The project series Dramaturgie für eine Konferenz (Dramaturgy for a Conference) by the Argentinean artist Matías Umpierrez creates space for thinkers and artists to examine questions of the times together in a performative way. Umpierrez commissioned Einat and Eyal Weizman to write a manual entitled Negative Evidence, which was given to four indigenous performers to develop a performance based on it. The artists have eight days of rehearsal time on site to engage with the manual and the piazza at K21. Each artist will create a solo performance for one of four consecutive evenings.

The performers each place a particular case at the centre of an artistic work that exposes colonialist structures in their countries of origin. The Inuk performer Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory from Canada, the Xhosa choreographer Mamela Nyamza from South Africa, the Indian performer Mallika Taneja and the Icelandic choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir are following the path of “forensic theatre” laid out in the manual. In this way, the piazza at K21 becomes a stage for truth. A discussion panel on the last evening of the event with Umpierrez and the performers, among others, then initiates the conversation with the city’s community.

The manual is a guide to redefining documentary theatre. Starting points are tweets, blogs, photos, articles, videos – documents of the 21st century. It analyses what constitutes a true statement today and whether art can help truth find a new, powerful expression.

Einat Weizman is a playwright and director. Her documentary theatre explores “blind spots” of Israeli reality. Eyal Weizman is an architect, writer, professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College in London. His research agency “Forensic Architecture” investigates crimes against humanity.

Matías Umpierrez is considered one of the most innovative theatre directors in Latin America; his projects, among others with his company Plataforma Fluorescente, usually move on the threshold between theatre and visual art. His works are shown in theatres and museums all over the world, and he has also developed ‘site-specific performances’ in factories in Sâo Paulo and on mountain peaks in the Pyrenees, among other places.

26 November 1975: The Majdanek trial, file number 8 Ks 1/75, begins in the Düsseldorf District Court – one of the longest and most elaborate trials in German post-war history. After 30 years, former SS guards and concentration camp guards of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp in Poland are charged for their actions. School classes are also in the courtroom. They are supposed to experience history at first hand. But soon a number of questions arise for Gerrit Niehaus and his classmates: How should the behaviour of those involved in the trial be assessed? How far has the reappraisal of German history really come? And what light does this shed on their future, i.e. our present?

The Theaterkollektiv Pièrre.Vers continues its highly successful work on historical material anchored in the city of Düsseldorf. After ›Schwarz-helle Nacht‹ and ›Aktion:Aktion!‹ the team around director Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen and author Juliane Hendes delves deep into the greatest crime in human history. Powerful testimonies are juxtaposed with legal claims of reappraisal. People who cannot forget meet those who do not want to remember. On the basis of true events, a torrent of opinions and positions gradually develops that reaches far into the present. It lends a decades-long dimension to today’s struggle for the prerogative of interpreting history.

“She doesn’t stop when it hurts”, ‹ZEIT› wrote about Florentina Holzinger, who is currently regarded as one of the most exciting performers. The artist from Vienna enriches the international performance scene with dizzying acrobatics, muscular female bodies and martial arts fight scenes – pop cultural references and a fondness for thrash don’t come up short, either. Her performances have reached cult status and she pushes boundaries – of taste and of her own body. Central to Holzinger’s work is the female body, which she treats as a testing ground for experiments, where anything is possible.

In her new work TANZ she deals with the disciplining of the body through ballet. For this she uses an ensemble of eleven strong women between the ages of 20 and 80, who perform mostly nude and come from a range of different disciplines, such as dance, ballet but also theatre and circus. The protagonist is 80 year old Beatrice Cordua, who for many years used to be John Neumeier’s prima ballerina, and who reached global stardom when she danced the La sacre du printemps in the nude for the first time in 1972. In TANZ Cordua teaches a ballet class the La Sylphide, a ballet performance from 1832 with levitating ‘air spirits’ and sylphlike fairies. It is regarded as the birth of ballet with tutu and point dance and has shaped its image since then. However, Holzinger views the topic from a contemporary, feminist perspective: she drags the idealised world of romantic ballet into the 21st century – without taboos and in a radical and shocking way – and thus creates a true ride to hell. In an operatic setting somewhere between fairy-tale forest and witches’ pandemonium, brutal parodies of images from the world of ballet, comedy and pornography are being created – including spectacular interludes featuring stunts and suspended motorcycles. TANZ is one of the most awarded pieces of 2020 in the German speaking countries: it was invited to the Theatertreffen, was named as the performance of the year in a critics’ survey by ‹Theater heute› and it was nominated for the German theatre award ›Der Faust‹. Holzinger additionally won the Nestroy prize for best director.

Florentina Holzinger (*1986 in Vienna) studied Choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. Her collaboration with Vincent Riebeek in Kein Applaus für Scheiße (2011) and Wellness (2012) furnished her with the reputation as the ‘most provocative emerging talent in choreography’. Her performances are shown at numerous festivals and production houses around the world. Holzinger lives in Vienna and Amsterdam and commences work with the team of René Pollesch at Berliner Volksbühne in 2021.

“In fury lies power lies love: being at one of Florentina Holzinger’s evenings means to feel the future.” (SZ-Magazin)

“The Austrian performance artist and choreographer is master of the art of taking things people usually prefer to avert their eyes from, onto the stage in a way that one enjoys looking at them after all.” (Der Falter)

Dulcimer and jazz? This is not a contradiction in itself as Marius Preda has proven. The virtuous multi-instrumentalist is not only a master of his main instrument, the cimbalom – a concert hammered dulcimer with metal strings – but also of the piano, accordion, violin, vibraphone, upright bass and pan flute. Elements of Latin-jazz, Salsa, Blues, Afro-Cuban and also Arabian sounds can be found in his music.

Preda was given his first cimbalom as a present from his grandmother when he was only four years old. Having captured his interest so early in his life, this unusual instrument, which is mainly used in Hungarian traditional folk music, has never ceased to fascinate him. After studying the vibraphone as part of the jazz curriculum at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, which he graduated from with honours, Marius Preda pooled all his resources into developing a completely new way to play the cimbalom. Thus, he became the first cimbalom player in the history of jazz and is currently the only cimbalom player worldwide, who has been playing at this level not only in the world of jazz but also in international concert halls.

For many years Preda had been soloist in the well-known Dutch jazz ensemble Rosenberg Trio, which rose to international fame by playing Swing in the style of Django Reinhardt. With his own trio, he has made it his mission to establish the cimbalon in jazz music – and does so in concerts all over Europe. On his current release Mission Cimbalom Preda performs with jazz giants such as the guitarist Mike Stern, drummer Dennis Chambers and the trumpeter and ten times Grammy-winner Arturo Sandoval. The legendary Romanian-French film composer Vladimir Cosma regards Preda as “one of the best musicians I have ever worked with during my entire musical career”.

“Marius’ compositions are a bit down and funky – and one can never be sure what to expect. Highly original and creative, most highly recommended!” (Contemporary Fusion Reviews)

“Preda has made it his commendable mission to turn a little known instrument into a keystone of jazz. And so the audience forget that they are listening to an instrument that is new to them.” (Lemon Wire)

“I’d been running a sort of jazz club near Sendagaya Station. It wasn’t so big, or so small, either. We had a grand piano and just barely enough space to squeeze in a quintet. (…) Most people I knew had predicted that the bar wouldn’t do well. Well, their predictions were totally off.” – Haruki Murakami

The literary work of the Japanese world writer Haruki Murakami sometimes reads like a declaration of love to music; numerous musical references run through his novels and stories. Before he started writing, Murakami himself ran a jazz club in Tokyo. In his new concert programme, Sebastian Gahler would like to whisk the asphalt audience away and take them there. It includes previously unheard compositions by Gahler, with which some of Murakami’s best-known novel characters are brought to life musically, but also new arrangements of jazz standards that play a role in Murakami’s stories. What do Aomame or Tengo from 1Q84 sound like or Kafka from Kafka on the Beach? Murakami readers will be able to rediscover these and other characters in modern, jazzy portraits. Invitation to Murakami’s Jazz Club offers a special opportunity to encounter Murakami’s literary cosmos live on stage.

Sebastian Gahler is a jazz pianist and composer and is based in Düsseldorf. He leads several established concert series in his hometown and plays a major role in ensuring that the local jazz scene is so vibrant. The Sebastian Gahler Trio is an established fixture in the German jazz scene. Gahler received the City of Düsseldorf’s Förderpreis für Musik in 2011.

Saxophonist Denis Gäbel from Cologne is one of the leading figures in his discipline on the German jazz scene. He has performed with musicians such as Antonio Faraò, Billy Cobham and Jiggs Whigham and played at festivals like WDR 3 jazz.cologne, Jazzopen Stuttgart and Enjoy Jazz. Gäbel is a lecturer for jazz saxophone at the Musikhochschule Mainz.

“Sebastian Gahler is one of Germany’s most fascinating jazz pianists.” (Jazz thing)

The musician, radio host and author Danko Rabrenović returns to the stage. However, this time, as the title Solo & Allein implies, on his own. He conducts an experiment by relying just on his gift for improvisation and his guitar. As a story teller and performer Rabrenović moves in a sphere which lies somewhere between concert, public reading, stand-up and cabaret – without safety net, fair and square. The format of his performances may have changed, but the topics remain: language, exile, identity, culture shocks, feeling at home, nationalism, integration, immigrant background and similar maladies.

Danko Rabrenović was born in Zagreb, grew up in Belgrade and spent three years in Peking with his parents as a child. He came to Germany shortly after the start of the war in the former Yugoslavia. He hosted the cult radio show Balkanizer for eleven years, and he is currently a radio presenter at WDR Cosmo. So far two books written by him have been published, Der Balkanizer. Ein Jugo in Deutschland and Herzlich willkommencić. Heimatgeschichten vom Balkanizer (Du Mont). Rabrenović is also singer and guitarist in the Ska-Punk band Trovači.

“He regards living in Germany with the similar benevolent astonishment shown by his Russian colleague Wladimir Kaminer. Maybe it’s because of his charming accent – similarities cannot be dismissed out of hand.” (Bonner Generalanzeiger)

“The Balkanizer tells of his life between two home countries and holds a mirror up to us in a charming manner. Russian-disco in Balkan-ese – witty and profound.” (Radio Fritz)

“The author and musician Danko Rabrenović has filled a gap with his story of integration in Germany.” (taz)

The Mivos Quartet is dedicated to performing the works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to a wide audience. The New York string ensemble has put together a spectacular programme for the asphalt Festival.

The first part, ‘Inspired by …’, features ‘luminous animal’ by Michael Catranis, ‘Glance / I don’t Belong Here’ by Hannah Kendall and ‘Mirror Mirror’ by Peter Kramer – three young, up-and-coming composers from the contemporary US music scene. Each piece is inspired by a work of art from a different medium – poetry, photography and prose. The composers each approach the originals in a unique way, creating music that expresses their own artistic voice and language.

The second set is titled ‘Improvisation / Experimentation / Exploration’ and features three pioneers of contemporary music. Featured is ‘Sixfivetwo’ by Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill, who uses improvisation as a key element to his music. Although most of this piece is notated, each member of the quartet is given space to improvise. ‘String Quartet No. 4’ by Sofia Gubaidulina follows, combining transcendental mysticism, graphic notation, experimental percussion and dramatic contrasts to create one of the most iconic compositional languages of new music. Her fourth string quartet adds pre-recorded, ethereal electronics to give the music even more sonic depth. In ‘String Quartet 2.5 – Playing With Seeds’ by George Lewis, the composer, improviser, trombonist, scientist and electronic music pioneer weaves together the various threads of his multi-faceted musical life. His kaleidoscopic work treats the string quartet like a four-headed hydra, moving apart and together in every possible combination.

Since its founding in 2008, the Mivos Quartet has worked closely with an ever-growing group of international composers representing different aesthetics of contemporary classical composition. The string quartet has performed at renowned concert series such as the New York Phil Biennale, Wien Modern, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Shanghai New Music Week (Shanghai, China), Música de Agora na Bahia (Brazil), Aldeburgh Music (UK) and Lo Spririto della musica di Venezia (Italy). Mivos has been a guest at the asphalt Festival several times and has played numerous compositions by Bojan Vuletic.

Mivos is committed to commissioning and premiering new music for string quartet and strives to work closely with composers over long periods of time. Each year the quartet also awards the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize, established to support the work of emerging composers, and the I-Creation Prize, a competition for composers of Chinese descent. In addition to expanding the string quartet repertoire, Mivos is also dedicated to collaborating with guest artists, exploring multimedia projects with live video and electronics, and performing improvised music. The quartet is a recipient of the 2019 Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Prize for Interpreters of Contemporary Music.

LUAH from Cologne – that’s Elsa Johanna Mohr (vocals, ukulele, percussion), Lena-Larissa Senge (vocals, synthesiser, percussion) and Ula Martyn-Ellis (vocals, guitar). The three young, trained musicians have their roots in jazz music, their compositions combine jazz, pop, folk and Brazilian music. LUAH sing in English and Portuguese (‘lua’ is Portuguese for ‘moon’), mix jazzy guitar lines with percussion, glockenspiel and synthesizer sounds, creating their very own folk jazz sound between mainstream and avant-garde.

The trio won the audience award at the Jazztube Festival in Bonn in 2019. In the same year, LUAH released their debut album Sunlit. In spring 2021, the band recorded their second studio album, which is expected to be released in autumn.

“LUAH have carved out their own niche with sunny vocals, folky arrangements and jazzy harmonies. In the process, a kinship to early Joni Mitchell can be detected, a pinch of acoustic dream-pop feeling is added, and the spice results from samba and bossa interspersions in the repertoire.” (Jazz thing)

“Their arrangements have an irresistible effect in this diversity, like the pull of a swing door, into a sophisticated and above all colourful hotel of the extra class.” (Generalanzeiger Bergneustadt)

“Three very different voices, sounding interesting, exciting individually, are beguilingly beautiful together” (Bonner Generalanzeiger)

In 2018, an investigation into Cum-Ex trading uncovered the largest tax scandal in Europe’s history: investors, banks and stockbrokers unjustly lost their nations’ treasuries at least 55 billion euros through a triangular trade of shares. Two years later some of the stakeholders are facing trial, however their dealings have long disappeared from public focus. And yet a number of questions still remain unanswered: What was known amongst politicians? Who decided to look away? Could it be that the wealthy were more important than the public?

