① Klanglicht
Every year, KLANGLICHT, the Festival of Sound and Vision, transforms the Styrian capital into a world of art and music, color and light.
What began as a project has developed over the last few years into Austria’s largest light and sound festival, which now attracts thousands of people to the Styrian capital over three days and proves that art has the power to inspire and move large crowds.
KLANGLICHT is organized on behalf of Bühnen Graz and has been taking the magic of two central elements of theater out into the public space since 2015. Light and sound are used to inspire and touch people, arouse emotions and create moments of wonder. Every year, together with artists from all over the world, KLANGLICHT makes public spaces, squares and buildings shine and resound.
② Review
2024
That was KLANGLICHT 2024
From October 24 to 26, 2024, the streets and squares of Graz city center were once again transformed into a glowing work of art. This year’s festival edition was dedicated to the worlds of dreams – those surreal, poetic and often profound spaces that accompany us when we are awake and asleep.
The art installations by national and international artists made thoughts float and emotions vibrate. Sometimes gentle and subtle, sometimes powerful and expansive, they unfolded a variety of moods and fantasies. Visitors were immersed in colorful cheerfulness, found themselves in fascinatingly surreal scenes or were confronted with critical reflections on existing reveries. Each installation opened up new perspectives and yet left enough room for individual interpretations – entirely in the spirit of the dream, which retains its secret.
The magic of light and sound created moments of wonder and invited visitors to leave the boundaries of everyday life behind. Between the glittering visions on the Schlossberg, the poetic light shows in the Joanneum quarter and the artistic soundscapes around the opera and Schauspielhaus, the dreams of the artists merged with those of the audience.
KLANGLICHT 2024 showed once again how art and culture can transform reality – not only as a sensory experience, but also as an invitation to reflect. Around 105,000 visitors were enchanted during these three evenings and helped to make the festival an unforgettable experience.
A big thank you to all artists, supporters and to you, the great audience! They have made KLANGLICHT 2024 a truly dreamlike journey.
2023
KLANGLICHT 2023
From October 25 to 27, 2023, immersive light and sound architectures transformed the streets and buildings of Graz city center and dedicated the 2023 edition of the festival to questions of reality and perception, permanence and transience of the artistic search for traces.
The audience’s presence and participation created symphonies of encounters and transformed physical interaction into luminous visuals. Twinkling stars invited you to lose yourself while elsewhere you found yourself in swinging, dancing sounds. Much of it resembled magic, while others practiced collective criticism of human activity and its increasingly obvious traces. Installations by renowned national and international artists gave rise to associations of longings, dreams and actual states in equal measure.
KLANGLICHT once again proved in Graz how it can transform the city into a shining work of art. This year’s festival edition was not only a tribute to art and culture, but also a real highlight for around 100,500 visitors.
2022
KLANGLICHT 2022
In its seventh edition, KLANGLICHT, the art festival of Bühnen Graz, connected the old and new Graz, the future and past of the city and tens of thousands of people with a total of fifteen light and sound installations from October 27 to 29, 2022.
With their light and sound interventions, internationally renowned artists opened the eyes and ears to the Schlossberg as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a natural spectacle and vantage point that is visible from almost every corner of the city. At the same time, on the other side of the Mur, one of Europe’s largest urban development projects shone and sounded like an urban utopia: the new Reininghaus district was discovered by thousands of visitors along the paths of KLANGLICHT 2022.
2021
KLANGLICHT 2021
During the 2021 fall vacations, the Bühnen Graz art festival was finally able to take place again after a coronavirus-related break! Compositions of sound and light were performed at a total of eleven locations in the garden and the immediate surroundings of Schloss Eggenberg: nationally and internationally renowned artists were inspired by the historic cosmos and developed works of art that coexisted with the famous
UNESCO World Heritage Site and at the same time entered into a visible and audible dialog with it.
2019
KLANGLICHT 2019
5 years of KLANGLICHT: a small anniversary! Once again, light and sound found their way into the streets and thousands of visitors from near and far flocked to Graz to be captivated by the many installations. Every year KLANGLICHT, but always different! An overwhelming backdrop of light, color, sound and text once again opened up completely new perspectives on familiar or newly discovered things.
2018
KLANGLICHT 2018
In four years, KLANGLICHT as the Festival of Sound and Vision has not only established itself as a highlight for light and sound art fans, but as one of the crowd-pullers in the cycle of the Styrian cultural year, the art festival of Bühnen Graz now played host to visitors to the art festival for three evenings. Whether huge light and sound effects, silent glow or touching sound, all the installations once again provided impressive moments and proved to the large crowds of visitors that art can also move the masses and move them emotionally!
2017
KLANGLICHT 2017
One evening is no longer enough – people’s enthusiasm is too great and the light and sound installations that are set to enchant the city center in 2017 are too diverse. Bühnen Graz is therefore extending the KLANGLICHT Festival to two evenings and, for the first time in collaboration with Murinsel and Universalmuseum Joanneum, will be staging a total of 22 projects in Graz city center: from Freiheitsplatz to Dom im Berg, from Opernring to Stadtpark and Grazer Burg to Schloßbergplatz. And sound and light also return to the place where it all began two years earlier – Kaiser-Josefplatz.
2016
KLANGLICHT 2016
3 locations | 5 installations. Already in its second edition, KLANGLICHT expands its rays and also brings the other two theaters – Schauspielhaus Graz and the children’s and youth theater Next Liberty – to shine and sound. The basic idea of KLANGLICHT is now taking shape: Light and sound as essential elements of theater find their way out of the buildings and into the public space. Local and international artists are turning their ideas into visual and auditory reality.
2015
KLANGLICHT 2015
KLANGLICHT takes place for the first time. The Graz-based artists’ collective OchoReSotto will bathe the façade of Graz Opera House in new light with a moving projection. As the light continues to unfold, dancers from Graz Opera’s dance company transform Kaiser-Josef-Platz into a moving stage. When the light installation is fully illuminated, the Graz Opera Chorus opens the first KLANGLICHT with “Lux Aeterna”. The light installation by OchoReSotto was installed in Graz Opera House for a total of one month, providing artistic insights into the world of the stage(s). The first stone was laid for a glowing success story.