Platz machen!

Wiesbaden Biennale

Theatre | Installation in Public Space
Staatstheater Wiesbaden | 2025

In 2025, the Wiesbaden Biennale makes space, in the city, in the theatre, in our thinking. At a time when artistic freedoms are shrinking and doors are closing, we are choosing radical openness: for new perspectives, for unexpected connections, for encounters in familiar places that suddenly appear in an entirely new light. The Biennale’s artists open up new spaces for action and reflection with works developed specifically for Wiesbaden. They invite visitors to engage in conversation, participate, and experience together – in workshops, rituals, talks, and performances.

We have designed an overall scenographic concept that reconnects the theatre with the city: not as a centre, but as part of a decentralised whole. It is an invitation to set out, discover places, and ask questions: What remains hidden? What emerges when we look closely?
To this aim, we developed the One-Square-Kilometre Map for Wiesbaden, a tool that invites all visitors to explore new places and continue expanding the map themselves.
This Biennale is a treasure hunt through history, the present, and possible futures. An invitation to make space together – for art, for exchange, for a new we.

Non-Centre
We focus on places that have received little attention – almost forgotten, yet located right at the centre. Places where we make space together for new thoughts and new perspectives.
The “Non-Centre,” a site where spatial and legal barriers converge into a kind of detour, opens room for exchange, reflection, and unexpected encounters.
We wanted to move to the back of the theatre.
To the places where the trash bins stand, where deliveries arrive, where cleaning staff park. Locations in the heart of the city, surrounding the Wiesbaden State Theatre, that nonetheless remain barely noticed. This is the part that keeps the theatre alive, but always stays in the background.

Our aim was to expose and question existing rules and power structures, make hidden stories visible, and create new forms of access.
To irritate! To provoke! To open doors, reduce barriers, and invite the city into the theatre.

Wolke
A ruin, or perhaps the shadow of a possibility. A space that has remained still for ten years, hidden yet directly beside the theatre. A place that waits, breathes, and slowly slips into another time when left to itself. This is where we developed the installation Wolke.

We wanted to reveal which resources remain unused and how spaces that fall out of urban awareness are quietly reclaimed by nature. In this case, by the warm steam rising from the drains of Wiesbaden’s famous thermal springs, an ancient presence that existed long before us and now reclaims this abandoned space, layer by layer, breath by breath. Access to the installation is fully barrier-free via a 36-metre ramp.

Cloudspotting
Rituals of Resistance
Productivity is more visible and more accepted than pausing. Yet resting is an essential part of everyday life for many people with invisible disabilities or chronic illnesses. Raquel Meseguer Zafe has collected their stories and created a sound piece that invites listeners to pause. It tells of the subversive act of lying down, of resting in public space, and of the power embedded in not-doing – poetic, meditative, and political at once.
For this sound piece, we transformed the main stage of the Wiesbaden State Theatre into a resting space. A lawn installation enables all bodies to lie down. High above, in the fly tower of the theatre’s machinery, artificial clouds drift by, catching the light and shifting the atmosphere in dialogue with the sound. Visitors lie together on the grass and occupying the stage, an act of collective rest, a political moment of the present. At the end, the two iron curtains open, and the backstage doors reveal a view into the park.

“All you need to do is open the door.”
Jess Thom

Artistic Direction Rebecca Ajnwojner and Carolin Hochleichter
Scenography and Spacial Design Guerilla Architects Silvia Gioberti and Shahrzad Rahmani
Artistic Production Aliki Schäfer
Production Patrizia Schuster
Graphic Design turbo type Laura Brunner and Leonie Martin
Technical Production Management Lars Werneke
Production Assistance Anna Boldt and Mel Brinkmann
Program and communications Assistance Anja Schneidereit
Spatial Strategy and Production Assistance Tonderai Koschke
Head of Press and Public Relations Leila Haschtmann
Collaborators Die Stadt, Thouretteshero
Photos and Social Media Elisa Grehl
Consulting Fog Machine Thom Luz
Accessibility consulting Olivia Hotz
Translation of Cloudspotting Noa Winter
Dramaturgy of Cloudspotting Felicitas Arnold
Production of Cloudspotting Mayk 2024 (commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk)
Composition Cloud Observations Jamie McCarthy
Artists Jess Thom, Sasapin Siriwanij, Angelo V. Suárez, Donna Miranda, Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Lizza May David, Noom Sorawis Chinsangthip, Memory Biwa, Barby Asante and many more
Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Photos © Elisa Grehl