International Festival Campus

Ruhrtriennale 2025 is hosting the International Festival Campus on the grounds of the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum: On three long weekends during the festival, international students and cultural professionals from various disciplines and backgrounds will meet in Bochum. Alongside visits to the festival's performances, installations and exhibitions and the opportunity to take part in a workshop on the thematic focus Communications about Art, the festival campus offers artist talks, critique discussions and, above all, the chance to exchange ideas with international artists and art students from various genres within the Ruhrtriennale festival programme. This year's participants are the result of collaborations with various international colleges and universities as well as an Open Call (application deadline: 31 May 2025).

The Ruhrtriennale campus program has existed since 2012 and is one of the largest of its kind. It is based on the belief that every aesthetic experience can only achieve sustainability through a lively, critical and committed discourse that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. The Ruhrtriennale Festivalcampus creates space for such encounters: between established artists and newcomers, between the successful avant-garde and subversive experimentation, between artists with very different working methods from different cultural contexts. Where practical experiments meet theoretical reflection – in a scope, radicality and intensity that only an international festival can offer.

Under the festival direction of Ivo van Hove, for the first time the Festivalcampus will be working with a thematic focus: Communication(s) about Art explores the question of how art can in future be (better) spoken about in public. Which media, forms and formats will lead to which new possibilities? How can exchange and discussion create and strengthen a diverse audience? How can ongoing exclusions – linguistic, ableist, institutional – be reflected upon and overcome communicatively?

The programme is kurated and hosted by Carla Gesthuisen and Philipp Schulte and developed in close cooperation with the academic staff of the cooperating universities.

This year's partners are: Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Hessische Theaterakademie, Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt a. M., Norske Akademi for Scenekunst Fredrikstad (Norwegian Theatre Academy), Uniarts Helsinki, Universität Hildesheim – Institut für Medien, Theater und Populäre Kultur, Kharkiw University, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Universität Krakau), DAMU (Theaterakademie Prag), Mozarteum Salzburg, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

Funded by Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach-Stiftung.