen will network intensively with international partner festivals in the coming years and through this exchange will be further professionalized and profiled as a European festival."

General: info @ begehungen-festival.de

Press: presse @ begehungen-festival.de

Booking / Festivalprogramme: booking @ begehungen-festival.de

Questions about the application: application @ begehungen-festival.de