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The motherland of street art, your favorite daily updates, check the latest walls, exhibitions, books and much more. The world is one.
Festival for urban art in Chemnitz, ibug – one of the most important festivals for urban art in Europe – is moving into the former hospital at Scheffelstraße 110 in Chemnitz in 2025. In its 20th edition, ibug (short for Industrie-Brachen-Umgestaltung) will once again turn a relic of Saxony’s industrial culture into a temporary canvas for artists from all over the world and a stage for creativity, exchange and community, this time as part of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 programme. V., based in Leipzig, are once again transforming a disused area into a vibrant festival site: three buildings, a former shelter and a green inner courtyard of the extensive hospital complex will be transformed into a temporary exhibition of diverse art, as well as workshops and talks, history, film and music.
Three festival weekends with a full programme
A total of 70 artists, duos and collectives from 25 countries have been invited to Chemnitz this year. Among them are old acquaintances and new faces, including Isakov & Krashkid (Berlin / Hamburg), Tschiefé (Germany), Katrin Lazaruk (Belarus / Germany), Sepe & EJSMONDT (Poland), Chinagirl Tile (Austria), Chiara Dahlem (Luxembourg), Tera Drop (Italy), Yubia (Spain), Alaa Satir (Sudan), Yukiko (Japan), GABS (Brazil), Facio (Argentina), Charbel Abuxapqui (Mexico) and N U L O (Uruguay). The spectrum of art ranges from large-scale murals, paste-ups and illustrations to installations and multimedia projects. The collective Adhocrates (Austria) has already been a guest at ibug several times and is planning, for example, a rediscovered prototype workshop of the Auto-Union (1936-1945) with objects that have accumulated on the site under the title ‘flow/resistance’.
Following the two-week creative phase, the festival site will be open to the public on three weekends – from 22 to 24 and 29 to 31 August and from 5 to 7 September. The exhibition can then be explored until 8pm. At the same time, a beer garden invites visitors to linger into the evening. The supporting programme offers guided tours through the exhibition, in which the works of art are presented and the history of the wasteland is explained, various workshops, discussion rounds on topics such as “Walls – Art – Politics. Architecture-related art in the GDR’ or ‘How industrial wastelands become creative places’ with experts and guests, as well as the live painting competition ‘MalJam’. There will also be a continuous music programme with DJs such as Tony Johnson, Rena Volvo, Goldie Palm, Daniel Hauser, Shizo van de Sunflower and concerts by JPD, Searching for Home, Kubas Lounge Band, Oh No Noh, Josua Karlsson, Classic on Synth, among others.
A site with history
Originally built as the Presto factory and later used by Auto-Union AG as its headquarters, the site was converted into a hospital after the Second World War. The so-called ‘Krankenhaus Stadtpark’ provided medical care for Chemnitz and the region for over five decades. Since its closure in 1997, the complex has stood empty. Now it is undergoing a creative revitalisation. The ibug combines urban art in all its facets with a diverse music and education programme. The festival has long been much more than just an exhibition: it is a place of togetherness, learning and creation – and conveys an incomparable attitude to life.
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