Theatre director Helge Schmidt and his team’s award winning production of the Cum-Ex Papers was part of the asphalt Festival in 2019 – and now here comes the follow-up. In collaboration with the investigative journalist Oliver Schröm of the ARD show ‘Panorama’, Tax for free – Scholz und Tschentscher geben einen aus und Michael Kohlhaas wundert sich tells the history of a political scandal. In 2016 the city-state Hamburg demanded the refund of 47 million euros in tax derived from presumed Cum-Ex trading from the private bank M.M. Warburg & Co. Following that, however, the co-owner of the bank met with the city’s mayor Olaf Scholz. Within a few days the revenue authority led by Peter Tschentscher decided to waive the refund of the money after all… In the meantime the reappraisal of the Cum-Ex scandal worried the legislative assembly, which as a result implemented a board of inquiry with regards to the illegal trading in October 2020.

Framed by interviews with politicians, journalists and non-government organisations the production pictures the closeness of financial economics and politics through the use of documentary material in an impressive way. Through content and use of personnel the play draws on the Cum-Ex Papers, which received the Deutsche Theaterpreis FAUST – however, by referring back to Heinrich von Kleist’s tragic figure of Michale Kohlhass, it asks: At which point does a system become so unjust that the public needs to fight back? The premiere of Tax for free is planned to take place at the Hamburger Lichthof Theater at the end of May and will be streamed live – followed by the first guest performance at the asphalt Festival in July.

Helge Schmidt (born 1983 in Schwerin) was engaged at the Thalia Theater Hamburg for several seasons and has been working as an independent director since 2014/15. His production Weltverbesserungstheater at Theater Erlangen was nominated for most stand-out production of the season 2017/18 by the critic’s poll of the Deutsche Bühne. Helge Schmidt works in the independent theatre scene as well as at municipal theatres. His works have been invited to numerous festivals.

More heart and soul is hardly possible: Diana Ezerex’s music combines urban pop, hip hop, soul and trap. Her charismatic voice brings to mind the energy of Rag’n Bone Man, the intensity of Bon Iver and the serenity of Anderson.Paak. For the last four years the singer has been performing as a volunteer for prisoners. She has received numerous awards for her commitment to social matters, amongst others the prize “Aktiv für Demokratie & Toleranz” funded by the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, the Heinz-Kappes-Preis 2020 and the Jugenddiakoniepreis 2019. At the asphalt Festival Diana Ezerex will, for the very first time, be performing songs live from her debut album My Past’s Gravity, which will be released in June. Her songs deal with topics which are closely related to prison life and pick up on themes such as taboos, structural problems and social inequality. Diana Ezerex’s lyrics are highly socially relevant and authentic, pose questions with regards to mental health, suicide, acceptance and how to find your way within society.

“Diana Ezerex is a songwriter whose passion does not only burn for music but also for social justice.” (Bayerischer Rundfunk)

“Her low, smoky voice pierces your heart the moment she strikes upon one of her own original songs.” (Badische Neueste Nachrichten)

The Joseph Boys are convinced: the future we want has to be created, otherwise we’ll get one we don’t want. That’s why the Düsseldorf band formed itself in 2014 from margarine into a man-made agglomerate of rage, renewal and art. Punk is their style, driving beats draw structure, chords the strategy. The Joseph Boys describe themselves as “audio-social punk plastic”, their work as “fully ripened, German lyrics laden, euphoric punk-post-punk with a certain rawness and cubic coolness”. For months, the band has been working on an atmospheric, hyper-realistic punk installation in their workshop studio. Their fourth album is to be a unique “seismograph of excitement culture” and a ” vociferous message from Düsselland”, the release is planned for the end of 2021. For the asphalt Festival, the Joseph Boys are conceiving a ” noisy swan concert” on the lake stage and invite the audience to “audiophile live grinding”. They promise the audience an emotional excursion about contemporary relevance and transformation processes and the answer to the question why making music is a source of happiness.

“The Joseph Boys are a peculiar mixture of art and punk, of dadaesque lyrics and raging guitars. A mixture that makes their concert performances an intense live experience – musically and physically.” (jmc Magazine)

“Fury meets nagging melancholy, civil disobedience meets precise riffing, post-punk and dance-drive add fuel to the fire.” (Plattentest.de)

“Hard, groovy, sometimes noisy, powerfully produced, somehow always danceable – and towering above it all are the fantastic vocals of singer Andi, who is a joy to listen to as he delivers lyrics that are absolutely not embarrassing. A must for all those who like to listen to good, hard, German-language music.” (Ox Fanzine)

Lo and behold: the human being, the social being. Isolated on the island of frustration. Locked up in her/his own four walls. What does one discover through loneliness and barriers? What comes to the surface? How does someone confront all the fears and longings that have been swept under the carpet in isolation on their forced island? How do you destroy your invisible walls, how do you find connection at a distance?

After their successful debut at ‘asphalt auf See 2020’, the soMermaids settle down again at the Schwanenspiegel and develop a unique, crazy, site-specific solo evening for the lake stage. In ISLAND OF F*CKED UP HEARTS (ECCE HOMO INSULARIS), the full title of the piece, the floating stage becomes an island of loneliness where all masks come off in an extremely humorous way.

The artist duo soMermaids are the actress Adrienn Bazsó and the director Panni Néder. The two Berlin based theatre-makers, originally from Hungary, see themselves as multidisciplinary feminist artists, exploring the different forms of autobiographical and documentary theatre and interweaving them with movement, song or video art. Their plays are particularly characterised by an honest and touching encounter between audience and actors.

“A mixture of honest, doubtful, ironic self-exploration” (Rheinische Post)

“Entertaining, sometimes humorous, more often thoughtful, dressed up in the cloak of poetry. You often don’t know whether to laugh, cry or look into the wide sky behind the stage.” (Culture Magazine O-Ton)

It is practically impossible not to hang on the lips of Emy Kaboré: Although barely 21 years old, the Paris-born Belgian is already considered a great musical talent. With her unmistakable soul voice, she expresses her most intimate thoughts and feelings. She deeply affects and leaves no one unmoved.

All the more astonishing that Emy is self-taught: it was only in the summer of 2015 that she bought her first guitar and started making music out of pure intuition – initially as a solo artist. Her emotional, poignant songs earned her third place at the “Humo’s Rock Rally” 2018, a very popular and traditional competition for rock bands in Belgium. At the time, the press judged, “At only 18, Emy’s voice conveys more emotion, life and urgency than that of the last eight Hooverphonic singers combined.”

This early success cemented Emy’s resolve to pursue her career in earnest, but now with the backing of a band. Meanwhile, she explores the neo-soul genre in the company of two wonderful musicians who add a groovy yet progressive feel to her repertoire and who complement her naturally soulful voice instrumentally. Fans of Billie Eilish, Erykah Badu and Hiatus Kaiyote will love EMY. Her debut single Freestyle (2020) has been played by numerous Belgian and French radio stations, and the follow-up Inconvenient (2021) could mark the start of an international breakthrough. EMY’s debut album is planned for 2022.

“With Emy, Flanders has its own Amy Winehouse.” (dansendeberen.be)

“It is one of those rare moments in which theatre explains, without pointing the finger. It’s more like a gentle pat.” (Theater heute)

Doing theatre with Tourette’s? At first glance this seems impossible, after all, no line is certain and no movement can be repeated. But Helgard Haug from Rimini Protokoll impressively proves the contrary. In her piece Chinchilla Arschloch, waswas she brings three people with Tourette’s syndrome onto the stage: Christian Hempel, who has made it his life’s work to educate people about this condition, the musician and geriatric nurse Benjamin Jürgens and the politician Bijan Kaffenberger. Their tics cannot be controlled, ranting and motor outbursts are part of their everyday life. Together with the musician Barbara Morgenstern, the three protagonists subject theatre to a stress test: how much lack of intention can it take? How much protection can it offer when the stage is actually made for the opposite – for precision, repeatability, control, world history and spectacle? And it quickly becomes clear: this is not just about Tourette’s at all. This piece is about the audience, the theatre and the fear of losing control.

The author and director Helgard Haug founded the theatre collective Rimini Protokoll 20 years ago together with Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. Since then, the three have been developing artistic projects worldwide under this label in different line-ups. Rimini Protokoll have received numerous awards for their documentary theatre pieces, interventions, scenic installations and radio plays with the so-called ‹experts of daily life›. They received, amongst others, the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, the Deutsche Theaterpreis Faust, the Europäische Theaterpreis, the Silver Lion of the Venice Theatre Biennale and the Deutsche Hörspielpreis. Chinchilla Arschloch, waswas had been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2020. The radio play production of the same name, developed on the basis of the play, won the ARD Deutsche Hörspielpreis in 2019.

“Chinchilla Arschloch, waswas is therefore not a play about Tourette’s. It is about breaking taboos, about freedom, loneliness, self-confidence, the calming power of music. It’s a piece about voyeurism, faked tolerance and empathy. It is phenomenally well-made, well-thought-out theatre because it touches, irritates, and scares you, because it surprises you with familiar things, so that in the end, ideally, you end up questioning your stance.” (Deutschlandfunk)

“A magical theatre evening that gives the three performers and the musician the means to strain the format of theatre, to stretch it and use it to their advantage.” (Spiegel Online)

If the pandemic hadn’t intervened, FHEELS would probably have already made the leap from intimate club shows onto big stages. The band from Hamburg released their first studio album Lotus in 2021 and plays sophisticated alternative rock internationally on a par with Elbow or Radiohead. Regular touring activities in Germany’s music hot spots and dozens of live shows in selected clubs have kept the band with its wheelchair-bound singer and guitarist Felix Brückner in the conversation continuously for five years.

FHEELS move musically through rock, jazz and psychedelic prog, building bridges between rock past and present, combining ambition and catchiness as well as artistic daring and musical skill.

Frontman Felix Brückner, who has been paraplegic since a snowboarding accident at the age of 17, studied singing and guitar at the Hamburg School of Music. He has been playing together with drummer Justus Murphy since his student days. Keyboarder Tobias Nitzbon and bassist Jens Boysen complete the band. On Lotus, dark grunge rock guitars and apocalyptic rock anthems can be discovered just as much as lyrical melodic arcs, danceable lightness and a pinch of soul. With his very intimate and personal song writing and his unconventional vocal facets, FHEELS singer Brückner always explores surprising new horizons.

Dancer Patrick ‘TwoFace’ Williams and three musicians from the transcultural Babylon ORCHESTRA explore the values and virtues of youth culture in their new work 2 Legit. ‘Legit’ is borrowed from ‘legitimate’ and is a slang word used mainly in the hip-hop scene – for example in 2 Legit 2 Quit (1991), one of MC Hammer’s biggest hits. If something is “legit”, it has authenticity and “realness”.

What does it mean for young people today to be truthful, straightforward and real – especially in a world where permanent self-promotion on social media plays a central role? Do virtues like sincerity and honesty have the same value in different cultures? What sounds authentic, what looks ‘fake’ and how quickly can one disguise reality?

The artists interpret their personal relationship to the virtues through music and dance. Dance styles such as popping, tutting or waving meet the sounds of Arabic instruments, Japanese harmonies and electronic beats. The encounter of music and dance on an equal level and the artists’ joint exploration of the theme stimulates completely new forms of movement and interplay. Dance and music form an exciting exploration of the coexistence of different cultures and value systems in our society.

2 Legit is the second joint work by Mischa Tangian, composer and founder of the Babylon ORCHESTRA, and the Japanese choreographer Takao Baba, who has his artistic roots in hip-hop. Dance soloist Patrick Williams a.k.a. Two Face is a member of the world-renowned contemporary dance company East Man under the direction of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. An active TikToker, he has more than 170,000 followers.

War has become quiet, visible fronts are becoming rare. Soldiers press the trigger button on a remote control. The killing is done by commanders from a cinematic god’s-eye view. The more valuable the military target, the more collateral damage is considered acceptable by those in charge. In recent years, much has changed in the way wars are conducted and communicated. This is not only due to new autonomous weapon systems and unimagined possibilities in visual surveillance. The aim is to shield people in safe countries from knowledge about wars and executions: ALL QUIET ON THE WAR FRONT. It has become easier to implement power politics militarily without being perceived as the aggressor and having to pay a price in blood. In contrast, the attacked societies not only have to endure high casualty rates in civil society. They are also traumatised by an invisible enemy that can only be noticed in the sky through the sound of its drones.

The new composition ALL QUIET ON THE WAR FRONT by Bojan Vuletic tonally and musically processes the perspectives on the ground and from the air as well as the blocking out of the noise of war in the safe distance. The work will be premiered at the asphalt Festival 2021 by a chamber music ensemble of outstanding international soloists.

During his time in Russia violinist Egor Grechishnikov was principal concertmaster of various chamber orchestras and of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Since he moved to Germany Grechishnikov worked for the SWR and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and currently holds the position of the second concertmaster of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker.

The New York cellist and composer Mariel Roberts has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in a wide range of concerts on four continents, bridging avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised and traditional music in her virtuoso performances. Born in Frankfurt am Main, clarinettist Christoph Schneider has already won several prizes as a soloist, played in the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, and has been principal clarinettist of the Duisburg Philharmonic since 2016. The trumpeter and performer Pablo Giw lives in Cologne and, in addition to a traditional style of playing, is primarily involved with extended techniques, percussion and noise. With his instrument, he creates dense walls of sound and grooves in which he also integrates voice and spoken word. The Romanian pianist Alina Bercu has performed on many important music stages in Europe, America and Asia, including Carnegie Hall New York, Tonhalle Zurich and Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and has worked with renowned symphony orchestras. Her debut CD with chamber music works by Schubert and Brahms was awarded the “Golden Label” (Benelux) and “Cle d’or” (France). Bojan Vuletic is a composer, sound artist and guitarist. He has worked with Markus Stockhausen, Nate Wooley, Bojan Z, the MIVOS Quartet, the WDR Radio Orchestra and Choir and the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. Audio realisations of exhibitions in collaboration with the artist Danica Dakic were shown at documenta 12 Kassel, the Liverpool Biennale and the Venice Biennale, among others.

“The way Olivia Wenzel searches for answers to questions of identity has so much wit and intelligence that one can easily empathise with the sensitivities of this character,” wrote the ‘FAZ’ about 1000 Coils of Fear. The author Olivia Wenzel (* 1985 in Weimar) writes theatre texts and prose and makes music in the Berlin electronica duo Otis Foulie. Wenzel’s plays have been performed at the Munich Kammerspiele, Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, among others. In the independent theatre scene she collaborates as a performer with collectives such as vorschlag:hammer. 1000 Coils of Fear is her first novel. Wenzel was awarded the Literature Prize of the City of Fulda 2020 and the Mörike advancement award of the City of Fellbach 2021.

