In this time, which is fundamentally shaped by anthropogenic environmental damage, climate change, species extinction and advancing technologization, we need to find new ways to share knowledge and experience and to discuss them together. With the new, international and cross-disciplinary art festival “Climate Art Fest”, we are creating a place for this. As an inclusive, playful art platform, the festival stands for collective, cross-generational art experiences that can make abstract global issues tangible.

ClimateArtFest is open to all artists and art forms (e.g. text, dance, performance, music, image, film, artistic research, etc.). Through this interdisciplinarity and the intertwining of art and science, this festival will collectively negotiate future issues.

The festival invites Hamburg artists* to contribute their works and projects in an open call. In combination with curated positions of international artists and an extended supporting program, a diverse, multifaceted program will emerge as an artistic contribution to the debate of importance to society as a whole.

LOCATION
As the central venue, the historic harbor barge Arca Futuris – about 6m wide and almost 30m long – will be transformed into a modular space offering space for the performances, exhibition formats, discussions, projections and exchange. As an ark of climate change, the harbor barge will be moored in Hamburg’s HafenCity for the duration of the festival. Together with other cargo and working ships, stages, exhibition venues, workshop spaces and meeting points will thus be temporarily created in the middle of the city.

OBJECTIVES
Presenting strong, bold and inspiring art that challenges artistic, political and social conventions and inspires creative individual and collective responses to the climate crisis is the primary goal of ClimateArtFest. The festival advocates for the promotion of artists* at home and abroad, aims to foster sustainable exchange and network the international climate art scene.

FUTURE: BIENNIAL FOR CLIMATE ART!
ClimateArtFest is more than a temporary festival. The first edition is meant to be the starting signal for a biennial: Every two years in the future, a festival full of bold, urgent art will be created, with local and international perspectives to inspire reflection on the ground. The versatile Hamburg scene is the nucleus for setting up a regular art festival with international appeal. As an epicenter of artistic engagement with issues of climate change and species extinction, the festival will become a long-term destination for visitors and travelers, but also an important venue for discourse. In this way, Hamburg will become a haven for Climate Art, just as the Altonale made the city a meeting place for street art and the Triennale der Photographie brought the photography scene to the Elbe.