Balance Club / Culture Festival 2024 Discourse

We are happy to announce that we will stream three Panels of the Discourse program of this years Balance Club / Culture Festival! 

Balance Club / Culture Festival was launched in 2018 in Leipzig as an interface of progressive club culture and transformative politics to highlight marginalized, queer and feminist voices in club culture.
With an interdisciplinary approach that includes music, art and discourse, the festival features artists working on the intersections of these fields. Balance aims to address the impact of club culture for community building and counterculture, especially in East Germany.

While planning the festival, we were guided by uncertainty – from political tensions within activist groups to the global rise of populist politics and its supporters. Germany, as well as Saxony in particular, faces the growing threat of the far right. In these times, when fascist mobs shamelessly invade our public spaces, othering the marginalized and marginalizing those who speak out, we view our cultural work as a political tool and a mobilizing counterculture against fascism, racism, antisemitism, and queerphobia in all their forms.

The 2024 festival edition is set to be intense, shaped by the endless tensions of our time. Club culture has emerged often from tensions to offer a refuge, a place to face a reality different from everyday dystopias. As a collective, we believe that now, more than ever, we need to reclaim clubs as true spaces of counterculture for queer, feminist, anti-capitalist and decolonial utopias, untouched by the commodification of nightlife. We believe that self-isolation and cliquish behavior won’t resolve any tensions. Our 2024 festival edition is a call to reconnect, party, discuss and vibe together.

From November 1st to 3rd, 2024 we will take over various spaces. We invite you to join us at UT Connewitz and DUQO at night and to Garage Ost during the day for the festivals’ free entry discourse and workshop program.

More than 20 DJs, musicians, artists, activists, and theorists, representing both local and international perspectives. Workshops, panels, lectures, live performances, concerts and a club night: this is Balance Club / Culture Festival 2024.

Program @Sphere

2.11.:
* 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
ROOMS FOR RESISTANCE
An (incomplete) history of counterculture in the club scene
with Bianca Ludewig
* 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
BRIDGING TENSIONS
How can club culture thrive despite tensions?
with Katharin Arend, Amina Adamu, Avril Stormy Unger, Chutney Mary, and Miguel Cuba

3.11.: 
* 5:15 PM – 6:15 PM
NARRATING QUEERNESS IN ART
How to Portray Grief and Pleasure? with Sarnt Utamachote, Kinari, and Abilaschan Balamuraley

You can find the complete festival program on @balanceclubculture. Don’t miss out!