Military conflicts among people alter our livelihood. On the borders of sound, it seems as if music was turned into steel; Tabla drums take Sufi-dancers to a vertiginous dissolution and at high altitudes our brain functions differently. Four examples, which at first sight might not seem to have much in common, but who still depict the programme of Transart13 perfectly. From conviction, there won’t be a common thread – but each project aims to get to the bottom of its limitations; to create new rooms of experience and of thinking and to present contemporary culture in its immediacy and directness.

New artists, new sites, new contents: the new is not a quality per se, but it steers our glance on the future of us all. The Latvian radio choir will perform a manga-opera in the City Theatre of Bolzano to the music of the creative rock band The Irrepressibles; sound installations will be bathed in a new light by means of live performances at Gandegg Castle in Appiano; the Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr makes Sufi-dancers reel to the beats of Tabla-drums in a powerhouse. In a district heating plant, pictures of glowing metals implode to the music of Fausto Romitelli; Transart-clubbing can come up with pioneers of the international scene, thanks to cooperation with Elevate Festival Graz and the label Ostgut/Panorama–Berghain from Berlin; the musical work Fama by Beat Furrer is one of the 100 most significant works of New Music; the cultural area Euregio will be venue for a cooperation with the Festival Klangspuren, which will find its highlight in an all-day event around the new Plessi museum at the Brenner Pass featuring artists like Blixa Bargeld and Teho Teardo; young South Tyrolean artists will present themselves with multi-discipline premiers; art films about Gilbert & George and Gerhard Richter are screened in the Filmclub of Bolzano; the freedoms of percussive sound-worlds can be experienced in a White Show Room in Bolzano and in the Vigilius Mountain Resort; the massive collision between symphonic soundscapes and beatboxing and break-dance will be the exclamation point at the end of this year’s festival.

TRANSART13 is characterized by sounds that move pictures, dances and our brains.