“I have more privileges than any person in my family ever had. And yet I’m fucked. I’m hated by more people than my grandmother could imagine. On the day of the federal election, I try to talk her out of voting for a right-wing party for 20 minutes with this claim,” Wenzel writes in 1000 Coils of Fear. In her novel, she describes what it’s like to be the only black audience member in a theatre. Or how it feels to be sitting with your boyfriend at a bathing lake in Brandenburg and see four neo-Nazis coming. Wenzel looks angrily and passionately at our rapidly changing times and also tells the story of her family: of her mother, who was a punk in the GDR and never had the freedom she dreamed of. Of her grandmother, whose life loyal to the line brought her prosperity and security. And of her twin brother, who was killed when she was seventeen. Clever, touching and with humour, Olivia Wenzel writes about racism and sexism, East and West, origin and loss, fear and hope.

“For me, one of the most poignant reading experiences of the year. Not even to mention the subject matter, in terms of literary construction it is one of the best books of 2020” (Denis Ohde, Deutschlandfunk Kultur).

“Literarily masterful. Olivia Wenzel withholds nothing, that is the lasting impression of this formidable, unsparing, tender novel.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Ursi Pfennig combines nostalgia with boldness. Even though Ursi is an artistic alter ego, hovering diva-like above things, she is palpable and authentic. She could pass for a friend of Hildegard Knef, only with more singing. Her songs move between lightness and melancholy, with a subtle ironic twist – casual, never forced and yet self-confident. Ursi Pfennig seeks dialogue with the audience and her fellow musicians. This makes her entertaining and somewhat unpredictable. When Ursi appears on stage – who knows what she will be in the mood for?

Anikó Kanthak, a songwriter, singer and producer living in Cologne, is Ursi Pfennig. After two years of searching for a suitable sound for German songs, Anikó followed a vision and arranged music in the style of songwriters like James Taylor and Joni Mitchel in her home studio. “To combine this appeal and mood with German lyrics in a band concept – that’s what I wanted.” It should be beautiful and atmospheric, folky, intimate and in German – but not profane or too tacky: ” Turn just before entering pop territory,” is Anikó’s motto.

“When I started mixing the pieces, there was suddenly a moment of realisation. Everything seemed to tally well: the sound, the singing, the attitude, the tempo. Only my name, it didn’t seem to fit anymore.” Thus an alter ego was created with the freedom to artfully express innermost feelings: Ursi Pfennig!

Her songs are immersed in nostalgia, with a vocal timbre that tolerates a little more vibrato, less soul and somewhat lower registers. The tempi are slower, drums and bass carry the voice without overpowering it. In addition, acoustic and lap steel guitar are woven like a tapestry around the atmospheric images of the songs.

Anikó Kanthak was already a guest on the Seebühne in 2020 with her duo project Invisible Twins.

In a village with a saloon, a gold mine, a railway and a church, built on red clay, seven South African actors are filming a Western – and in the process they expose all the current, romanticising clichés of the genre.

The Danish director Tue Biering and the South African choreographer Nhlanhla Mahlangu developed the multi-award-winning production ‘Dark Noon – a Western about us’ together with actors from Johannesburg and Pretoria. The play delves into the time when millions of impoverished white Europeans fled across the Atlantic to America to build a new life in the Wild West. The immigrants fought for a second chance, wanted to open up land, dig for gold and survive on the American dream. It is a dangerous, often deadly journey – in God’s own country and in the merciless pursuit of happiness, lives are often worthless.

For a long time, history has been portrayed exclusively from the perspective of the white, male population – the expulsion of Native Americans and the accompanying genocide against them do not feature in Westerns. ‘Dark Noon’ analyses the genre in a satirical tour de force traversing the merciless history of American conquest and thus exposes all the more clearly the historically dubious nature of the myths of the Wild West.

The play begins with an empty stage. Little by little, the stage set is erected as the immigrants build their town in the harsh, inhospitable land where not all dreams come true. Almost out of nowhere, ‘Dark Noon’ develops into a large, visually and emotionally gripping theatre spectacle with rapid role changes, an infectious rhythm, singing and hip-hop music in the tradition of South African storytelling. The Europeans are embodied by black actors. In this respect, ‘Dark Noon’ is not only an allegory told from a South African perspective about white colonialism in the African world, but also questions who is allowed to represent whom – a clever commentary on current debates about cultural appropriation.

The Danish performance company Fix & Foxy has been producing theatre pieces, performance art and immersive installations for over ten years. Artistic director Tue Biering and his team are masters at telling complex narratives through playful, entertaining formats while challenging preconceptions. To do this, Fix & Foxy often invite people onto the stage who are rarely shown or represented in theatres. ‘Dark Noon’ was awarded in the category ‘Special Award’ at the Reumert Award 2020, the national Danish theatre award, and was nominated for Stage Design of the Year. At asphalt 2022 it can be seen for the first time ever in Germany.

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The press says:

“It’s different and I dare say it’s brilliant. ‘Dark Noon’ is an excellent example of what modern performing arts can offer!” (Ungt Teaterblod)

“‘Dark Noon’ is a true ensemble performance from start to finish, a cornucopia of ideas, energy and ferocity. Director Tue Biering, together with South African choreographer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, has created a truly unique performance with international potential.” (Danish Arts Council)

“‘Dark Noon’ touched me deeply, gave me goosebumps, made me laugh out loud and caused a lump in my throat.” (Enturikulturland.blogspot.com)

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On 24 June 2022, the large, international symposium ALL IN will take place in Düsseldorf. Lectures, workshops and discussions will focus on how the theatre business can become more inclusive and how people with disabilities can have better access. The asphalt Festival is organising the evening programme of the symposium on the grounds of the Alte Farbwerke.

We warmly welcome the symposium participants and all asphalt visitors to the Cubit Festival Bar. With free admission under the open sky, concerts by the jazz trio open excess and the electro-pop duo Unfall! will take place before and after the screening of SCORES THAT SHAPED OUR FRIENDSHIP. The musical programme will be visualised reactively by ALL YOUR BASE, a tactile tool by the artist duo CYLVESTER for audiovisual media art in urban space that creates new, interactive approaches to music and art.

The concert by jazz trio open excess takes place at 7:30 pm. Pianist Lucca Keller, bassist Torben Schug and drummer Till Menzer share a fascination for music that arises spontaneously in the moment. The combo’s trademark is their exuberant and witty joy in playing. They play pieces by Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Roy Hargrove and their own compositions. For their concerts, open excess always invites different guest musicians.

Pianist and composer Lucca Keller is very well known in the NRW jazz scene and a stylish border crosser who likes to break away from harmonic guidelines, which he also proves on his current solo CD ‘mood of regrowing’. The list of his musical collaborations seems endless. Bassist Torben Schug studied jazz and popular music in Enschede, Amsterdam and Cologne. As bassist of the Ricciotti Ensemble in Amsterdam, he is committed to bringing music to places that otherwise often have no direct access to it – such as hospitals, prisons, asylum centres, kindergartens and public squares. He has toured the Netherlands, Turkey and Russia with the orchestra. Till Menzer is a busy drummer on the Cologne scene. He studied jazz and traditional oriental percussion at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar and at the ITÜ-Istanbul. With his band projects – Horst Hansen Trio, FL!M, Naheli and Isaac Vacuum, among others – he tours throughout Europe.

The concert by Unfall! takes place at 9:30 pm. The electro-pop duo of Max Schweder and Martin Widyanata moves between reduced 4/4 beats and painful dissonances, turning them into deep-porn pop. Live electronic saxophone and hard modulated vocoders play just as much a role as classical sampling and looping.

Max Schweder is a musician, performer and multimedia artist who studied jazz saxophone and music production at the ArtEZ Conservatorium in Arnhem and at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. In addition to his music, he realises reactive audiovisual art projects. At the KHM Cologne, Max Schweder completed a fellowship in 2020/2021 and is also an artistic researcher at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (Belgium) and alumni of the Academy for Theatre and Digital Dortmund. Martin Widyanata studied media informatics at the FH-Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, media informatics at the HfM Karlsruhe and is currently doing his Master’s at the Institute for Popular Music (IfPOM) at the Folkwang University of the Arts. He is a DJ, producer of electronic music and co-producer of various artists from different genres. He also works as a composer, musician and performer for various theatre productions.

Wherever Desmadre Orkesta performs, the party gets started! The band from Buenos Aires plays folk melodies and classics, in surprisingly new and virtuoso arrangements. Three brass players, an accordionist and a rhythm section take the audience on a musical journey from Balkan brass to Colombian cumbias and swing from New Orleans to Argentinian milongas. The fact that the ensemble was formed by musicians from a theatre production nine years ago is still apparent today: With Desmadre Orkesta, the performance is at least as important as the music. The band members are constantly in motion, dance, interact with the audience and are bursting with energy and good humour. No wonder they enjoy performing as a marching band on the street as much as on big stages. Every concert is a joyous, intense and dynamic performance that is guaranteed to delight the audience.

The Argentinian band has already completed several tours in Europe and India. Their album ‘Vendaval’ was nominated in the category ‘Best Album of the Year 2019’ at the UK Latin America Awards.

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Six musical crossover artists, twelve instruments, five languages and a firework of emotions: RasgaRasga are bursting with energy and joie de vivre. The band around charismatic singer Daria Assmus makes music that oscillates somewhere between folk and pop, Balkan and world beats. The five instrumentalists have known each other since school and have been making music together for years; in 2020, Assmus joined them as a new singer. The RasgaRasga frontwoman, who invites comparison with the French nouvelle chanson singer ZAZ, sings in English, German, Spanish, French or her very own language – sometimes highly energetic, clear and direct, then again melancholic and dreamy.

Through numerous performances in clubs, cultural centres and at festivals, RasgaRasga have established a reputation as an absolutely rousing live band. In 2019, they won the main prize of the creole NRW competition for global music. The band has already released several albums, including ‘Hafen Fleur’, which made it onto the longlist of the German Record Critics’ Prize. Their latest EP, ‘Aperitif’, with its steady forward-driving downtempo beat of drums, bass, banjo and violin, develops a pull that inevitably draws you to the dance floor.

“Sophisticated arrangements, great joy of playing and intoxicating energy” (Jury statement for the award of the creole NRW prize).

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The visual artists Marcos Castro and Mauro Giaconi from Mexico City are developing several site-specific installations exclusively for the asphalt Festival.

Marcos Castro unfolds a kind of stage set on the walls and within the space, inspired by traditional Mexican mural painting. He reflects on Mexican post-revolutionary thought by reinterpreting elements of official historiography, creating hybrid graphic relationships from extended painting and borrowing symbols from various cultures – from the Mexica tradition to Mexican punk culture.

Mauro Giaconi deploys an installation in the space based on anecdotes about the Mexican Revolution and the use of illusion as a strategy to alter perceptions of reality in combat. Using wooden stakes, flour, water and heat, he occupies the space like a battle array, provoking a scenario of symbolic and historical intersections presented in a surreal landscape of hybrid relationships between revolutions, anarchy and bread.

Marcos Castro (*1981 in Mexico City) studied Fine Arts at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts ‘La Esmeralda’ in Mexico City. He has already had several solo exhibitions in Mexico, the USA and Europe and has been represented in numerous group exhibitions internationally. His work is part of various renowned collections in Mexico and the USA, including the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. In 2007 and 2014, Castro received the Young Artists Grant from the Mexican government’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA). In 2008 he participated in the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, and in 2014 he was selected for the Omi Residency in New York. In 2016 he held an artist residency in Skowhegan, Maine, USA, and in 2018 the Dedazo residency in the Ejido Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Chiapas, Mexico. Castro’s work is heavily influenced by traditional Mexican murals, but also shows influences of neo-expressionism as well as a contemporary gothic or punk aesthetic. His paintings, drawings and sculptures draw on a variety of symbolic elements and aesthetic codes of Mexican identity. By deconstructing patriotic symbols or reinterpreting various historical events, from pre-Hispanic history to the 1968 movement, Marcos Castro succeeds in questioning deeply rooted myths as well as official historical and nationalist discourses.

Mauro Giaconi (*1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) completed his art studies at the National Art School Prilidiano Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires. He has lived and worked in Mexico since 2011. Giaconi was a fellow of the Buenos Aires Artistic Research Center (CIA), a fellow of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, USA), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine, USA), the Omi International Art Center (New York, USA) and the Solentiname Art Residency (Solentiname, Nicaragua). His works have been shown in solo exhibitions in Latin America, the USA and Europe, and he has also been represented in group exhibitions internationally. Works by Giaconi are in collections such as the SPACE Collection (USA), the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the Miami Art Museum (USA). He received, among others, the first prize at the Argentinian Philips Award for Young Talents in 2001 and an honourable mention at the Salon of Drawing and Engraving in Buenos Aires in 2004 and 2006. The starting point of Mauro Giaconi’s artistic works are mainly graphite drawings, which extend to other disciplines such as sculpture and installation. His spatial interventions and images explore formal, historical and cultural characteristics and peculiarities of everyday objects, focusing on the materiality of these elements in order to examine and transform them processually. Giaconi works predominantly with discarded or cast-off objects. Architecture, structure, memory and environment are key elements in the Argentine artist’s work.

The Israeli actress, singer and dancer Liraz Charhi is not only a superstar in Israel, but also has many fans in Iran: The prominent artist is Jewish with Iranian roots, has secretly collaborated with musicians from Iran for her new electro-pop album ‘Zan’ and sings in Farsi. “You could call it subversive diplomacy,” was Deutsche Welle’s verdict on the risky project – because Iranians are forbidden by law to be in contact with Israelis. This cultural collaboration is ‘underground music’ in the actual sense of the word, because everything had to be recorded in secret. Liraz mixes contemporary electropop with pulsating Middle Eastern rhythms and Persian retro sounds – and was named ‘Artist of the Year’ by the influential British ‘Songlines Magazine’ in 2021.

