auawirleben 2020 is cancelled
We’ve got some wild times behind us. In 2019, we’ve been to more demonstrations than we had been for a long time. The Swiss National Women’s Strike, the big climate demonstration in Bern, the countless campaigns by Fridays for Future … It seemed as if activism was really trendy again. You just had to choose which cause you wanted to stand in for, and you already had the feeling of improving the world. But since mid-March, it’s all been different. The best thing we can do now is to sit at home. For the first time, we can save lives by doing nothing.
The auawirleben team has gone through intensive months of preparation. With great pleasure have we put together a program that can be subsumed under the festival theme “BETTER NOW”. The 16 pieces from France, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Germany, Australia, Italy, Estonia, Finland, Bolivia and Switzerland are about making the world a better place, utopias, self-improvement, finding the best way for you personally, but also about the question of what is actually «better» and who has the power of definition. And it’s about sickness and healing. And that’s where reality caught up with us.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s auawirleben from 8th to 21st May 2020 will not take place as planned. We stand behind the measures taken by the Swiss Federal Council and believe that it would be neither responsible nor appropriate to hold a festival in May. Our task is now to find the fairest possible solutions for the artists and partners in order to keep everyone’s financial loss as low as possible. We will also be working on an alternative form of the festival in the coming weeks and will communicate it as soon as we have news.
You can still find the planned festival program here on our website. Browse around and maybe shed a few tears.