Lines of life flow around the tables of our families, they begin or end there – silent witnesses to many a story. Fourteen artists from different artistic disciplines from Egypt, Bosnia Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Germany, Greece, Iran, Japan, Lithuania, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan perform their family table. They trace the breaking points, the secret codes and open flanks of family negotiation in different social contexts. The family table as a representative for the everyday life and the festival place of a family is the centre of life, assembly and negotiation space for social processes, retrospectives, future scenarios as well as common reveries. In fourteen video installations, a kaleidoscope of family in extreme situations emerges for the audience, dealing with personal tragedies, war, migration, but also with the global pandemic. The audience experiences how families find each other and lose each other again, voices fall silent, the family table is abandoned or deliberately destroyed. Chairs remain empty and are filled anew. At a time when all people in this world share the same extraordinary experiences, we sit at a single global family table that has been shaped as a biographical stage by personal, social and cultural impressions of the last seventy years. A selection of six video works will be shown here in an installation from 19 February to 7 March 2024, all works are visible at www.atthetable.art.

AT THE TABLE was presented at the Düsseldorf Festival, Lokstoff! Theatre in Public Space Stuttgart, Theatermuseum Düsseldorf and Spazju Kreattiv Valetta (National Museum Malta). The project grows by two artists every year. We would like to thank the Fonds Darstellende Künste, the Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste NRW, the Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur NRW and the Kulturamt der Stadt Düsseldorf.