At asphalt Festival there will be a world premiere: Liraz will perform together with Sistanagila for the first time. Iranian and Israeli musicians founded the band in Berlin because their two countries are enemies. Beyond the political tensions, Sistanagila seek dialogue – by means of the universal language of music. The band’s name is an Iranian-Israeli neologism: ‘Sistan’ is the name of an Iranian province and Nagila is borrowed from the immensely popular Hebrew folk song ‘Hava Nagila’, whose title means something like “Come together”. Sistanagila make use of folkloric and religious melodies from Klezmer, Sephardic and traditional Persian as well as classical and contemporary music. The different melodies and motifs, rearranged with influences ranging from flamenco and jazz to progressive metal, merge into a music that expresses both religious and modern elements of cultural identity, building a bridge between two worlds and creating something entirely new. According to the belief: Differences need not divide, but can enrich us.

Liraz and Sistanagila will play pieces from their own repertoire, some of which will be rearranged especially for this asphalt concert, and will also present some new songs.

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The project series ‘Dramaturgy for a Conference’ by the Argentinean artist Matías Umpierrez creates space for thinkers and artists to explore questions of the times together in a performative way. Umpierrez commissioned Einat and Eyal Weizman to write a manual entitled ‘Negative Evidence’, which was given to four performers to develop a performance based on it. The four solo performances were originally to be presented at asphalt Festival 2021, but travel restrictions during the pandemic prevented this. Instead of cancelling the project, the artists developed a new concept for the dramaturgy of a conference in augmented reality, which will now be premiered at asphalt 2022.

The performers each place a specific event at the centre of an artistic work that exposes colonialist structures in their countries of origin. The Inuk performer Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory from Canada, the Xhosa choreographer Mamela Nyamza from South Africa, the Indian performer Mallika Taneja and the Icelandic choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir follow the path of ‘forensic theatre’ set out in the manual.

The manual is a guide to redefine documentary theatre. Starting points are current documents of the 21st century such as tweets, blogs, photos, articles or videos. It analyses what constitutes a true statement today and whether art can help truth find a new, powerful expression. How do you find truth when there is no evidence? The transfer of the solo performances into augmented reality makes answering this question all the more exciting. The discourse on the perception of colonial power structures initiated in the process gains a special urgency in terms of content and aesthetics through the physical absence of the performers.

During the opening hours of the K21, tablets and headphones can be borrowed free of charge to experience the solo performances as an augmented reality installation. The audience can move around the K21’s outdoor area as well as the piazza and thus enter into a connection between virtual and analogue space.

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory from Canada is a ‘kalaaleq’ (Greenlandic Inuk) performance artist, poet, actor, storyteller and writer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She is known for performing ‘uaajeerneq’, a Greenlandic mask dance that involves storytelling and centers on three elements: fear, humour and sexuality. Laakkuluk describes ‘uaajeerneq’ as both a political and cultural act and an idiosyncratic art form. She realised her solo for ‘Dramaturgy for a conference #2’ together with her longtime collaborator Jamie Griffiths. The filmmaker, photographer, visual artist and performer is focused on issues of identity, wellness, transparency and colonialism, with exhibitions and performances in Canada, UK, US and EU. Griffith is working with cameras, sound, projections and light, using custom softwares for interactive installations and performances.

The choreographer and art activist Mamela Nyamza from South Africa is formally trained in Ballet. With her work she tackles the classical genre of dance, by deconstructing the traditional methods and logic of ballet and contemporary dance and explores the events of her childhood in the 1980s and cultural traditions, as well as contemporary social grievances surrounding HIV/AIDS, domestic and sexual violence and drug abuse. Her biography as a black African, lesbian mother also flows into her work.

Erna Ómarsdóttir from Island is a dancer, choreographer and rock singer whose works, created with explosive energy, read as a mix of storytelling, absurdity and horror, concertante elements and poetic images. Both as an independent artist and as artistic director of the Iceland Dance Company, Ómarsdóttir has created and directed a number of highly acclaimed works that have been shown worldwide and have received great international acclaim.

Mallika Taneja lives and works out of New Delhi, India. Through performances, installations and curatorial work, she explores questions of gender, solidarity, rest and remembering. She is particularly interested in exploring political possibilities of performative ensembles and the role songs have to play in leaving and gathering traces of people, places and things. Some of her works and collaborative spaces include ‘Be Careful’, ‘Allegedly’, ‘Rest of the Struggle’ and ‘Women Walk at Midnight’. She won the ZKB Acknowledgment Prize for ‘Be Careful’ in 2015 and the ZKB Patronage Prize for ‘Allegedly’ in 2021.

Einat Weizman is a playwright and director working primarily on documentary theatre. Eyal Weizman is an architect, writer, professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London. His research agency ‘Forensic Architecture’ investigates crimes against humanity.

Matías Umpierrez is considered one of the most innovative theatre directors in Latin America; his projects with his company Plataforma Fluorescente, among others, tend to tread that fine line between theatre and visual art. His works are shown in theatres and museums worldwide, and he has also developed ‘site-specific performances’ in factories in Sâo Paulo and on mountain peaks in the Pyrenees, among other places.

The agency A4VR, based in Düsseldorf, is a European leader for concepts and applications in virtual and augmented reality. Together with A4VR, the first dramaturgy for a virtual conference was designed.

Wherever you want to place Jelena Popržan stylistically – whether new and old music, world music, singer-songwriter, cabaret, new Viennese song (Wienerlied), folk or jazz – the musician and singer takes the best ingredients from all these genres and serves up her very own mixture of sound.

About ten years ago, Popržan started hitting Vienna’s stages with the duo ‘Catch-Pop String-Strong’, and with the ensembles ‘Madame Baheux’ and ‘Sormeh’ she consolidated her reputation as an imaginative arranger, expressive vocal artist and entertainer with comedic talent and political commitment. At the asphalt Festival, the beguiling singer and great violist presents her current solo programme on the Seebühne at the Schwanenspiegel. Her instruments and technical equipment include a five-string viola, a mouth organ, a glass harp and a looper. In addition, Jelena Popržan is a wonderful storyteller and sings in several languages. A varied revue can be expected, with songs, compositions, sounds, homages to forgotten traditions and unforgettable new impressions.

Jelena Popržan was born in Serbia, began studying viola in Belgrade and continued her studies in Austria in 2002, where she still lives and works today. In addition to her solo and band projects, she also writes music for the theatre and works with artists from a variety of genres. In 2020 she released her solo album ‘La Folia’. Popržan is a multiple award winner – she won among others the Vojin Draškoci Award 2020 of the World Music Association of Serbia, the First Niederstätter surPrize 2021 and was nominated and awarded several times at the Austrian Nestroy Theatre Prize and Stella Prize for her theatre music.

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The press says:

“One of the most versatile and adaptable musicians in the country” (Radio Ö1, Jazz Magazine).

“Jelena Popržan delivers a piece of music that is wonderfully captivating and is able to entertain with style of the highest order.” (MICA-Music Austria on ‘La Folia’)

A fantastic voice, a superb band and great songwriting – you’re sure to hear a lot more from this up-and-coming R’n’B artist in the future. Giovanni Jano, better known as JAEL, is a 28-year-old musician, singer, DJ and producer from The Hague with Indonesian roots. In his childhood, he was constantly surrounded by Indonesian folk songs, gospel and Japanese funk, and his parents instilled in him a passion for soul and R’n’B. Asked about his favourite artists today, the Dutch musician names D’Angelo, Anderson .Paak, H.E.R. and Pino Palladino, among others. All these inspirations can be heard in JAEL’s own characteristic sound: From R’n’B, funk and bass-heavy hip-hop beats, he conjures up fresh new soul songs.

Following the EPs ‘Time’ and ‘Unworthy’, the multi-talented JAEL recently released his debut album ‘Half As Much’, which features Alex Isley, Grammy winner Rae Khalil, Jayla Darden, Phabo and The Kount, among others.

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What the press says:

“The incredible JAEL can not be summed up by one discipline. As an artist, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer – his talents seamlessly blend together to produce fresh and timeless music.“ (The Blues Project)

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A new star on the jazz horizon: Triorität are currently playing their way into the first league of new German jazz bands. Their debut album ‘ALG0’, released in 2020, was enthusiastically received, especially in England. Everyone, including Gilles Peterson and many of his Worldwide FM colleagues as well as BBC 6, has been full of praise. Some already consider the trio from Darmstadt to be Germany’s answer to Yussef Kamaal and the explosive sound of UK jazz.

Triorität play dancefloor jazz in the truest sense: uplifting drum beats, repetitive Rhodes riffs drilling deep into the subconscious, and at times almost techno-like energies ensure this band is an unforgettable live experience. The three musicians draw inspiration for their ‘Organic Dance Music’ from 70s fusion jazz and disco as well as from modern house and hip-hop. The results are danceable pieces and atmospheric, refined jams. Triorität have already been awarded the Darmstadt Music Prize for their new, modern jazz sound.

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What the press says:

“One of the most exciting trios in contemporary jazz, happily ignoring genre boundaries.” (Byte FM)

The lyricist, musician and visual artist Marlon Bösherz will move into the Weltkunstzimmer during the asphalt Festival and live and work in an open studio. Visitors will gain an insight into artistic development processes and can see up close how Bösherz draws and reads, writes and thinks – a pure, direct glimpse into the life of an artist. Bösherz reveals his sketchbooks, works under observation and will hold spontaneous lecture performances of his new texts, some of which are created in conversations with guests.

After studying philosophy and history at the University of Duisburg-Essen and numerous exhibitions and performances in artists’ studios, Marlon Bösherz has been a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2015. He is currently in the class of John Morgan and assistant to Durs Grünbein. Thanks to a scholarship, he lived as an artist in residence at the Cité International des arts in Paris in 2019/2020 and concluded his residency with an exhibition and book publication ›Rattenzählen an der Pont Marie‹. Bösherz’s exhibitions combine painting, drawing, object art, installation and sculpture across genres and are always accompanied by performative actions and poetry. Since 2012, Bösherz has also been the singer and bassist of the band Botticelli Baby, which plays concerts across Europe and released three albums so far. Bösherz can already look back on several solo and group exhibitions and regularly publishes music and poetry in limited editions. In 2022 he founded the art collective ‘DJOundBO – TRÄNEN, SEX und ALKOHOL’ together with the artist Josefine Henning.

In the opening concert of the asphalt Festival 2023, the world-renowned jazz pianist Omer Klein will meet the Aris Quartet, which is regarded in the classical music scene as “one of the most sensational ensembles of the young generation” (ARTE) and has long been among the top ranks of chamber music with its distinctive sound language. The special concert includes original compositions by Omer Klein, his arrangements of pieces by jazz greats such as Wayne Shorter and Sidney Bechet, but also classical pieces for string quartet – both in the original and as the basis for jazzy improvisations. The programme “Shake it!” is an impressive example of what can be achieved by combining classical music and jazz, tradition and the new. Omer Klein was nominated for the German Jazz Award 2023 for his arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s “Oriental Folk Song” for piano and string quartet.

The music of pianist and composer Omer Klein is “boundless” (New York Times). Signed to Warner Music in 2017, he received the ECHO Jazz Award in 2018 for his album “Sleepwalkers”. March 2023 will see the release of his 10th album, “Life & Fire”, which will also mark the 10th anniversary of his trio as a band. Klein plays internationally at renowned festivals and concert halls, including North Sea Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Elbphilharmonie, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Berliner Philharmonie and Wiener Konzerthaus. He performs regularly with mandolin star Avi Avital, the NDR Big Band and classical percussionist Alexei Gerassimez. Born in Israel in 1982, Omer Klein studied jazz and classical piano in Boston and New York. He has lived in Germany since 2009, currently in Frankfurt after several years in Düsseldorf.

The Aris Quartet is one of the young stars of the concert scene. Founded in 2009 in Frankfurt am Main, the musicians have been playing consistently at top venues for several years – including the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and repeatedly at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. In addition to artistic excellence, the musicians’ passion and emotionality are particularly impressive. The ensemble’s success is also reflected in its awards: with numerous first prizes at renowned competitions, the Aris Quartet quickly achieved its international breakthrough. The musicians are “Rising Stars” of the ECHO network of Europe’s major concert halls in the 2022/23 season, are among the BBC’s “New Generation Artists” and won no less than five prizes at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. In addition to regular appearances on radio and TV, the Aris Quartet has already released six CD productions which have been highly acclaimed by the music press. The most recent release is a recording of works by Beethoven and the contemporary composer Gerald Resch.

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The multi-instrumentalist Miroca Paris from the Cape Verde Islands delights audiences worldwide with his infectious drum and percussion sound and his unique, rhythmic, driving guitar playing. With his raw, distinctive voice, he brings the famous Lusophone “Saudade” – melancholic music of longing and love – to the stages of the world.

In his homeland, Miroca Paris is also called the “Island Rhythm Innovator”. The singer, percussionist and guitarist is one of a new generation of Cape Verdean artists who have found their new home in Portugal. He has shared the stage with pop icon Madonna and toured for over ten years as part of the band lead by Cesária Évora, the legendary queen of the Cape Verdean musical style Morna, a musical sister of Fado, who died in 2011. His debut album “D’Alma”, which Miroca Paris recorded with renowned musicians from Brazil to Cuba, offers rousing interpretations of Cape Verdean music, which is influenced by Creole Portuguese-African cultures and their many rhythms. Joie de vivre and grooving rhythms turns each performance of Miroca Paris into a special experience!

Miroca Paris is the youngest of a well-known family of musicians from Cape Verde. He began playing the drums at the age of seven. In his long musical career, Miroca Paris has also worked with well-known artists such as Sara Tavares, Angélique Kidjo, Bonga, Mariza and his uncle Tito Paris. In 2022, Miroca Paris was nominated for best performance at the International Portuguese Music Awards.

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The press says:

“A master of precise, infectious grooves.” (WOXX Magazine)

“A man of many talents – singer-songwriter, gifted guitarist and percussionist.” (PRI The World)

” We’ve fallen in love with rhythm again!” (El Pais)

” You simply have to dance to this music.” (kultur-kritik.net)

A high-energy voyage through rock, jazz and psychedelic prog: FHEELS from Hamburg forge a bridge between rock’s past and present, between sophistication and catchiness – a mixture that is familiar on an international level from bands like Elbow, Interpol or Radiohead. The Hamburg band released their first studio album “Lotus” in 2022, preceded by the EP “Traveller” and professional video productions. The band name is in fact made up of the words “wheels” and “feelings” – after all, frontman Felix Brücker has been on the road on four wheels since he was confined to a wheelchair after a snowboarding accident at the age of 17.

