The IN TRANSIT festival focuses on current artistic and cultural developments in Asia, Africa and the Americas and their relationship to the situation in Germany and Europe. It is a festival of encounter and production, a laboratory for the future of the performing arts.
The inspiration for this festival springs from the complex intellectual, social and political layerings of the current global situation. It lies in concepts - such as globalization, postcolonialism, cultural identity, nationalism and the emancipation of minorities, the questioning of the subject and the possibility of dialogue - that have crystallized out of the work of the House of World Cultures. At the same time, it lies in the artistic upheavals, the resistance offered by artists,the repositioning of tradition and the development of new performing arts languages that react to the rapidly changing situation in the world. IN TRANSIT has been shaped by cultural, social and political processes on the one hand and artistic positions on the other. From the very beginning IN TRANSIT was both: a laboratory for cultural studies and a platform for the performing arts. The festivals in 2002 and 2003, conceptualized in collaboration with the theater-maker Ong Keng Sen from Singapore,developed formats in which cultural/political and artistic issues had room to unfold. The central lab, the lectures and discussions, premieres and explorations of the city fostered an experimental festival structure that questioned concepts of dance, theatre and performance within an intercultural context and sounded out their boundaries.The dancer and choreographer Koffi Kôkô from Benin / Paris will take over as artistic director in 2004 and 2005. Under Koffi Kôkô, IN TRANSIT will posit an African perspective on contemporary artwithout turning into an African project. In the years to come, IN TRANSIT will continue to move on the boundaries of discourses. Between theory and performance, inquiry is focused on the body as a medium of perception, memory, rebellion, knowledge and transformation, the body as a text of cultural and political projections and as the subject of understanding and redefinition.
