Festival
CAMP – Collaborative Arts and Music Project
Performance – Exhibition / Im Dialog 2020 – Anniversary Festival, Wagenhallen Stuttgart
With 20 artists from 10 countries and a new concept, CAMP Festival 2020 is celebrating its 20th anniversary at Kunstverein Wagenhalle in Stuttgart. Under the banner of Performance – Exhibition/Im Dialog 2020, the week-long festival seeks to explore and practice new forms of artistic cooperation, disseminating art, and networking.
CAMP as a Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Art
At the interface between subculture and high culture, CAMP sees itself as a platform for creativity and innovation in the interplay between music, sound art, performance, dance, and visual music. The artist collectives are the centerpiece of the festival. In small groups, artists will engage in dialogue to develop interdisciplinary projects and stage them in Kunstverein Wagenhalle. This will give rise to performances in which sound, movement, language, and images intertwine. Each of these projects is unique in its goals, production, and presentation.
A key feature of the collectives is that all the artists involved are treated as equals. There are no conductors, producers, or dramaturges directing the projects. As a result, work in the collectives focuses not only on what the artists create, but also on how they create it – addressing issues such as the social and psychological conditions under which art is created, how democratic principles can be put into practice in an artist collective, and how even extreme positions can be represented.
CAMP as an Exhibition
This year, the festival will for the first time feature an exhibition, which will accompany and be part of the creative process. The exhibition showcases the latest work of former CAMP artists and also provides insight into the history of CAMP. These works are intended to be a point of departure for and an element of this year’s performances and should also reflect the interplay between music, sound art, performance, dance, and visual music over the 20-year history of the CAMP festival.
Stefan Hartmaier and Martin Mangold’s exhibition design and architecture are a response to the festival’s creative potential and translate it into out-of-the-ordinary forms of presentation. This gives visitors the opportunity to become part of the festival. Parts of the technical exhibition media and the exhibition architecture provide the framework for the performances of the CAMP anniversary event.
CAMP’s History
For 20 years, CAMP has wandered from Germany to other European countries as a kind of nomadic festival. One highpoint was when the arts platform, founded by Fried Dähn and Thomas Maos, was invited to participate in the Biennale in Venice in 2013. The first three-day CAMP festival was held at Sudhaus Tübingen in 1999, with 15 artists from Germany, Switzerland, and the USA taking part. The event was followed by further festivals under the artistic direction of Fried Dähn and Thomas Maos in Stuttgart (WKV, Wagenhallen, Theater RAMPE) Karlsruhe (ZKM/HfG), Munich (Signalraum) and Potsdam (Waschhaus).
At the invitation of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and Art, the two founders organized several festivals in locations outside Germany in collaboration with Stefan Hartmaier and Martin Mangold: Zagreb (Croatia), Cluj (Romania), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Montemor-O-Novo (Portugal). In 2013, this was followed by an invitation to participate in the Salon Suisse at the Venice Biennale. CAMP has established a global network of more than 100 artists and is one of the eading creative and innovative platforms for interdisciplinary art.