Festival Avant-Garten
The Garden of All Gardens is open again: on all festival days, starting one hour before the first performance. Free entry!
Hamburg’s jewel among the summer art gardens is shining once more, inviting visitors to step in and lose themselves – before and after (and, for those feeling overwhelmed, even during) the performances. In the gastrotainment area hosted by the PEACETANBUL restaurant, you’ll find love and snacks, while the Avant-Garten offers free performances as an accessible gateway to the avant-garde. On the Waldbühne, this year’s GROWING GROUNDS series of talks and concerts presents a top-class program of literature and music (neighbours, don’t worry: unplugged!). And, as always, MIGRANTPOLITAN opens its doors every evening with festival favourites such as the Soli-Casino and Hools of Fashion. On the weekends, the legendary headphone parties by Hamburg live art group JAJAJA transform the garden into a dance floor, while underground icon MARTINA PALM creates unique portrait drawings of visitors. Meanwhile, NAN GOLDIN’s legendary “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is screened in the Vorhalle. The Avant-Garten is being designed by the Hamburg-based art collective Baltic Raw Org, which has already been responsible for the garden design at past festivals. From the fall on, Kampnagel will be renovated and its site will be transformed into a “performative construction site”.
Avant-Garten Design
At ISF 2026, Baltic Raw Org explores moments of transition: when the familiar changes, when certainties are shaken, and when new possibilities come into view. The works create spaces between memory and the future, visibility and invisibility, the individual and the community. They invite viewers to reframe their perceptions and explore possibilities beyond the expected. The result is a space that fosters agency in times of change.
Baltic Raw Org: THE ARK / ARAPOLIS
Walk-through installation, 3.8 × 12 m, material: wood
Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2021; Vienna Climate Biennale, 2024; Museum Giersch at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 2025
THE ARK / ARAPOLIS draws on the motif of the ark as a symbolic image. Removed from its original context, the ark appears at the International Summer Festival as an autonomous sculpture, inviting reflection on the questions embedded within it. As it travels between Hamburg, Vienna, and Frankfurt, its context continually shifts – the ark itself becomes the carrier of an evolving narrative.
Baltic Raw Org: Mirroring Us
Installation, 6 m × 2.5 m × 2.5 m, Material: Aluminum Dibond mirror, 2026
Created in the context of the International Summer Festival 2026 at Kampnagel, the work marks a transitional moment ahead of the site's upcoming renovation – a period of transformation. The tilted mirrored panels cast a final yet fragmented view of a familiar place. The surroundings emerge as a shifting projection, capturing a moment suspended between farewell, change, and new possibility.
Baltic Raw Org: Verbiege die Wahrscheinlichkeiten / Shift the Probabilities
Text-based Public Art, 7 m × 26 m, 4,5 m × 40 m, color: acrylic, 2026
The large-scale asphalt inscription conceives of the future as an open process, shifting the focus from what is predictable to what can be shaped. What is considered likely is not fixed – the expected can be reimagined. It is an invitation to become unpredictable through individual and collective action.
Baltic Raw Org: Fade yourself
Installation, Intervention, 30 m × 4 m
Materials: Safety clothing, reflective fabric, wood, 2026
FADE YOURSELF transforms urban space into a zone of camouflage and privacy. Through the reflection of light and movement, it creates a dynamic interplay that disrupts the recognizability of individuals. An intervention that questions surveillance and reimagines anonymity.
Baltic Raw Org: JAJAJA’S GARAGE
The minimal structures serve as temporary shelters for the musical performances of the artist collective JAJAJA. The title refers, without irony, to Frank Zappa’s groundbreaking 1979 concept album and rock opera "Joe’s Garage".