The singer with the impressive vocal range also repeatedly deals with the topic of disability in his very intimate and personal songwriting. The explicit video for the single “Sharp Dressed Animals”, in which Brückner can be seen with actress Laura Ehrich and which deals with desire and sexuality from the perspective of a man with paraplegia, attracted attention far beyond the music press. FHEELS see themselves as bridge builders not only in musical terms, but also when it comes to inclusion.

FHEELS regularly tour festivals and play gigs in small, intimate clubs, but they will certainly soon conquer many a big stage. The band was already a guest at asphalt Festival in 2021 and rocked the lake stage so much with their piercing alternative rock that asking them back was virtually inevitable.

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The press says:

“The vastness of post-rock and the stadium. The narrowness of the jam cellar and the blues bar. The horizon of the whole rock landscape – FHEELS think big. Felix Brückner is one of the most variable, charismatic, engaging and simply the best singers we have in this country.” (VISIONS)

“Brückner’s voice, which shifts with ease from a fragile, delicate head voice to full, raspy lows, hits straight into the heart.” (Independent music magazine Vinyl-keks.eu)

“No need to run when the sun is coming” – Kim Churchill’s life motto reveals a lot about his way of making music. The Australian with the long, sun-bleached hair travelled the world for years in his camper van as a street musician, his surfboard always in tow. In his songs, which are often about surfing, the singer-songwriter processes the experiences of his travels. With his passionate singing, which he accompanies solo with guitar, harmonica, tambourine and stand-up drums, he creates entire landscapes in the minds of the audience, which he captivates effortlessly with his magnetic stage presence.

In 2009 Kim Churchill won the Australian street music competition Byron Bay Bluesfest and was awarded National Youth Folk Artist of the Year. He has been nominated several times for the APRA Music Awards, the Australian equivalent of the Grammys. In the meantime, Churchill is as internationally recognised as he is in his home country of Australia and has given concerts almost all over the world. Tours have taken him to Canada, Europe, South Africa and the United States. He has played at Glastonbury Music Festival, Montreal International Jazz Festival, South By South West and supported Milky Chance, Billy Bragg and Michael Franti.

In 2020, Kim Churchill released a collection of EPs entitled I Am Forgetting The End Again. Each EP was recorded in a different part of the world with a different producer, including Berlin, Vancouver Island and Australia’s Blue Mountains. “Dawn Sounds”, now his seventh studio album, was released in early 2023 and he will be performing it live on a major tour of Australia and Europe this spring and summer.

“The album is a collection of songs I wrote on 100 mornings at dawn – a wonderful, quiet time in the world and in my head,” says Kim Churchill. “Dawn Sounds” was produced and recorded in a studio in the Byron hinterland, also in a very special atmosphere: “We opened the doors wide and hung microphones on the trees.”

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The press says:

“Kim Churchill’s music strikes a brilliant balance between the warmth of summer and life.” (The AU Review)

“You can imagine listening to this music while hiking on a mountaintop in Nepal, soaking up the sun on an Australian beach, or watching the snow fall in a cosy pub in Europe.” (Life Without Andy)

Angela Aux has been on a mission between pop and underground, anti-folk and experimental pop for years. The artistic alter ego of Munich singer, guitarist and author Florian Kreier cannot be pigeonholed. Her songs are a mixture of indie pop, folk and experimental music, with references from Beck to Velvet Underground and Mac DeMarco to the Beatles.

Angela Aux has released four albums so far, all of which have become critics’ favourites. With his latest LP “In Love with the Demons” (2019), the singer-songwriter has gained an even larger fan base. His playful, reduced lo-fi folk songs now collect millions of streams, rotate in worldwide playlists, are played on the radio between the arts section, indie and mainstream and underpin Netflix series (“Biohackers”) and feature films (“My Son”) alike.

Angela Aux is known for her intense live performances and has already played at numerous festivals in Germany and Europe. Flo Kreier has been on stage in a dress and wig for many years and recently dressed as an alien – an artist full of contrasts who plays with identities and gender norms, always striking a balance between Wu-Tang shirt and girly wig, haiku and Dostoyevsky. He is one of the co-founders of the “New Weird Bavaria” movement.

The release of his next album “Instinctive Travels on the Paths of Space and Time” is scheduled for April. The work is conceived as part of a trilogy for which Kreier wrote a sci-fi novella and staged a play. Here, the future of civilisation is negotiated in hybrid folk songs between Neil Young and J Dilla. In spring 2023, Angela Aux will go on a big tour through Germany and Switzerland as support for Die Sterne.

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This is what the press says:

“Angela Aux, with long blonde hair, beard and gentle songs on the verge of a nervous breakdown, charms Munich’s scene with an idiosyncrasy that is hard to resist.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“Almost a Ziggy Stardust of the New Weird Bavaria movement. Content-wise equally weird. Folk and hip hop? Bang on!” (PULS, Bayerischer Rundfunk)

“With a delicate voice, he meanders through enchanting melodies, always leaving his multi-faceted songs enough room to breathe, dream and reflect.” (br.de)

“Angela Aux writes songs that are so soothing that you would like to keep them permanently as your life’s soundtrack.” (MunichMag)

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With its “Ukrainian Voices” series, asphalt Festival 2023 is turning its attention to Ukrainian artists who are reacting to the Russian invasion. The prominent Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk will give this year’s festival speech and also address this topic. For Halyna Kruk, poetry is unthinkable without the immediate reality that surrounds us. She says it is not possible for her “to write about stars in the sky when there is something more important, timely and topical.”

Halyna Kruk was born in Lviv in 1974. A multi-award-winning poet, writer and literary scholar, she is the author of five books of poetry, An Adult Woman (2017), Co(an)existence (2013), The Face beyond the Photograph (2005), Footprints on Sand and Journeys in Search of a Home (both 1997), a collection of short stories Anyone but me (2021) and several books for children. Her works have been translated into more than thirty languages and published in various poetry collections, journals and anthologies in many countries. Kruk was Vice-President of Ukrainian PEN from 2017 to 2019 and holds a professorship in literary studies at the University of Lviv, where she teaches European and Ukrainian Baroque literature.

She has won numerous literary awards, including the Women in Arts Award 2023, the Kovaliv Fund Award 2022, the Best Book Award of BookForum 2021, the Smoloskyp Poetry Award, the Bohdan-Ihor Antonych Award, the Granoslov Award and the Step by Step international competition for children’s books. Halyna Kruk participated in numerous literary festivals in Ukraine and abroad. In response to Russia’s interventions and invasion, she has co-created several multimedia projects, including “The BookWar” in collaboration with electronic musician Yurko Yefremov and singer Halyna Breslavets, and “The Resistance of Matter”, a poetry and music project based on her poems. Her brilliant speech at the Berlin 2022 Poetry Festival about the war in her home country caused a big stir and was published in DIE ZEIT and elsewhere.

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The songs of Rosa Butsi emerge just like the first rays of sunshine or a delicate flutter of wings – each piece is a little chamber of wonders. With her warm, soulful voice, accompanying herself on the guitar, the Belgian musician introduces the audience to her very own mixture of jazz and singer-songwriter.

Rosa Butsi, whose real name is Roos Denayer, inherited her musical talent from her Hungarian grandmother and therefore uses her name for her musical alter ego. In 2020, she won the Brabant edition of the very popular music competition “SoundTrack” in Belgium. On her debut EP “Circle One” (2020), every song was inspired and accompanied by other musicians from her circle of friends. She is currently artist in residence at the Het Depot concert hall in Leuven, Belgium.

The artist performs both solo and with a band. In 2023 she will release her debut album with Trui Amerlinck on bass and Jordi Geuens on drums – as this trio she will also perform on the Seebühne.

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The press says:

“Rosa Butsi sends shivers down our spines with her jazz-tinged country-blues guitar sound, with her catchy, sinuous, gentle and beautiful melodies.” (Le Soir)

“Very beautiful, meandering, jazzy guitar compositions that surprise and swim against the current at the right moments. Rose’s gentle voice completes them.” (Radio 1, Belgium)

“Denayer’s songs are on such a high level it puts them in the vicinity of Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell.” (Muziekblog Luminous Dash)

Los Pipos combine the lively sounds of Latin America with refined jazz elements, a touch of classical music and influences of European music such as Spanish flamenco. The six-piece Latin jazz ensemble was formed in 2016 and brings together friends from different parts of the world, including Peru, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, Chile and Holland. The mission of the musicians is to share their passion for traditional Latin American songs and to give them a unique and refreshing modern twist.

The music of Los Pipos is characterised by improvisation, storytelling and emotional expression, as it is characteristic of Latin American music. With each member contributing their own cultural influences and experiences, Los Pipos seamlessly blend a variety of sounds and styles from different Latin American countries.

Los Pipos is not only about music, but also about joy of life. The band’s energy is contagious, and the musicians love to sing, laugh – and of course dance! They have performed at major festivals such as North Sea Jazz and Hildener Jazztage and won the Dias Latinos Award in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, in 2021.

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The press says:

“Colourful Latin fireworks” (WAZ).

“They don’t need to rely on powers of persuasion or warm-up. Los Pipos’ are bang on in it with their first chord. The moment they enter the stage they hurl their energy and their lust for life, their rhythms and emotions into the audience.” (Rheinische Post)

What are the origins of violence and what impact does it have? In “Oasis de la Impunidad”, the internationally renowned company La Re-sentida from Santiago de Chile deals with violence inflicted on people by the police apparatus in the context of protests and demonstrations. The inspiration for the creation of the piece was the violent suppression of the mass protests in 2019 in Chile, the “oasis of impunity” – a country with extreme social inequality that has still not come to terms with the Pinochet dictatorship. However, this visually powerful dance theatre points far beyond a single country and asks universal questions about the legitimate and appropriate use of violence in a democracy: How is power transformed into strategies of surveillance and oppression that violate, maim and degrade the human body? What are systemic and individual motivations for the use of violence? Who uses and who controls the state’s monopoly on violence?

“Oasis de la Impunidad” is a precisely choreographed mixture of dance and performance and hardly requires any words. The pantomimic picture theatre unfolds a force in sometimes drastic scenes that is hard to evade. At times the eight performers on stage seem like perfectly synchronised puppets on a string, although it remains unclear who the puppeteer is. The production creates great images that stay with you for a long time: sometimes fantastic, carnivalesque and poetic, sometimes eerie, shocking and painful – but always brilliant.

The Chilean director, actor and author Marco Layera (*1978) founded the company La Re-sentida in 2008 and is its artistic director. The collective is considered an exceptional phenomenon in the Latin American theatre world; its central theme is anger at political abuse and violence in the Chilean homeland. The theatre group’s award-winning productions have already been invited to numerous international festivals.

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The press says:

“Snarling nightmarish images” (Berliner Zeitung).

“The ensemble boldly conquers the terrain of political dance theatre. No one has been that evidently radical in Germany since Johann Kresnik.” (tanz.at)

“At times (…) the piece feels like being caught in a carnival of torture and brutality that deeply disturbs both performers and audience.” (The New York Times)

The phrase “Sorry I can’t hear you over the sound of my freedom”, originally used by the nationalist right in the USA, cynically mocks the opinions of others. The phrase reflects a decline in the culture of democratic debate and respectful interaction. Bojan Vuletić’s new work “sorry I can‘t hear you over the sound of my freedom” gives a disarming answer to this. From the demagogic texts of the small and big dictators of this world, elements are acoustically and visually extracted until new poetry emerges from the linguistic brutality. Exclusion becomes openness, inhuman laws are transformed into tender lyricism – swirled through by contemporary music that sparks new artistic dialogues. The expansive concert installation can be experienced through many loudspeakers distributed throughout the hall, so that the audience can freely choose its position in the room.

The new work will be performed by three outstanding soloists of international standing: the Romanian pianist Alina Bercu, who lives in Germany, the New York trumpeter Nate Wooley and the Polish violist Rafal Zalech. Composer Bojan Vuletić is involved in the live performance himself with an unusual typeface-electronics instrument.

The artists

US trumpeter Nate Wooley is considered one of the leaders of the American movement to redefine the physical limits of his instrument and has gained international recognition for his idiosyncratic style of trumpet playing. He is considered – not just in New York – to be one of the most sought-after trumpeters in the jazz, improvisation, noise and new music scenes. In 2019, he made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic in the opening series of the season. Wooley has premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben. He received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award in 2016, the Instant Award for Improvised Music in 2020, and the Spencer Glendon First Principles Award. In 2022, he was a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow.

Romanian pianist Alina Bercu has performed on many important music stages in Europe, America and Asia, including Carnegie Hall New York, Tonhalle Zurich and Tonhalle Düsseldorf. She has worked with renowned orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Orchestre de chambre Lausanne and the KlassikPhilharmonie Hamburg. Studio and live recordings by Alina Bercu have been included in the Golden Phonotheque of the Romanian Radio. Her debut CD with chamber music works by Schubert and Brahms was awarded the “Golden Label” (Benelux) and “Clé d’or” (France).

Rafal Zalech’s wide-ranging artistic activities move between performance, composition and the development of IoT devices for musicians. As a violist, he has performed at new music festivals on five continents and as a soloist with orchestras such as the Webern Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia and Divertimento. Zalech is a member of the Black Page Orchestra, the duo collective Nimikry and CEO of the smart-instruments startup DigitAize. Between 2010 and 2021, Zalech worked intensively with Klangforum Wien, one of the most recognised ensembles for new music, with whom he played over 100 concerts. In 2022, Zalech received the prestigious Erste Bank Composition Prize for his artistic life’s work.

Bojan Vuletić is a composer, sound artist and guitarist. Musical collaborations connect him with Markus Stockhausen, Nate Wooley, Bojan Z, the Mivos Quartet, the WDR Radio Orchestra and Choir and the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has also written theatre music for over 50 productions and compositions for several contemporary dance pieces. Audio realisations of exhibitions in collaboration with artist Danica Dakić have been featured at documenta 12 Kassel, the Liverpool Biennale and the Venice Biennale, among others. Vuletić’s concert and interdisciplinary compositions have so far been performed in various countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the USA.

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Watch the video of an interview that composer and festival director Bojan Vuletic conducted with Nate Wooley in his studio here.

Tofa Jaxx is an emerging singer-songwriter and remarkable live performer from Tanzania. His music combines R’n’B, neo-soul, jazz, nostalgic electro-pop, Afro-fusion and reggae, and his smoky, unique and mysterious voice is his trademark – once you’ve heard Tofa Jaxx live, you won’t be able to forget him anytime soon. His honeyed, soulful tenor combined with his honest, poetic lyrics feels like talking to an old friend or wrapping yourself in your favourite comfort blanket.

