INTRODUCTION

TCC#1 – Twin City Challenge -KunstKulturFest HAIFA Bremen

TCC#1 – Twin City Challenge -KunstKulturFest: Haifa + Bremen

The Twin City Challenge (TCC) is an KunstKulturFest (ArtCultureFest), which will take place over several years in the summer in the city center of Bremen on the Domshof in cooperation with the Open Space of the University of the Arts. The 3-day event invites annually one of the twin cities (Haifa, Gdansk, Riga, Dalian, Izmir, Durban) of the Hanseatic City of Bremen to participate under a unifying theme in a joint KunstKulturFest in public
space on the Domshof in downtown Bremen.
The aim of the Twin City Challenge is to pick up the character traits of the selected twin city and to bring them into dialogue with the current urban biography of both cities.

TCC#1 will take place in July 2021 (July 29 to August 01, 2021) with the twin city of Haifa.
Features, attributes and characteristics of the two cities will become the platform of exchange and communication.

TCC#1 works on the theme of senses in 2021 and consists of three pillars:

  • Art -Tandem
  • Culture Encounter
  • Sound collage

Art Tandem

TCC#1 the KunstKulturFest Haifa Bremen invites 14 artists* from Haifa and Bremen to a six- month web artist residency. The 14 positions from sculpture to painting, photography, video and new media form 7 tandem – pairs, which together design an art project in the form of a sculpture. The sculptures express different urban aspects of both cities. Cultural heritage, urban life, economy, vitality, nature and the arts. The artist residency includes weekly meetings between the artists* and the supervising team. On a rotational basis, selected key figures are invited to enrich the residency with lectures on the respective city (digital tourism).

The artist residency, as well as the exhibition of the art objects, will take place in collaboration with Kobi Ben Meir, Chief Curator of the Haifa Museum of the Arts. The festival will open with a vernissage of the Artist Residency in the Cathedral courtyard.

Culture Encounter

During the preparatory months, a social program will be put together for the Twin City Challenge, which will take place several times a day. Again, there will be collaborations with the twin city and several institutions from Bremen. The festival will present various formats such as: live musical performances, open-air cinema performances and a radio-in-dialogue (haimen megaherz).

We offer everything that moves the senses to experience a joint, unforgettable festival from Haifa and Bremen.

Rasch am Markt – a sound collage

Talpiotmarkt Haifa meets weekly market Domshof Bremen.
Talpiotmarkt is the Bremen weekly market counterpart in Haifa.
The organizing team is creating a sound collage of the market sounds from Haifa. This consists of interviews with visitors and vendors of the Talpiotmarkt, as well as the voices of market announcers and the atmospheric background sounds. The sound collage will be heard daily as an audio installation via permanently installed loudspeakers at the Domshof weekly market during market hours. Visitors will thus experience a fusion of the two markets. They hear Haifa, but shop in Bremen.

The interviews will be translated into German to evoke a linguistic proximity between the market visitors and people in Haifa. They move on the seam between the cities: culture and geography melt together.

THE PLACE

The Domshof is one of the most central public squares in Bremen’s city center.  Domshof has appeared on historical city maps as early as the Middle Ages. It is a paved urban outdoor space surrounded by buildings on all 4 sides, forming a large-scale, flat urban space of about 120m x 50m. The square is lined by a few trees and has a large water sculpture on its western edge. The buildings surrounding Domshof offer little activity or urban life. Every weekday, the square hosts a local farmer’s market that runs from the morning hours until early afternoon. After the market closes, Domshof functions as an inner-city pedestrian passageway without a roof, in the heart of the city.

Since 2019, between May and September, the OPEN SPACE project of the University of the Arts, enlivens the square and invites cultural professionals of the city to help shape the program. In the future, the prominently located square is to function as a centrally located and attractive place of encounter.

In this sense, the TCC KunstKulturFest sees itself as a contribution to the revitalization of the city center as well as urban development.