LOCALIZE Festival for city, culture and art: WE WILL SEE

About

THE LAKE AS A PLACE OF POSSIBILITIES AND UNCERTAINTY 

‘We will see’ – a simple statement that refers to expectation, uncertainty and possibility. The title opens up a mental space between seeing and the lake (german “See”) itself, between perception and landscape, between projection and reality. The festival poses questions about perspectives, the construction of reality and the relationship between people, nature and the city. The lake has always been an ambivalent symbol. In terms of cultural history, it is a place of myths, a mirror of the soul, but also a projection surface for social utopias and fears. Lakes appear in philosophical discourses as borderline spaces – as a transition between land and water, between the visible and the invisible, between surface and depth. At the same time, they are concretely anchored in the real challenges of our time: ecological changes, urban development, use of resources and the question of who owns the urban space.

ARADOSEE – A PLACE IN TRANSITION 

A commercial site bordering the Aradosee will become a festival venue and temporary exhibition space in 2025. On this site, Localize opens up a field of experimentation for current social issues. Between bomb pond and former El Dorado for tortoises, Lake Arado has many exciting stories to tell. What will the future hold? Construction land, bathing pond or biotope? WE WILL SEE. Created in 1750 during construction work to straighten the Nuthe, inconspicuous and hidden, most people in Potsdam don't have this lake on their radar. Its history is also almost forgotten: the name of the lake refers to the Aradowerke, a branch of an armaments factory that employed thousands of forced labourers. While a world war bomb was recently defused in Aradosee, we are now rearming for a future in which we will hopefully have learnt something from the past. Or have we not? At the same time, specific questions arise about the potential and prospects of the site. How can we deal with the spaces still available in the city?

YOUR IDEA FOR LOCALIZE 2025 

We invite you to use the site at Aradosee as a temporary experimental field for artistic, performative and discursive explorations. We are looking for projects that address the theme ‘We will see’ and deal with space, city and our future in an experimental, site-specific and interdisciplinary way. The festival site is a commercial courtyard with various rented buildings adjoining it. The festival is largely open-air, which should be taken into consideration when submitting entries. Possible formats:

● Installations in the outdoor space
● Performances and interventions
● Graffiti or painting on 20m house walls
● Video and photography projects
● Workshops, talks and guided tours
● Participatory formats and experiments
● Dance, sound, poetry and more

The festival offers space for unexpected perspectives and unusual points of view. Works by emerging artists and collaborative approaches with urban society are particularly welcome.

LOCALIZE – FESTIVAL FOR CITY, CULTURE AND ART 

Since 2008, Localize has been opening up urban spaces for contemporary art in Potsdam. With a thematic, site-specific focus, the festival seeks to explore urban space in transition, interstitial spaces for design and the potential for participation.