In 2016, Tofa Jaxx opened for Grammy winner Joss Stone at one of her “The Total World Tour” concerts in Zanzibar. He also performed with the Dhow Countries Music Academy band at one of the biggest cultural events in East Africa, the Zanzibar Film Festival. Together with seven other artists from all over the world, Tofa Jaxx was selected by the Goethe-Institut to participate in a “Musician’s Bootcamp” in Berlin.

His first release “I Want You” was nominated for the All Africa Music Awards in 2017 as the best R’n’B and soul song by an East African artist. During a stay of several months in London, Tofa Jaxx collaborated with dance-electronic producer duo Tru Fonix, singer-songwriter Tara Priya and musician D.Knights, among others, who produced his single “Go Away”.

In addition to his studio recordings and numerous live performances in Africa and Europe – his tour in the summer of 2022 most recently took him to countries such as Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Austria and Switzerland – Tofa Jaxx also composes film music, such as the soundtrack for the award-winning animated film “Mozizi” by the Tanzanian film giant Kijiweni Productions.

Tofa Jaxx, whose real name is Christopher Dominic Kihwele, currently lives and works in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and sings in both English and Swahili. In the future, he plans to broaden his spectrum and also use tribal languages in his music.

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The band members of La Chiva Gantiva come from Colombia, Chile, Belgium and Vietnam and met in Brussels, where they also live. They are explorers who pass on and transform the musical richness of their own roots. The band builds bridges between the folkloric sounds of ancient peoples and the modern and militant rhythms of punk and ska. This creates a style of its own, which the band calls “Punklore”. Live, La Chiva Gantiva take the stage by storm with a powerful show. The Times, among others, wrote about one of their concerts: “They throw a carnival party that explodes like a Molotov cocktail of rock, rap, soul and wild, funky Latin rhythms.” The band has toured all five continents and is now a reference for rebellious new roots music.

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The press says:

“La Chiva Gantiva combine the sounds of the Colombian Caribbean and Pacific with the influences of music from Central Europe and the Balkans.” (Radio National de Colombia)

“The most Colombian of all Brussels bands” (Radio Télévision Belge).

Hold your breath, dive under, swim away! Imagine that in the middle of the city, in an unassuming lake, there was a hidden world where everything was different. And you would be a mermaid, a dolphin or just a little black fish. The sun would be a billowing sphere from here, the wind a bubble machine and the street noise a dull sound wave from a distant galaxy. And somewhere far out under the water there would be something calling you. How far do you dare to dive into the unknown? What stories will you encounter along the way? And what is happening under the surface of the water in exactly the same moment the earth is shaking somewhere else? Or while we sit up here and listen?

The actress Anke Retzlaff and the musicians Peter Florian Berndt (guitar, electronics) and Dominik Tremel (keys, electronics) turn the perspectives around. They have developed a musical reading with ambient and techno sounds specifically for the floating lake stage and a cross-generational audience. Equipped with an underwater microphone, their instruments and a collection of known and unknown stories, they embark on a musical dive deep into the Schwanenspiegel and all the way to the other end of the ocean. Why fly to the moon and reach for the stars when our own planet remains so unexplored?

Anke Retzlaff is an actress, musician and director. She was nominated for the New Faces Award for Best Newcomer Actress in 2013 for her role in the feature film “Puppe” and named Best Newcomer Artist in “Theater heute” in 2021. Her performance “Dream Machine”, in which Berndt and Hoffmann also participated, premiered in 2021 at the “Theater der Welt” festival in Düsseldorf and has since been touring internationally. In 2022, the three developed the musical performance “Wofür es sich zu kämpfen lohnt – Aufzeichnungen eines Hamsters” together with Paul Jumin Hoffmann, which premiered at the asphalt Festival 2022.

Peter Florian Berndt is a musician, songwriter and performer. He has worked as a composer and stage musician at various theatres in Germany. He is an active member of the professional improv theatre ensemble “Ernst von Leben” and plays e-guitar with “Los Pistoleros Güeros”.

Dominik Tremel works as a freelance musician at theatres and in the field of experimental electroacoustic music and, like Berndt, is a member of the ensemble “Ernst von Leben”. He also develops radio plays and films: “TRAUMfactory” screened at the Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival in 2020, and the radio play “Was wirklich geschah” won first prize at the 2021 Berlin Radio Play Festival.

Three West Africans living in Belgium are trying to find the answer to the migration and integration debacle. Their solution is to create a new country for African Europeans and European Africans, where they can decide for themselves how they wish to live. Before this utopian state can be established, the rules have to be set and the audience is allowed to participate by ballot paper. What form of government and what state religion should it have? How and above all where should this promised land be? In the north-west of France or perhaps better in resource-rich Central Africa? In a kind of election debate, moderated by director Ahilan Ratnamohan himself, the various socio-political drafts are presented to the audience and, after a not infrequently pugnatious discussion, a vote is taken.

The sobering life situation of the Star Boy Collective, a group of former footballers, was the true motivation for the development of the play “Reverse Colonialism!”. Their dream of becoming professional footballers in Belgium did not come true. After a few years of uncertainty, they are now all living legally in Belgium, but have little prospect of taking more than unskilled jobs. With their unique, explosive energy, the Star Boys bring an unheard voice to the stage and examine our society in a rigorous way. In this politically charged performance, they turn the tables and take a confident, uncensored and provocative look at a possible future.

Australian theatre director Ahilan Ratnamohan enjoys using non-traditional methods such as football and language learning processes in the development of his plays. He works almost exclusively with people without classical acting training. After completing a film degree at the University of Technology in Sydney in 2005, he initially embarked on a career as a professional footballer in the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany. In 2007, he turned to the stage and has since been creating live performance pieces with socio-political focus. Since 2013 he has been working in Europe, mainly at the Monty Kultuurfaktorij in Antwerp. His world premiere “Michael Essien, I want to play as you” led to the formation of The Star Boy Collective, a twelve-member performance group of former footballers from West Africa.

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The press says:

“In ‘Reverse Colonialism!” theatre director Ahilan Ratnamohan confronts us in a rare and combative way with our relationship to Africa and African migrants. A relationship that is burdened by our colonial past and present and of which we are unfortunately rarely aware.” (Theaterkrant)

“An evening with some rhetorical finesse that raises exactly the right questions regarding migration and integration.” (Hamburger Abendblatt)

Maria Basel

Melancholic harmonies, shimmering loops and sophisticated arrangements form the backbone of her sound, which reflects the artist’s many talents: Maria Basel is a singer, composer, producer and DJane. In her songs, she brings together her strengths as a classically trained musician and her preference for electronic sounds, jazz and R’n’B.

Born in Ukraine as the daughter of a pianist and a cellist, she has been deeply rooted in the music scene of NRW as a Wuppertal native for many years, composing, playing and singing in various electro, pop, hip-hop and jazz formations (including for the Pina Bausch Ensemble, Samy Deluxe, Jonas David and Golow). In 2020, she launched her solo project Maria Basel and released the EP “Layers” a year later, about which the British independent music magazine “Nothing But Hope And Passion” wrote: “Maria Basel fuses electronic vibes with a touch of jazz and R’n’B, paving her way here to a solo adventure that is remarkable and promising.” Currently, the musician is working on her debut album.

The foundation of her compositions, which the musician writes and produces completely independently, are piano and Rhodes. In her songs, she spans a wide range from fragile, thoughtful, natural sounds to powerful, beat-heavy and electronic elements, using effects and looping her voice, among other things. Her tracks are full of sonic contrasts and melodic harmonies – not to mention her stunning vocals that permeate everything.

In September 2018, Maria Basel was selected as the winner of the Lalla:Labor artist award for popular music at state level and has been supported by the German funding and export office Initiative Musik since 2020. In 2021 she was nominated for the popNRW Newcomer Prize and in 2022 she received the Von der Heydt Promotion Prize and the Pop Stipendium.

Maria Basel: vocals, keyboards, loops

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Bloodflowers

Brightly coloured surf psychedelic, a bit of indie nostalgia and unmistakable 70s vibes: the Düsseldorf band around singer and guitarist Nadia Wardi captivates its concert audience with “almost hypnotic soundscapes that Khruangbin could not have imagined more beautifully” (gaesteliste.de). Influences of this US-American funk and psychedelic band are just as unmistakable in the music of the Bloodflowers as those of Pink Floyd, Tame Impala or My Morning Jacket. Nadia Wardi’s Indonesian roots and her interest in meditation and spirituality also leave traces in the dreamy and atmospheric songs.

The Bloodflowers have only existed in their current line-up since 2022, and in the same year the band won the Förderpreis Musik of the state capital Düsseldorf. With numerous live performances that have taken them far beyond the borders of the region, the Düsseldorf psych-rock front-runners have earned themselves a steadily growing fan base and have long since ceased to be an insider tip. In 2023, the Bloodflowers released their debut album “Nebula”, which they will present live on the Seebühne in the second set of the double concert with Maria Basel.

Nadia Wardi: vocals, guitar
Tim Dierich: bass
Gereon Gründer: synthesizer, keyboard
Matthias Köhnen: drums

Stefanie Sargnagel writes radically subjective and very wise about the so-called simple life, about feminism, hopelessness and depression. She is taciturn, yet always strays into narrative, breaks all genre boundaries and achieves something on paths never trodden that you don’t have to call a novel to be captivated by it. It is often hilarious and sometimes tragic.

Sargnagel won the Audience Award at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2016 with a text that she later used as material to develop her play “JA, EH!”, which opened the asphalt Festival in 2019. This year, on 27 and 28 June in the Weltkunstzimmer, we will be showing her new play “HEIL. Eine energetische Reinigung”, and the evening before the Viennese author brings a reading of humorous short texts to the Seebühne.

With her cool yet radical everyday observations, hilarious reportages, illustrations and Facebook postings, Stefanie Sargnagel hits a nerve in a unique way. She relentlessly exposes online what she sees as mendacious, fake, inadequate or simply hilarious.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung considers her the first German-language author who has found a form on the net that works as literature. At her performance on the Seebühne, Sargnagel offers a “best of” her career as a “social media heroine” and reads immensely entertainingly from her numerous Facebook postings.

Stefanie Sargnagel (civil name Stefanie Sprengnagel, *1986) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, among others in the class of Daniel Richter. But she spent more time at her day job in the call centre, because: “Whenever my professor Daniel Richter shows up at art student parties, suddenly everyone behaves as if God were speaking to his disciples. I never know how to deal with that, because I am God.” Sargnagel’s first novel, “Dicht. Aufzeichnungen einer Tagediebin” was published in 2020. In 2022, she held a visiting professorship in creative writing at Grinnell College in Iowa. Sargnagel’s trenchant commentary and observations are regularly published in German-language feuilleton.

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The press says:

“Her everyday observations, aphorisms and adolescent raps hit a nerve.” (taz)

“One could perhaps even say that, with the exception of Rainald Goetz and his online diary ‘Abfall für alle’, she is the first German-language author to have found the form on the net that fits, that doesn’t annoy, that works as literature.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“The entries always seem scattered, maybe they are – and yet the words and every non-existent punctuation are perfectly placed.” (DIE ZEIT)

Trio or quartet? Both are true for Accordion Affairs. Accordionist and pianist Jörg Siebenhaar, bass player Konstantin Wienstroer and drummer Peter Baumgärtner may be three musicians, but they play four instruments. Sitting at the piano, Siebenhaar usually plays the accordion with his right hand and the piano simultaneously with his left. This gives the band a very special, unique sound and considerably expands the way arrangements and improvisation can be used – accordion and piano become one! The ensemble develops an extraordinary dynamic from almost whispered to extremely voluminous sounds, expressive or ultra-cool. Not tied to only one genre, the programme ranges from world music to original compositions to interpretations of pieces by the great accordionist Richard Galliano and guitarist John Scofield and from Bach to the Beatles. Accordion Affairs play with casual virtuosity and are full of joie de vivre.

Pianist and accordionist Jörg Siebenhaar, who is visually impaired, is a sought-after composer, stage and studio musician who has taken part in numerous theatre and television productions. He has worked on national and international stages with well-known artists such as Greetje Kauffeld, Bobby Hebb, Inga Lühning and Desirée Nick.

Konstantin Wienstroer was awarded the Folkwang prize in the category jazz. Working with musicians such as Lulo Reinhardt, Bobby Hebb, Ziroli Winterstein, Hazy Osterwald and Stefan Krachten, he has repeatedly demonstrated his musical versatility. He has regularly toured the USA, Japan, Switzerland and Great Britain.

The experienced jazz musician Peter Baumgärtner has already worked with many renowned musicians such as Silvia Droste, Klaus Osterloh, John Goldsby, Jon Davis, Axel Fischbacher and ensemble members of the WDR Big Band and has been part of numerous studio, radio and TV productions. He is a founding member of the association “Jazz in Düsseldorf e.V.” (Jazz Schmiede) as well as founder, organiser and artistic director of the Hildener Jazztage.

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The press says:

“The musicians play with splendid subtlety. Siebenhaar’s multitasking is fabulous, Wienstroer’s bass sounds like your best friend who is there when you need him. And Baumgärtner elicits from his drums not only a marvellous sound, but even an aroma.” (Rheinische Post)

In the past three years, Austria and many other countries have seen a flurry of activity in the so-called “Contrarian” scene, which became especially visible at the regular “Covid protests”. They have always been there, but during the pandemic they suddenly marched through the streets en masse: Esoterics, side by side with conspiracy theorists, known neo-Nazis, but also with leftists and hippies. United under the credo of hostility to science, horse deworming drugs were snorted, “revitalised water” gargled and energetic vaccination transformations performed. So-called alternative medicine and all its excesses were suddenly no longer just a quirky hobby of the eccentric neighbour, but a social problem with concrete effects on the health system. In her new play, Stefanie Sargnagel delves into the world of shamans, energetics and “nippies”. For research purposes, she went into the yoga lion’s den herself, attended an aura reading seminar in Vienna’s 14th district, among other things, in “HEIL. Eine energetische Reinigung” she takes a critical and satirical look at this bizarre scene.

After the successful show “JA, EH! – Beisl, Bier und Bachmannpreis”, which was a guest at the asphalt Festival 2019, Stefanie Sargnagel has developed a new text for the Rabenhof Theatre – once again in a production by directing shooting star Christina Tscharyiski and with a brilliant ensemble of actors. Live music is provided by the band of the hour: Buntspecht.

