Art Festival Begehungen 2023

Festival location

Display cases, object descriptions, bases, lighting and monitors - everything is still in its place. What is missing are the exhibits. From August 17 to 27, 2023, the Begehungen art festival invites you to rediscover these abandoned rooms in Palais Lichtenstein/Sa., the former Daetz-Centrum.

Festival title

Courthouse, widow's palace, prisoner of war camp, refugee accommodation, apartment building, exhibition site - this incomplete list illustrates the eventful history of the house. With the festival title "et cetera pp" this enumeration is symbolically continued and at the same time referred to the possible future of the object.

Artists of the exhibition

The title "et cetera pp" formulates the thematic framework of the festival. Artists were asked this year to submit works on the subject of collecting or dealing with the history of the house.

The international call for applications for artists started on April 1st. They could apply until April 23 with existing works or as an artist-in-residence. We received almost 700 applications from over 60 countries. Thanks to everyone who applied for this incredible result!

The exhibition in 2023 will be composed of works by the following artists:

As a group*: Nina Behnisch (D), Zhaoyi Chen (CHN), Charline Gdalia (FRA), Ann-Marie Najderek (D/ PL), Halyn Shin (KOR) und Selin Wutzler (TUR)

Raquel Algaba (SPA)

Veneta Androva (BGR)

Verena Bachl (D)

Dana Engfer (D)

Nicoletta Favari & Christopher Salvito (ITA)

Thiemo Frömberg (D)

Monika Golla* (D)

Benedikt Hartl (D)

Margret Hoppe (D)

Mariko Hori* (JAP)

Daniela Junghans (D)

Tanja Kodlin (D)

Fanny Liebhardt & Georg Stahlbock (D)

Sarah Lüdemann [Beauham] (D)

Catherine McEvoy* (GB)

Anne Peschken (D) & Marek Pisarsky (PL)

Stefan Schleupner* (D)

Polina Shcherbyna & Sofiia Yesakova* (UKR)

Carla Sophie Tapparo (ARG)

Bernd Trasberger (D/BEL)

Johannes Weilandt (D)

Phoebe Walton* (GB)

Thorsten Wagner* (D)

Agata Zemla* (PL)

*Artist in Residence

** Remote Residence

Citizen participation

We want the people of Lichtenstein themselves to be part of the art festival Begehungen. That's why we encourage everyone to tell us about their private passion for collecting.

Do you collect anything yourself? Is that perhaps a passion of yours?

Do you associate it with a special story or memories?

Have you inherited, left behind or passed on a collection?

Show your collection or tell your story about it!

The aim is to integrate a selection of these into the festival. It is still unclear in what form this will take place.

Send a message to one of the following addresses:

E-Mail:: sammeln [at] begehungen-festival.de

Phone: 037204 941400

WhatsApp: 015731076158

Mail: Kultur.Palais.Lichtenstein, Schlossallee 2, 09350 Lichtenstein (keyword "collecting")

In addition, the BEGEHUNGEN team would like to use the festival to discuss the future design of this house with the citizens of the city in cooperation with the Lichtenstein city administration, to collect suggestions and to prepare them for further use. More about this project here soon.

European Capital of Culture 2025

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 inspections. 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 inspections open up spaces and new perspectives. Chemnitz and 38 municipalities are both cultural capitals, which is why the Begehungen art festival is now taking place for the second time in the region and relies on the active participation of the people of Lichtenstein. 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. I'm looking forward to "et cetera pp."

About us

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

Since then, a former prison, empty cultural centers, abandoned allotment gardens, an old brewery, disused department stores and train stations have been festival locations. In 2022, the inspections took place outside of Chemnitz for the first time.

The festival is largely the result of voluntary work by the members of Begehungen e.V. and many helpers.