Hear it Coming. This concise exhortation conveys the palpable dystopian tension that socially conscious individuals are currently experiencing. What global political developments are approaching, how should we respond, and how can we take action?

Hear it Coming could also serve as the basic idea for many of the artistic concerns that have found their way into the festival. Hearing as a process of cognition. As in Kirsten Reese’s Future Forest with the Ensemble Recherche: it is based on research that can read the state of nature from its sounds. Or in the ECLAT debut of the Italian ensemble Azione Improvvisa, which takes a highly speculative approach to the future. Or–again, speculation–Franz Kafka’s image of Odysseus plugging his ears, which inspired Francesca Verunelli to compose exquisite hypothetical music for the ensemble C Barré and the Neuen Vocalsolisten. Or in Malte Giesen’s work for the ensemble Ascolta, in which the music gradually emerges from white noise. Or in Hans Thomalla’s musical exploration of the night with–another debut–the ensemble LUX:NM.

Or in Éndropía, in which Samir Odeh-Tamimi translates a thermodynamic state into music. Or in the works of the SWR Vocal Ensemble, in which a given theme is to be conveyed purely through sound. Or finally in lin korobkova, who seeks to recover memories from an unequal musical dialogue. Meanwhile, Malin Bång searches for spaces of memory in orchestral sound with the SWR Symphony Orchestra.

Hear it coming is the title of a space-filling performance by Andreas Eduardo Frank and initially refers to a completely new collective listening experience through constantly changing sound movements in space–and, associated with this, a critical posthumanist model of thinking. The next two evenings–or rather nights–are also infected by this philosophy. With Mutante, Ricardo Eizirik and Pony Says enrich Stuttgart’s club night with DJs from the local club scene. A collective of queer-affiliated artists enriches Luxa M. Schüttler’s performance late on Saturday evening.

Collectives–including the Ensemble-Kollektiv Baden-Württemberg, founded especially for ECLAT–will also be staging the prize winners’ concert and two projects from Eastern Europe: New Sounds of the Future with composers from Eastern European autocracies and BALKAN AFFAIRS. This is perhaps the most important project in the festival, drawing our attention to the countries of the former Yugoslavia with tremendous aesthetic richness and bringing us artistically closer to what we can learn there about the state of our world.

‘The future belongs to those who can hear it coming’ is the full quote from David Bowie from which the above work title is taken. Where can we hear the future if not here in all these projects? So: let us stay awake, let us listen to each other and to the world around us–and let us shape the future together in all our diversity. It belongs to us. We should not let it be taken away from us.

Today, on the day of the final editing of this programme, we are surprised by overwhelming news: Maria Kalesnikava is free, along with 122 other political prisoners in Belarus. Relief and exuberant joy! The lust for power of an (unelected) autocrat put her in a labour camp, and the power of an (elected) quasi-autocrat has now brought her out again. Otherwise, she would not have been released; the world simply works according to the method of ‘pressure and deals’ (known as diplomacy). Humanity plays no role in the world of the powerful, nor do the human rights to which their states once committed themselves. The law of the strongest prevails.

If we want to regain hope for a better world, we must be the strongest. And that is only possible if we, as civil societies of this world, become strong again. We must not allow ourselves to be fragmented by the manipulation machines of those obsessed with power. We must see people and not religious, national or gender affiliations. We must overcome camp thinking. We must not cancel each other culturally. We must be free in our minds.

And that is only possible if we all take action together. That includes us, the artists. Especially us! Because we have something to offer, our very own methods: a change of perspective, differentiation, concentration, a broad focus, the discarding of ‘certainties’ and the constructive that arises from this.

However, we should not be satisfied with full houses. Perhaps we need to learn to listen, to offer shared creative spaces, to create not only for people, but together with people.
This will be the focus of Musik der Jahrhunderte next year. And it will become visible at ECLAT 2027 at the latest. Despite a significantly smaller budget, we want to continue to offer a diverse and complex programme in the future. Bringing together the unexpected, the unfamiliar, the contradictory, excellence, the overwhelming, innovation, discourse and the world: creating a place where a wide variety of things can collide in a condensed period of time.

You can find all past events in our archive.