The writer Stefanie Sargnagel won the audience award at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2016 with a text which she later used as material to develop the play “JA, EH!”. In 2020, her first novel “Dicht. Aufzeichnungen einer Tagediebin” was published, in which she dealt with her own youth. In spring 2022, she was invited to be a visiting professor at Grinnell College in Iowa to teach creative writing. The trenchant comments and observations of the Viennese are regularly published in German-language feuilleton.

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The press says:

“Indeed, even a virtuoso mocker like Stefanie Sargnagel has trouble exaggerating the madness in a satirical way. But of course she succeeds again and again.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“The four-member ensemble plays magnificently, the punchlines purr.” (Theatre Today)

“Rather, this evening is tough on the outside and empathetic on the inside, and perhaps for that very reason exactly what is needed in these difficult times.” (Der Standard)

“Frighteningly real!” (Kronen Zeitung)

“Stefanie Sargnagel caustically attacks esotericism” (Deutschlandfunk)

Dark and sharp-edged are the sounds of Dalila Kayros. The Sardinian singer and composer is one of the most important protagonists of the experimental Italian music scene. Her avant-garde, electronic indie songs evoke memories of Björk. The trained jazz singer uses her voice in an impressive way and creates surrealistic images full of symbolism and dystopian aesthetics.

Dalila Kairos works with the electronic musician Danilo Casto. On their current concept album “Animami”, the two embark on a journey into the unconscious, through unexplored musical realms. Sometimes they build up ominous dark ambient soundscapes, then they let the experimental music flow into catchy electropop again – always exploring all facets of their compositional and vocal creativity. Dalila Kairos’ concerts allow the audience to emotionally participate in the inner life of a remarkable artist.

The list of Dalila Kayros’ solo works and collaborations is almost endless, ranging from film soundtracks to theatre works, live soundtracks accompanying David Lynch readings and her work with the avant-garde metal band SYK. Her albums generate a lot of attention in the worldwide underground scene. Dalila Kayros has performed at numerous festivals throughout Europe and has played as support for the US singer and poet Lydia Lunch and the British heavy metal band Godflesh.

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The press says:

“‘Animami’ may not be the easiest album on the market, but it’s certainly one of the most intriguing.” (Rockit Magazine)

“‘Animami’ is a journey along the border of space and time. The album doesn’t behave like something that can be locked into three dimensions, if anything it creates further dimensions.” (Impatto Sonoro Webzine)

Indie pop and bossa nova, jazz and ska, bard pop and klezmer, folk and Viennese song: the Austrian band Buntspecht is in a constant process of bringing new musical elements to light. Film music for films that don’t exist, children’s songs for adults, atmosphere and ballad: everything may, everything should, everything must! The pieces of the six-member group from Vienna move between ecstasy and melancholy, sadness and mischievous grins, lack of perspective and utopia, affirmation of life and always gnawing doubts. Buntspecht are known above all for the exuberant energy of their shows, which get everybody moving. Their appearance is charming, their sound intoxicating. The band has been creating its own sound over the last few years, both buoyant and brute, somnambulistic and wondering, mocking and dreamy – and with ” Beneath the Masks”, coincidentally, also a pandemic hit. Currently, Buntspecht are working on their fourth studio album, the first single release “Majorelika” has already been released at the end of 2022.

In Austria, Buntspecht have long ceased to be an insider tip. They already made it into the top ten of the Austrian charts with their second album. The band’s first live concert after the pandemic in March 2022 at the Arena Wien was completely sold out. Only a few days later, Buntspecht played a Ukraine benefit concert at Vienna’s Heldenplatz in front of tens of thousands of spectators, together with Wanda, Conchita Wurst, Cari Cari and other stars of the Austrian art and culture scene. In Germany last year, Buntspecht thrilled audiences at festivals such as Haldern Pop, c/o Pop and Watt en Schlick. From May 2023, a big tour across the entire German-speaking region is planned.

Buntspecht are responsible for the live music at Stefanie Sargnagel’s play “HEIL” (27 and 28 June at the Weltkunstzimmer), and we are delighted to welcome the smart musicians from Vienna for an additional concert on our Seebühne!

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The press says:

“The stubborn and idiosyncratic is elevated to a leitmotif with Buntspecht; the song miniatures show themselves to be playful and light-footed – and elude classic (indie) pop clichés.” (profil.at)

“Buntspecht transform chamber music (guitar, cello, double bass) into a crazy mix of folk and bossa nova and also reveal their affinity for diverse fashion styles when it comes to their choice of clothes.” (musikblog.de)

“Between mania and romantic melancholy, the six multi-instrumentalists conjure up a mix of light-heartedness and world-weariness.” (The Postie)

“A playful repertoire ranging from subversive nonsense to the sensually absurd.” (ORF.at)

The brilliant Ukrainian music and performance group Dakh Daughters from Kyiv has been internationally known at least since the Euromaidan protests in 2013/2014. In their current performance “Danse Macabre”, which was created shortly after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the six actresses and singers tell the stories of women from Ukraine: stories about the war in their everyday lives and families and how it has changed their attitude to life. Based on the verses of the Book of Job, interwoven with Shakespearean sonnets, songs and testimonies about war, “Danse Macabre” is indictment, report and revue. The Dakh Daughters mix their virtuoso cross-genre compositions between ethno, punk, Ukrainian folk tunes, cabaret and vaudeville with personal narratives – and not only depict the violence of a conflict in a very haunting way, but also appeal to humanity and solidarity. “Danse Macabre” is conceived as an act of resistance, as a kind of “frontline theatre” to bear witness to what is happening thousands of kilometres away in the Ukrainian homeland. The play vividly demonstrates what art can achieve in these times: The stage becomes a precious, protected space to gather, share, denounce and perhaps even heal.

The Dakh Daughters formed in 2012 at the Center of Contemporary Art DAKH in Kyiv, an independent theatre and centre for experimental contemporary art. In March 2022, the artists fled Ukraine together with director and theatre founder Vlad Troitksy and found refuge at the Centre Dramatique National de Normandie in Vire, France, where they can continue to work artistically. In their musical performances, the Dakh Daughters sing in different languages and dialects, and the members of the all-female band play a total of 15 instruments. Founder Vlad Troitskyi describes the group as an “intellectual freak cabaret.”

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The press says:

“A poignant document of resistance” (Tagesspiegel).

“Fear, anger, pain and an unbelievable power pack this evening.” (NDR)

“The Dakh Daughters’ opera of rage is not for the faint-hearted.” (Hamburger Abendblatt)

“The Dakh Daughters are among the most important cultural ambassadors of Ukraine.” (3sat)

27 July 2000, 15:03 pm, Düsseldorf: A bomb explodes at the Wehrhahn S-Bahn station, injuring ten people, some seriously. An unborn child dies. The victims had just arrived in the country as immigrants and so-called quota refugees, many of them of Jewish faith. In an instant, they lost their hopes, perspectives and sense of security as a result of this brutal act of violence – and still do to this day. Since the devastating attack, 23 years ago by now, two major investigations, a committee of enquiry, a court case and countless discussions in the city’s society have only led to further questions. Where is justice?

The Theaterkollektive Pièrre.Vers brings together actors from the city’s community who were and are involved in various ways in coming to terms with the attack in a chamber play. Representatives of the police, the press, Antifa and those affected raise questions once again in a process of collective remembrance: Why could the crime never be solved? Did the police turn a blind eye or did the press obstruct the investigation with its medial barrage? Did Antifa make it too easy for themselves by pointing the finger to the far right? Or were the facts of the case as well as the profiles of victims and possible perpetrators clear from the start? Those affected remain silent, but that does not mean they are without concerns. Who has to justify themselves to whom? Who is allowed to blame whom? Who bears responsibility? Why do we forget, when do we remember?

After their successful four-part cycle “Historification” and the examination of Nazi crimes in Düsseldorf, director Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen and author Juliane Hendes now set out on the traces of the state capital’s recent history with “Dunkeldorf” and ask: What does it say us about our culture of remembrance when after only twenty years oblivion sets in?

In the coming years, the Theaterkollektive Pièrre.Vers will deal artistically with events of far-right violence in the recent history of the Federal Republic of Germany and will receive top-level funding from the State of NRW for this purpose, among others.

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What the press says:

“The evening dismays and enriches. Once again it proves a weighty dimension and the enormous potential of theatre: to bring history up close, to provide memories with vividness, whose half-life seems to be decaying ever faster.” (nachtkritik)

“Documentation and interpretation are artfully kept in balance in ‘Dunkeldorf’. This is a strength of the theatre collective that has already been visible in other productions.” (Rheinische Post)

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with Julia Dillmann, Azizè Flittner, Daniel Fries, Jonathan Schimmer, Alexander Steindorf as well as Julia Franken and Barbara Schröer
Director, concept: Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen
Stage, costumes: Simone Grieshaber
Text, dramaturgy: Juliane Hendes
Composition: Bojan Vuletić
Video: Julia Franken & Barbara Schroer
Production assistance: Nastasia Radtke
Stage, costumes assistance: Leonie Ohlow
Technical coordination: Philippe Waldecker
Sound engineering: Philipp Kaminsky, Avelina Ost, Sandra Zawada
Production management: Melissa Müller

A heady, seductive mix of electro, hip-hop, soul and funk, Pink Oculus, the alter ego of Dutch-Surinamese singer and producer Esperanza Denswil, has you nodding along casually one minute, dancing exuberantly the next. With her music and her appearance, she radiates a powerful feminine energy that only few artists have. Her voice has an incredible range, effortlessly switching from furious flows to sweetly gentle vocals.

In 2016, Pink Oculus released several singles and her debut EP “Delicious”, performed at major European festivals such as Glastonbury, The Great Escape and North Sea Jazz, and opened for Anderson .Paak in 2017. There is something trend-setting about the way the musician from Rotterdam fuses experimental hip-hop, soul and jazz. The music press predicts that she is capable of “producing genre-defining music in the years to come”.
Her latest album, Before Wisdom, was released in 2022. Pink Oculus has supported D’Angelo and Stromae, worked with musicians such as George Clinton, Sabrina Starke and Berget Lewis and the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, one of the largest symphony orchestras in the Netherlands.

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Totem Celestial is a unique, very special musical encounter: the Alexander Hawkins Trio and electronic musician Matthew Wright present two complementary yet startlingly different visions with their music. The quartet, assembled especially for the asphalt Festival, will play two sets on the Seebühne. The first is an electronic version of the compositions on Hawkins’ album “Carnival Celestial”, which will be released by Intakt Records in April 2023. The second set is the latest instalment of Matthew Wright’s ongoing project “Spheric Totemic”.

Pianist Alexander Hawkins is widely recognised as one of the most innovative and inventive musicians of his generation. He is not only being sought after as a soloist or with his own ensembles, but he has also collaborated with a wide range of artists including Anthony Braxton, Mulatu Astatke, Shabaka Hutchings, Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell and Sofia Jernberg.

Matthew Wright’s work ranges from scores for baroque ensembles and contemporary chamber music groups to digital improvisation, experimental turntablism and website installations, as well as works for dance, theatre and film. His current project, Spheric Totemic, becomes an artwork of fragmented rhythms, bass and surround sound textures, blending influences from DJ Premier, Konono No. 1 and the UK free improvisation scene.

Hawkins and Wright have previously collaborated on projects such as “Sunnosphere” for Jazzfest Berlin and also on a commissioned work for the Pierre Boulez Hall. Their artistic collaborations are moreover available on various recordings, including Hawkins’ “Togetherness Music” (Intakt Records, 2021), according to the press “a masterpiece that can stand alongside the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker”.

Alexander Hawkins’ trio colleagues are star musicians in their own right: Nick Duston, according to the New York Times a “young bass player with hungry ears and a commanding, wide-ranging style” and an “indispensable player in the New York avant-garde”, is a composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who has performed at numerous concerts and festivals in the USA and Europe. Drummer Stephen Davis from Belfast also plays in the British free jazz trio Bourne Davis Kane and has worked with Mark Ribot, Evan Parker, Ralph Alessi, Kris Davis, John Taylor, Rufus Reid, Paul Dunmall, Django Bates, Van Morrison and many others. Jazzwise magazine considers him “the most musical of drummers, always sensitive and insightful.”

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The press says:

“British pianist Alexander Hawkins’ music is at once accessible and adventurous, oscillating between composed structures and highly exciting improvisatory elaborations of the free spaces within.” (NRW Jazz)

“Hawkins is one of the much-discussed and striking personalities of the younger jazz generation. From the wider jazz piano history, he distils with precision and intuitive poise his very own approach, marked by transparency, fragility, contrast and polytonality” (Concerto)

“If you allow them to, sounds like these can expand your horizons, open up possibilities and stimulate your senses.” (“Jazz and Beyond” on Matthew Wright)

The city of Rome was and continues to be a source of great European longing. How can an artistic journey to the “eternal city” be conceived today? In light of today’s global challenges, what spaces of action and imagination can be explored in the process?

On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the class for film and video between Düsseldorf and Rome is working on the multi-part exhibition project “ROM. ROM? ROM!”, which will run throughout the year. By intersecting with the past, important perspectives for the present and the future are revealed. At different locations, using various artistic forms and media, individually and/or in groups, the students deal with the topics touched upon in the project.

The students work in different places, using various artistic forms and media, individually and/or in groups. The exhibition is being developed in cooperation with the asphalt Festival for its new venue 34OST and is shown there.

The class for film and video at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf has been led by artist and professor Danica Dakić since October 2022.

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A programmatic focus of asphalt 2023 is on works by Ukrainian artists dealing with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Against this background, the Ukrainian artist Alisa Gots was invited for a six-week residency. The graphic artist from Kyiv will be living and working in the Weltkunstzimmer for a month before the festival begins, and during its course, she will be showing an exhibition in the Backraum of earlier works and new ones created during her residency.

For the artist, her projects and series of works are a way of remembering personal experiences and decoding their essence. She creates most of her works with lithography technique. Due to the peculiarities of the printing process, the works sometimes take on a life of their own and the final outcome often defies prediction.

Alisa Gots (*1988) completed her master’s degree with a focus on graphics at the Institute of Printing and Publishing of the National Technical University of Ukraine in Kyiv in 2012. In 2013, together with Nina Savenko and Taras Koblyuk, she founded the independent print workshop Lithography30, in which the three artists work mainly with lithographic printing processes. Today, Lithography30 is the only independent lithographic workshop in Ukraine that functions as both an artistic association and an open educational platform where people can learn this technique. Alisa Got’s works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions in Europe and the USA.

