Hallo Festspiele

The Hallo Festspiele is a festival which scouts unused locations and their surroundings in order to create space for long-term projects. Following festivals in Lisbon and Paris, the organisers have staged their festival 2017 in the listed Bille power station, the oldest existing electric power plant in Hamburg. Most of the grounds had not being used, and the festival wished to musically intervene in the transformation process taking place in the station’s “decommissioned” structures. Audiences had the opportunity to listen and perceive the site-specific characteristics of the power station and the district of Hammerbrook. The focus was on auditory interventions which activated the rooms and their architectural and social potential. Composers, sound artists and musicians have been invited to develop concerts, performances, DJ sets, sound installations and audio walks which explored and emphasised the individual venues. The festival has been preceded by a series of one-day events titled “Hallöchen” (Little Hellos), staged at various venues in the neighbourhood of the power station, e.g. a traditional pub and the municipal waste management facility. Selected artists have been on hand to present sketches of their works and personally describe their projects. The programme of the Hallo Festspiele was comprised of two parts. The first weekend of the festival concentrated on the visitors’ subjective, personal moment of experience, e.g. in the musical theatre piece “zero decibels” by Daniel Dominguez Teruel featuring different sets through which the audience members, wearing radio headsets, could freely move about. At the second weekend, several performances have been staged in the two impressive factory halls, e.g. the installation “Long String Instrument” by the internationally acclaimed artist Ellen Fullmann, featuring 30-metre-long music strings which she has plucked and strummed together with the musician Konrad Sprenger.

Artistic director: Dorothee Halbrock
Curators: Sérgio Hydalgo (PT), Daniel Dominguez Teruel (DE/ES)
Artists: Frauke Aulbert, Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson, Daniel Dominguez Teruel (DE/ES), Gabriel Ferrandini (PT), Alexander Schubert, Ellen Fullman (US), Konrad Sprenger, Umschichten and others

Additional Venues:

Venues in the vicinity of the Bille power station, Hallöchen (lead-up events), Hamburg: 12 Aug. 2017 and 9 Sep. 2017;