CURRENT #3 - AIR (2025)
As an invisible yet omnipresent element, air shapes life and the environment. It carries sounds and smells, drives winds, and forms the absolute foundation of all life. This is precisely where the third edition of CURRENT – ART AND URBAN SPACE began: under the theme "Air," artists explored how air flows through the city of Stuttgart, making it tangible through installations, interventions, performances, and walks at various locations from Pragsattel to the Main Station, Marienplatz, Stuttgart East, and Degerloch. Across three main focuses, the festival dedicated itself to air as a public good, its material quality, and the influence of the car on the city.
In times of air pollution, climate crisis, and pandemics, air has moved into the social and political focus, raising urgent questions about quality of life, social justice, and shared responsibility. The festival pursued central questions: Who owns the air, who is responsible for its quality, and how does it influence our physical well-being? How is air perceived when it is consciously shaped or manipulated as a material? To what extent are cars and air quality intertwined as mediums of social inequality, and does the mobility transition create space for a more just, inclusive urban design?
Participants
Weitere Projekte
„LUFT“/ „AIR“ is a three-year project exploring the invisible resource of air and its impact on urban life. Together with international artists and young people between the ages of 15 and 29, the project looks at how air—as a shared resource—connects and shapes the city of Stuttgart and its community: physically, politically, ecologically, socially, materially, and poetically. Through artwork, workshops, and gatherings, the project brings the invisible to life and offers new perspectives on urban spaces.
Driving, Dreaming, Drifting explores the impact of the automobile on the environment, mobility, and urban spaces, as well as on social power structures. The project questions notions of public space that are often shaped by control, exclusion, and hierarchies, with the car serving as a symbol of ownership, individualization, and dominance.