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The exhibition “Zero Tolerance” consists of four video works dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The animated film “MARIUPOL. A HUNDRED NIGHTS” by illustrator Sofiya Melnyk tells of the terrible events that took place in Mariupol in the spring of 2022 and is dedicated to the children who died as a result of the war. The video works “WAR” by photographer Olexandr Glyadyelov and “UKRAINE 2022” by photographer Maksym Dondyuk document Russian crimes in Ukraine in unique footage, showing, among other things, the evacuation of civilians from the Kiev region and gruesome findings after the occupation and destruction. “#WAR_DIARY” is a documentary film made by actors from the Centre of Contemporary Arts DAKH in Kiev. They kept a video diary to express their fears and hopes during the first week, month and year of the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian illustrator and animator Sofiya Melnyk is a graduate of the Animation Institute at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. She has illustrated several books and album covers, worked as an animation artist, animation supervisor and designer on short films as well as animated feature films and documentaries for television and cinema. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she has devoted her projects almost exclusively to this subject and to promoting Ukrainian art.

The Ukrainian documentary photographer and photojournalist Olexandr Glyadyelov has reported on the armed conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and Ukraine and has been wounded several times during the course of his work. Since 1996, Glyadyelov has focused on long-term photographic projects, including on abused children, the HIV/Aids epidemic among drug users and post-Soviet prisons. Glyadyelov’s photographs have been used by international organisations such as The Global Fund, WHO and UNICEF and have been shown in more than 30 solo exhibitions to date. His works are in private collections in the USA and Europe. Olexandr Glyadyelov has not left Ukraine since 24 February 2022, documenting the Russian invasion of various regions of Ukraine.

Ukrainian artist Maksym Dondyuk uses photography, video, text and archival material in his works, often addressing issues of history, memory, conflict and their consequences. Since 2014, he has been photographing the war in Ukraine and keeping a “visual diary” of events there. Dondyuk’s photos are published by leading Western magazines such as Der Spiegel, Paris Match, Time, Stern and others.

Andrii Palatnyi, curator of the installation and “#WAR_DIARY”, has been an actor and project manager at the Centre for Contemporary Art DAKH in Kyiv since 2010 and curator of theatre and performing arts, residency programme and international relations at the International Multidisciplinary Festival of Contemporary Art “GOGOLFEST” in Kyiv since 2016. In 2019 and 2020 Palatnyi was an honorary advisor to the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of Ukraine on theatre issues, in 2021 curator of the Festival Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre iStage and the Marathon of International Residencies as part of the 2021 Mariupol Capital of Culture. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Palatnyi’s artistic work has focused almost exclusively on promoting Ukrainian culture in Europe and supporting Ukraine.

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How is a body`s movement impacted, when its relationship to its surrounding space is fundamentally unstable and vulnerable? At the centre of “Precarious Moves”, a biographical solo by choreographer and performer Michael Turinsky, is the questioning of both very personal and collective needs and necessities. Turinsky works with the concept of “crip time”: people in wheelchairs experience space and time differently than non-disabled people. Turinsky opposes the imperative of integrating disabled bodies into current concepts of mobility. After all, slowness also has a quality that should not be lost sight of in a society that is constantly in the fast lane. “Precarious Moves” is an ironic and humorous performance that explores the body’s connection to the world through which it moves. Turinsky sensitively introduces the audience to boundaries and limitations, but also to possibilities for changing the status quo. The play was awarded the most important Austrian theatre prize “Nestroy” in 2021. “Turinsky’s solo performance, which is as intelligent as it is sensual, is utopian in the best sense of the word,” said the jury’s statement.

Michael Turinsky lives and works as a choreographer, performer and theoretician in Vienna. He is interested in a comprehensive examination of the specific phenomenology of the body labelled as “disabled”, its relationship to temporality and rhythm, gender and sexuality, visibility and invisibility. But he also engages intensively with discourses focussing on the productive tension between politics and aesthetics. Turinsky has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth and is confined to a wheelchair. From 1998 to 2005 Turinsky studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. As a performer he has worked with Bert Gstettner, Barbara Kraus, Legitimate Bodies/Robin Dingemans/Mick Bryson or Teresa Vittucci, among others. The performance “Ravemachine” by Turinsky and choreographer Doris Uhlich was awarded the “Nestroy” in 2017. Michael Turinsky has given lectures and workshops at the Universities of Linz and Salzburg, at the College Art Association in New York, at the Tanzquartier Wien and as part of the ImPulsTanz Festival, among others, and has been published in various journals.

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The press says:

“Turinsky is ironic, intellectual, playful. The studied philosopher presents his fate in such an unsentimental and vivid way that you have to laugh uncontrollably, yet cry in other moments, because you realise what a struggle the smallest everyday tasks present or even tasks that four-year-olds can solve in half the time – let alone to be able to physically endure such a fantastic solo. Turinsky’s measure of time is actually the more beautiful.” (FAZ)

“Turinsky’s actions on stage have a sensuality and delicacy that are very moving. And whilst many movements seem complicated to him, it is his thinking that is so agile.” (Kölner Stadtanzeiger)

“Michael Turinsky shows in ‘Precarious Moves’ that his comparative immobility is just a kind of mobility we are simply not used to yet.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“Michael Turinsky is a dancer, performer and actor, and with his movements he strikes a blow straight to the heart of the audience.” (Tanzschrift)

Thorsten Lensing, legendary director, is back! To date he has been making a name for himself with successful adaptations of novels, such as David Foster Wallace’s Unendlicher Spaß (Infinite Fun), which was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen and was a guest at asphalt 2021. Now, for the first time, Lensing has written his own piece for the stage, more precisely for the celebrated actors Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung, Ursina Lardi and Devid Striesow, some of whom he has been working with for 20 years. 

“Verrückt nach Trost” (“Madly seeking solace”), premiered at the 2022 Salzburg Festival, was co-produced by the asphalt Festival and will finally come to Düsseldorf in summer 2023!

The siblings Charlotte and Felix, ten and eleven years old, play their dead parents on the beach. They have been observing this ritual at the seaside for years. In memory of their parents’ wild exuberance, they rub sun cream on their backs and tickle each other until they can hardly breathe. For brief moments, all sadness falls away from them. Again and again, however, the different needs of the two children intrude on the game.

The children Charlotte and Felix come out of the sea and play their dead parents on the beach. It’s a ritual the two have been practicing for years. In memory of their parents’ wild exuberance, theyrub sun cream on their backs and tickle each other until they can hardly breathe. For brief moments, all sadness falls away from them. Again and again, however, the different needs of the ten- and eleven-year-old siblings break into the game.

While their untamed imagination determines the first part of the production, the second part focuses on adulthood and the siblings going their separate ways.

The audience accompanies the characters over several decades. The ensemble of four outstanding theatre, film and TV actors embodies people from childhood to old age just as magnificently it does the parts of animals. During this performance, which is like a “firework of acting” (ORF), we encounter hungry babies in huge car parks, injured pole vaulters, talking octopuses, death-worshipping divers, people who can’t feel their own bodies, cows on the day of slaughter, nursing robots and the dying awaiting their death in an old people’s home. They are all driven by the fear of having lost their way and the great longing for a sense of being truly alive. This is a glorious piece of theatre, full of heart-wrenching comedy.

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The press says:

“A magical moment of theatre” (taz)

“The most beautiful, comforting and brightest performing theatre currently on show. There is no director who allows the actors as much freedom as Thorsten Lensing. Three and a half hours of theatre and not one wasted minute.” (RBB)

“The stellar ensemble plays animals and children – and does so superbly.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“Gorgeous piece of theatre” (FAZ)

“Lensing and his four terrific actors are driven by the desire to enter simply everything, every animal and every human being, even things, just as a ghost or a curse enters something.” (DIE ZEIT)

“A rather quiet piece of wonder theatre between everyday life and exaggeration, between well-situated situational and dialogue wit and melancholic crashes, enigmatically disguised as burlesque.” ( nachtkritik)

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its effects on the people on the ground and in neighbouring countries are a focal point in the artistic programme of asphalt 2023. The closing event of this year’s festival edition is also dedicated to this topic. “Tell me about myself” is a summit meeting of important voices from Ukraine and Germany, in which prominent authors from both countries will engage in dialogue with each other.

The poet, writer and essayist Serhij Zhadan, who received the 2022 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize winner Tanya Maljartschuk, the author and translator Yuri Durkot, who was awarded the 2018 Leipzig Book Fair Prize, the translator Beatrix Kersten, who recently translated a major Selenskyi biography into German, the writer and doctor Iryna Fingerova and the “ZEIT Online” journalist and award-winning reporter Steffen Dobbert will discuss Ukrainian-German relations and how they have developed since the invasion began on 24. February 2022.

More than a million people have fled to Germany since the Russian invasion began. Ukrainian immigrants who have lived here for a long time meet newcomers. There are controversial discussions about arms deliveries, humanitarian aid and the future support of the Ukrainian state. How can Ukrainians find their place in Germany and especially in the EU? How can Germany better understand Ukraine? What will the future bring?
The evening will be led by the musician, DJ and author Yuriy Gurzhy. In between the discussions, he will play music tracks that were created after the invasion began and which he compiled into a playlist together with the guests. The Ukrainian publicist Oksana Shchur has curated the event together with Yuriy Gurzhy.

The authors

Serhij Zhadan, born in 1974 in Starobilsk in Ukraine, is a poet, writer, essayist and translator living in Kharkiv. In 2022, he was awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the Freedom Prize of the Frank Schirrmacher Foundation in Germany. Zhadan is also active as a singer and songwriter. His band Zhadan and Sobaky has participated in many music and literature festivals in Ukraine and around the world. In 2021, together with Yuriy Gurzhy, he recorded the album “Fokstroty”, based on the poems of Ukrainian authors who lived in Kharkiv 100 years ago. His most recent book published in Germany is “Himmel über Kharkiw. Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg” (2022, Suhrkamp).

Tanya Maljarchuk, born in 1983 in Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, first worked as a journalist in Kyiv after studying philology. Her most recent publications in German are the novel “Blauwal der Erinnerung” (2019) and the collection of essays “Gleich geht die Geschichte weiter, wir atmen nur aus” (2022, both Kiepenheuer & Witsch). In 2018 Tanja Maljartschuk received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, in 2022 the Usedom Literature Prize. She regularly writes columns for ZEIT Online and Deutsche Welle Ukraine, among others, and has lived in Vienna since 2011.

Juri Durkot, born in 1965 in Lviv, studied German at the universities of Lviv and Vienna. He currently lives in Lviv as an author and translator. For the translation of the novel “Internat” by Serhij Zhadan, he was awarded the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair together with translator Sabine Stöhr in 2018. In 2022, ” Himmel über Kharkiv” by Serhij Zhadan was published in the translation by Durkot and Stöhr. Since 24 February 2022, the WELT has published Yuri Durkot’s war diary.

Beatrix Kersten has worked as a freelance lyricist and translator for many years. She has translated poems, song lyrics and prose by Ukrainian authors for literature festivals, magazines and anthologies in Germany and abroad. Her most recent translations include Serhij Rudenko’s political biography “Selenskyj” (2022, Hanser), as well as Ukrainian avant-garde poetry from the First World War (“Ein Hauch von Grauen und verborgene Hoffnung”, 2023, Arco) and the historical novel “Das Zeitalter der roten Ameisen” by Tanya Pyankova (2022, Ecco). Kersten lives and works in Amsterdam and in France.

Iryna Fingerova, born in Odessa, Ukraine, is a writer, essayist and doctor. She has lived in Dresden since 2018. In Ukraine, she published two short story collections, the novels “Placebo” (2018) and “Zamki” (2020) and the children’s book “Drink Water” (2022). Since the start of the invasion, she has written several essays about Ukrainian refugees in Germany and how she volunteers as a doctor to provide medical and psychological support. Her texts have been published in several German-language magazines.

Steffen Dobbert, born in Wismar in 1982, lived in Odessa and Kyiv as a scholarship holder of the International Journalism Programme (IJP). The journalist, who has been part of the ZEIT Online editorial team since 2014, specialises in the topics of Ukraine, the EU, Russia and Eastern Europe. More than 50 research trips have taken him to various parts of Ukraine. In 2014 his reportage volume “Euromaidan: Protest und Zivilcourage in der Ukraine” was published, in 2020 “Heimatsuche: In 80 Tagen durch Mecklenburg-Vorpommern” and 2022 “Ukraine verstehen: Geschichte, Politik und Freiheitskampf” (History, Politics and the Struggle for Freedom). In 2017, Dobbert received the German Reporter Award.

Music and production

Yuriy Gurzhy, born in Kharkiv, came to Potsdam with his family at the age of 20 and now lives in Berlin. The well-known musician, DJ, producer and radio presenter founded the legendary party series “Russendisko” together with the writer Vladimir Kaminer. Gurzhy curated ten compilations on various European record labels, including “Russendisko Hits”, “Shtetl Superstars” and “Borsh Division – Future Sound of Ukraine”. His latest productions include “Misto 2Go – New Donbass Symphony” (2021), “Fokstroty” (with Serhiy Zhadan, 2021) and “Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate” (with Irena Karpa, Lyuba Yakimchuk and Grigory Semenchuk, 2022). In his first book, “Richard Wagner & The Klezmer Band” (2022), he embarks on a search for the current Jewish sound of Germany.

Oksana Shchur is a Ukrainian curator, literary critic and publicist. She has lived in Berlin since 2022. From 2016 to 2022, she was the curator of the International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv, the most important literary event in Ukraine, where she was responsible for the international projects and the main programme. Before that, she worked as editor-in-chief at Komora and Osnovy Publishing. She is curator and producer of ” Fokstroty” (2021), “Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate” (2022) and co-editor of the anthology ” Stimmen gegen Krieg” (Austria-Ukraine, 2022). Shchur is the author of numerous literary reviews, columns and interviews for Ukrainian media such as Ukrainska Pravda, Ukrainskyi Tyzhden, LB.ua, Chytomo and Gender in Details.

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The press says:

“The musicians play with splendid subtlety. Siebenhaar’s multitasking is fabulous, Wienstroer’s bass sounds like your best friend who is there when you need him. And Baumgärtner elicits from his drums not only a marvellous sound, but even an aroma.” (Rheinische Post)