“Balance / Club Culture Festival sees itself as an interface of progressive club culture and social critique and has been taking place in Leipzig since 2018. With its interdisciplinary approach of music, art and discourse, the festival explores the political significance of club culture in society, its role in different communities and its contribution to technological and cultural progress.
This year’s festival edition, titled „In:Visibilities“, builds on 2021’s „Re:Balance“ which took place as a one-day event at UT Connewitz. The 2021 festival edition explored the question of whether and how club culture can recover from the overall societal crisis as well as the individual crises it has triggered.
And with “In:Visibilities” we’re taking it a step further to focus on moving on in times of crisis accompanied by (in)visible wounds and internalized crises. Social structures, wars, discrimination, hierarchies and patterns of exploitation shape everyday life and leave little room for encounters that allow (in)visible wounds to heal peacefully. Some of us are more often affected. Others are more often forgotten.

Clubs, despite all this, have the potential to be places of retreat and growth: for queer, feminist, anti-capitalist and decolonial utopias.
Clubs, understood as a political space, can help to face reality in order to let go, to deconstruct everyday dystopias and to finally party together again. The goal of the festival is not only to see and be seen, but also to feel and empathize, so that we approach the utopia we strive for without blocking out reality. Thus, the 2022 festival edition combines activists‘ constant sadness, overwhelming feelings due to current happenings and the great desire to talk about it all, to break out of it, to vibe with each other and to dance.
We, therefore, want to take over and explore different spaces together from 30.09.-03.10.22. During this time we will be in UT Connewitz, IfZ and Mjut at night and in the living room of the festival, Garage Ost, as well as Sportetage Süd during the day.

More than 50 DJs, musicians, artists, activists and theorists are invited. We connect international and local perspectives.

Workshops, panels, lectures, exhibitions, live performances, three club nights, concerts: this is Balance Club / Culture Festival 2022.”

www.balance.ifz.me