Arten Festival is an open invitation — for animal lovers and art enthusiasts, for young and old, from the city and the countryside. Come for a day or two, and experience encounters unlike any other. In more-than-human company.

What would a world look like in which humans and other animals meet as equals? Sanctuary farms like Hof Narr are laboratories of such peaceful coexistence — communities built around care and community at their core.

Artists make similar inquiries. They explore new forms of living together and imagine a future that is just and joyful for all living beings. The relationship between human and non-human animals is being reimagined — yet most often within the black boxes of theatres or the white cubes of gallery spaces, where animal bodies are not permitted to enter.

So what happens when horses, chickens, turkeys, pigs, goats and sheep are part of the audience or join as performers?

The goats listen to a reading about a not-so-distant utopia, while we tune in to springtails, mites and earthworms moving through the soil. Horses move alongside other dancing bodies. In the pigsty, we reflect on how often large, female bodies are spoken about with contempt — and whose bodies are granted space at all. And in the company of the chickens, the whole family discovers through play why the chicken is considered "stupid" and the fox "clever."

Video documentation of the 2024 edition (32min)