PLURALE - 11th Festival of Young Talents
From 17 to 25 May 2025, PLURALE will present 24 selected inter-university projects on the 1,400 square meters of the documenta-Halle and in the adjacent Staatstheater Kassel. Cooperation and improvisation between different artistic disciplines and between the partner universities are important driving forces for the festival - as an invitation not only to reproduce, but also to create, beyond recipe and viewing habits. This kind of cooperation between six universities is unique in Germany.
The variety of themes and the selected installation and performance projects are linked by the common denominator of cross-university and interdisciplinary collaboration: from walk-in installations and participatory interventions to sound focuses and literary influences through to dance, performance and role play.
This year, the enormous spatial dimensions of the documenta hall are formative. It presented students with the challenge of "thinking big", as is particularly evident in the projects "BIG FAT CENTERPIECE" or "Clocking-in at TEDDY BEAR STITCHERY", as well as in the intervention "Konstruktion Variante 51. 09", for which students have brought original elements of a construction site crane into the exhibition, is symbolic of the logistical effort involved in such a cooperation project, but also representative of the social upheavals that are evident not least in the numerous construction projects that characterize the cityscape.
Artistic works that deal with sound are also strongly represented in 2025, such as the "BLEACH" and "Inner Core" projects. An intensified perception of spatial and sonic conditions - in the exhibition space, but also beyond that in our everyday environment or in the nature that surrounds us - plays a major role here. For example, the artists in the "hum" project record sounds from the ground and redirect them into the documenta-hall.
Several works deal with ecological issues, as well as social structures of living together: with agriculture and cooking and eating together, as well as with one's own origins - which must always be considered in the plural when working together in a group. The participants not only take up personal memories and (migration) stories, but also the relationship between urban and rural spaces, as well as relationships between the sexes from a feminist and masculinity-critical perspective.
For example, two projects at the Staatstheater Kassel, "Aus meiner Haut schießen die Triebe" and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", explore how bodies can be more than just a projection surface for outside perspectives beyond classic categories such as age or gender.
At a glance
PLURALE - 11th Festival of Young Talents
May 17-25, 2025, documenta-Halle and Staatstheater Kassel
Opening
May 16, 2025, 6 pm, by Timon Gremmels, Hessian Minister for Science and Research, Art and Culture
A cooperation of the following institutions:
- Hessian Theater Academy (HTA)
- Offenbach University of Art and Design (HfG) (initiator, coordinator)
- Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK)
- Institute for Applied Theater Studies at Justus Liebig University Giessen
- Kunsthochschule Kassel (participating in the festival for the first time)
- Mainz University of the Arts
- Curatorial Studies program at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Städelschule Academy of Fine Arts
- Dramaturgy program at the Goethe University Frankfurt
Sponsor:
- Hessian Ministry of Science and Art
- Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen-Thüringen
- Hessian Theater Academy
- Hessian Film and Media Academy
- Rhine-Main Universities
- friends of the hfg e.v.
- Rita Höfer Foundation
- Sparkasse Gießen charitable foundation
- Kassel Savings Bank