Everybody say NO!

Katharina Germo and Juliane Hahn will take the reins as artistic directors of the Kunstfest Weimar starting in 2026. For the summer 2027 edition of the festival, they are planning the music performance project “Everybody say NO!”, which explores the performative and political potentials of popular music. Four new productions are thematically centred around youth culture and political resistance, as well as musical styles of K-Pop, blues, punk, Egyptian Mahraganat and Serbian Yugo rock. The music theatre piece “Born to Be K to Be Pop”, the Korean-Belgian artist duo Jaha Koo & Eunkyung Jeong investigate the ambivalent role of K-Pop as a cultural wave that is connecting young people around the world. Although K-Pop has been credited with inspiring political activism, it has also strengthened structural inequality in the artists’ country of origin. The Serbian theatre artist Sanja Mitrovic has been invited to present the documentary theatre production “Zemlja”. The eponymous pop song “Zemlja” is part of a vibrant protest culture in Serbia and draws a parallel between the demonstrations against the Milosovic regime of the 1990s and today’s student protests against corruption and the abuse of power. In her new music theatre production, the director and musician Tanja Krone reconstructs the blues music fairs of the GDR as places of political resistance and cultural involvement where young people organised against repression and apathy. The choreographer Islam Elarabi is developing a Mahraganat dance project that connects Egyptian pop music to local youth culture. An accompanying symposium will examine how music serves as an expression of political desires and a platform for civil disobedience. 

“Everybody Say NO!” is funded through General Project Funding by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Artistic directors: Maria Rößler, Katharina Germo 
Artists: Jaha Koo & Eunkyung Jeong, Tanja Krone, Islam Elarabi, Sanja Mitrović
Performances: selected venues at the Kunstfest Weimar, Weimar: summer 2027