OSNABRUECK.- On Saturday, August 25, from sunrise to midnight, the Kunsthalle Osnabrück in partnership with the Theater Osnabrück invite visitors to the “Kulturnacht” Festival to enter the Friedenssaal (Peace Hall), where the Westphalian Peace Treaty was signed in 1648.

Young people from all over Europe gathered in Osnabrück by Labor Europa, a European Heritage project, together with community-based performers under the creative direction of Ernesto Pujol will present The Listeners, a new, durational, public, group performance. The performance engages individuals between 18 and 80 years old, who will embody silence and practice mindful listening for 16.5 hours in the Friedenssaal (Peace Hall) lending their ears to everyone who wants to share a memory, tell a story, or clarify thoughts by voicing them.

“We need to listen to each other, more than ever. We need to listen to seniors, to women, to young people, to children, to immigrants and refugees. We need to listen to workers who feel betrayed by industry. We need to listen to voters who feel betrayed by politicians. Right now, in Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, millions of people feel invisible, unheard,” says Pujol. “I am an artist. I make art. I believe that the goal of art is consciousness, the creation of a conscious culture. And a conscious culture is people.”

The Listeners' performers include Lars Barlag, Manfred Blieffert, Ester Davanzo, Selin Dursun, Roman Gojayev, Renate Hansen, Iryna Kharlamova, Iulia Tatiana Lupascu, Simon Niemann, Desiree Pesci, Hiltrud Schäfer, Martina Spinelli, Cornelia Stertz, Dagmar von Kathen, Monika Witte and Alessia Zeni, among others. The piece is co-curated by Julia Draganovic and Christel Schulte.

Ernesto Pujol is a social choreographer and a site-specific performance artist based in the US. In 2016 he created a new piece for the Kunsthalle Osnabrueck called Systems of Weight, which explored the invisible psychic weight that people carry. The performance lasted for 48 hours of continous walking and engaged 18 local citizens who underwent a group training led by the artist. This was followed by a public conversation about the transformative experience. Pujol's project was part of the CAPP Collaborative Art Partnership Programme, a network of nine European art institutions that research collaborative and socially engaged art practice and is funded by Creative Europe. Pujol contributed to the publication "Practice and Power" released earlier this year by CAPP.