This Is Home

This Winterwerft we want to start from what is perhaps one of the oldest ideas of humanity. The idea of home.

It seems that we live in an age where, on one level, home is what is in the centre of the wars, the conflicts, of the cracks running through our societies. And where – on another, deeper, level, we seem to have utterly forgotten about what it means to care for our common home.

When we say „This is home“, and put it as the headline of this festival, we do it because it seems to us that in this age of forgetfulness, here is a statement to be formulated, a question to be asked, a truth to be remembered.

This is home is an angry question, to be hurled into the face of the ones engineering wars, commanding airstrikes, of all of those accepting death and displacement in the name of so-called justice or entitlement or ideology. We refuse to become used to a reality in which some lives are worth less than others, some homes are protected and others are set on fire. And in a world that seems to come down to a simple choice of taking this side or the other, of closing ranks with one group and opening fire on the other, the question becomes a silent act of denial. Of stepping into the trench between enemy lines and asking quietly: But don’t you see? This is a home. People live here.

This Is Home is a call for peace. For de-centering our perspective and putting ourselves in the shoes of the other. In the home of the other, if you will. To view life from the other side of the fence, through the eyes of „the enemy“, the ones called “terrorists” or “immigrants” or “fascists” or whatever label serves to legitimize dehumanization and violence (to be clear: this is not an apology for fascism or terrorism. But how often these markers serve merely to justify interests of power?). And also to view life through the perspective of the non-human creatures we share this world with; the tree in your garden, the wasp on your cake, the river running through your town, the forest that was once there.

This is home is a declaration of resistance against a system fueled by the idea of paradise and progress but bringing poverty and sorrow for the many, and loneliness and separation for the few. Against a machine rolling ever onwards towards the promise of a bright future and leaving in its wake the ruins of ancient traditions, stumps of forests, never-ending noise and a silent spring. In the face of the ongoing conversion of nature and culture into money, we stand shoulder to shoulder and with the calmness of the ones protecting life, we say: No further. This is our home. And it is also yours. 

Finally, This is home is an act of remembering in an age of forgetfulness. And a sincere question: 

What is home, then? For you? For me? For the man in the dirty coat sitting on the ground in front of the shop? For the woman whose family has grown their food on the same soil for countless generations and that is now threatened to make place for a logistics center? 

What is home for the salmon that used to journey the same river for millenia and suddenly find themselves facing a concrete dam? For the decorative conifer from North-East China that you planted in your front yard?

And – knowing that there are as many and diverse answers to this question as beings on this planet – is there also an idea of home that might apply to all of us?

If we remember that home is the earth we grow our food in, the healthy ecosystems giving us water to drink and air to breathe, in short, all that is part of the life-sustaining cycles of water, earth, time and energy, life and death around us; what does this remembering mean?

It is to remember that home is the place where your family, your kin is; and to understand that this family includes many more beings than people in the dominant culture of the west, assumed in the last centuries. That we depend on our family and they depend on us.

Because home is also a place of responsibility, a place that asks you to contribute and to fulfill tasks. To keep a home in order, in balance, is work, and it is a conversation: it is about listening to what that place needs, and what it has to give. And perhaps most of all, home is a place of caring; of taking care for the place that gives you life and those you share it with. 

If we can remember that, the idea of home becomes a revolution. A silent revolution from within, but more radical than any demand that can be made in the brightly lit political arenas of our societies. And a revolution that we can start right now, each of us with the people around us, no matter where we are, starting with this statement: This is home.

In this Winterwerft, this is what we want to invite and share: Stories about home. Stories of grief, of anger, of resistance and solidarity, of research and curiosity. Again, we want to establish a sense of community, to come together around these themes and explore them with the most powerful means we have: Theater, Performance, Music and Dance, Arts and Storytelling.