Post-West

Entitled Post-West, the Impulse Festival is launching a new strand of programming that will be continued in the years to come.

The crisis in “The West” as a political principle of interpretation and order associated with certain values like democracy, personal liberty, the rule of law, but also with capitalism and dominance, did not start yesterday. Since the collapse of its counterpart “The East”, its claim to leadership based on “values” has eroded and left room for a multipolar world order in which old alliances are increasingly questioned. Now, 35 years after the end of “The East”, even the western mainstream is writing about the end of “The West”.

With this year’s intra-German exchange, we will reflect together with artistic and discursive voices on aspects of a post-Western society – in the West of Germany. In doing so we do not mark “The East” as “the other” but will examine parallel transformation processes in East and West.

Post-West presents guest performances and exchange projects that engage with their respective East-West experiences, some of which have originated in East German partner institutions in the independent theatre sector. Here themes and participative practices are discussed that emerged from a dissident subculture in the GDR in the 1980s and flourished briefly in 1989 and 1990 (The Round Table, “Ohne Frauen ist kein Staat zu machen” (Without Women There Can Be No State), GDR environmental libraries) before being overshadowed by the West German mainstream. 

The group hannsjana takes us along on an archaeological expedition to unearth feminisms formed in East and West Germany. In their work “Bitter Fields”, les dramaturx reflect on the climate crisis, the strengthening of right-wing movements and their own unsuspected involvement in these. The Leipzig company fachbetrieb rita grechen cycles along the old trade route the Via Regia from Görlitz to Cologne for a slow-paced portrait of Germany between East and West. It will be welcomed by the artists of MFK Bochum in Cologne at the contested Gremberg woods, which have been earmarked to make way for the expansion of the A4 motorway. This raises old and new questions about infrastructure, mobility and protecting the environment. In an installation lasting several days focussed on listening, Anna Zett and Joshua Wicke apply self-organised practices from the period the wall came down (and before) to the present, while Ost-West-AG combines practical activism from East and West Germany in a series of urban interventions.

We invite you most warmly to explore these themes together with the artists and to perhaps gain new insights, make new connections and see things from a different point of view.