Elevate Festival 2019 27 Feb 19 – 03 Mar 19

Elevate N0 15: 27 February to 3 March 2019

Five days of substantive engagement with the festival theme „Truth”; a Hyperdub label night and closing concert by synth pop legends Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF); plus new expressions in the field of Elevate Arts.

In 2016 „post-truth” was chosen by Oxford Dictionaries as their International Word of the Year. In such a world, appeals to emotion and personal belief are becoming more influential in shaping public opinion than objective facts. Borne in on the rising tide of populist politics, „fake news” unsettles the public discourse by denying otherwise respectable media any shred of credibility. Also our own ways of absorbing and sharing knowledge and information suffered. False reports are more often shared in social networks than fact-based ones, while digital echo chambers facilitate self-immunisation against arguments of different-minded views.

What happens to a society that no longer accepts facts? Has what we call „truth” been lost between „alternative” and „real” facts? Or do we simply have to accept deviant conceptions of reality as part of an open society based on pluralism and difference?

In a time of felt facts and new myths, Elevate Festival 2019 is dedicated to exploring the most important concept in any knowledge society: the truth – and its many (un)secret siblings.