[This text has been translated electronically.] Our Festival of the Arts, Sustainability and Democracy is based on a concept that is intended to provide special spaces for dialogue, reflection of the zeitgeist in the arts and, above all, for social interaction.

We would like to tie in with you to the guiding themes of the festival. For this purpose a place will be created in the cour d'honneur of Ludwigsburg Palace: a resonance space accessible to all, which offers the opportunity to deal with universal and personal questions and to develop common visions.

But what exactly does resonance mean? We use this term to refer to the sociologist Hartmut Rosa, who has thought about our relationship to our environment and developed a social theoretical concept for it. He describes a sociology of the world relationship, i.e. a certain way of entering into a relationship between us and the world, with other people or also objects from nature, history or also the arts. People are not alienated from a certain section of the world if they are in resonance with it.

Resonance describes a form of successful relationship. It occurs where people are reached, touched or moved by something. This experience can happen in reading, in working, but especially in music and the arts. But it is not enough to be touched, there must also be a response - the person touched responds with an emotion. It is therefore always an alternating process of reaching and being reached.

A central characteristic of a resonance relationship is transformation. For whoever enters into resonance with another, one does not remain the same - one is transformed to a certain extent. In this transformative moment, lies the experience of aliveness, it comes out, for example, in sentences like »this concert / this music / this piece has changed my life«. For art, like nature, has become perhaps the most important resonant sphere of modernity.

»Art touches and moves modern humans as recipients in the innermost part of his soul like nothing else.«

We take this sentence by Hartmut Rosa to heart, because we want to touch with what we do. And wait for a response.

Rosa also says that resonance does not happen on its own. Resonance requires a willingness to engage with events.

That's why, dear audience, we'd love for you to engage with us!

Sources:

Hartmut Rosa, Resonance - A Sociology of the World Relationship, Berlin 2016

Hartmut Rosa on Resonance, in: Die Presse from 17.03.2018.