CURRENT – ART AND URBAN SPACE is a transdisciplinary festival for art in urban space. The third edition will take place from June 26 to July 27, 2025, and will focus on "Air" in all its social, political, ecological, and material forms.
As an invisible but omnipresent element, air shapes life and its surroundings. It transmits sounds, smells and vibrations, moves within winds and is essential for life on Earth. The festival CURRENT – ART AND URBAN SPACE examines how air flows through and shapes the city of Stuttgart. Invited artists investigate the significance of air in its urban, historical and societal dimensions. Their projects will be presented at various locations, from Stuttgart’s Pragsattel to the central station to Marienplatz and the former Luftkurort, or climatic spa at Degerloch. By following streams of air through the city, CURRENT uses air as a narrative, aesthetic and artistic element. ...more about the Festival
Main topics
Air as commons: Reclaim Air
Air as a Commons: Reclaim Air, highlights the notion of the commons and examines how air eludes territorial boundaries and individual appropriation. Widely considered a given and taken for granted — air — for example, receives far less attention in public discourse than water does.
With Materializing Air, CURRENT explores the material qualities of air. As a complex mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and other gases, air forms an essential component of the biosphere and is indispensable for life on earth. As a physical substance, air has specific material properties: it transports sounds, odours, temperature and particles.
With Driving, Dreaming, Drifting the influence of the automobile on the environment and urban architecture are brought into focus. Urban spaces themselves are changed by emissions, particulate matter and heat, whereby air becomes a political actor: as a carrier of pollutants, an indicator of socio-spatial inequality and a medium revealing the inequality of mobility.
Artists
Funding of:
Funded by:
In cooperation with:
Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart gUG
WKV
Lapidarium
Luftbad e.V.
Sternwarte
JUKUS
Werkstatthaus
Kunstbüro
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