Stuttgart's first interdisciplinary festival, THE IRRITATED CITY, will take place from July 21–26, 2020, at numerous locations throughout the city.

Five independent cultural institutions from across Stuttgart, representing a wide range of artistic disciplines, together with the Department of Culture of the City of Stuttgart, invite audiences to participate in this unique festival.

Through performance projects, artistic interventions, and a symposium, the festival seeks to artistically "infect" the city's inhabitants, challenge perceptions of the urban environment, and encourage public engagement with social issues through artistic means. Bringing together dance, performance, theatre, and music with visual and media arts, literature, and film, the festival aims to reveal the utopian potential of art to inspire change and new ways of thinking. More than 100 artists from across the globe have developed experimental formats that foster new modes of perception and, above all, encourage active participation by Stuttgart's residents. The festival is designed to reach a broad and diverse audience across all sectors of society—including people who may not ordinarily have easy access to the arts.

With its largely intimate, participatory, and process-oriented projects in public space, the festival is particularly well suited to meeting the challenges posed by the COVID-19 regulations. Many of the works have been reconceived and adapted for physically distanced audiences while complying with public health guidelines. As cultural institutions continue to explore how small-scale artistic formats can take shape in public space under social distancing requirements, THE IRRITATED CITY, with its distinctive interdisciplinary structure, is uniquely positioned to pioneer new approaches. In doing so, it highlights the innovative role of Stuttgart's independent arts scene. The festival therefore also serves as a laboratory for artistic formats that may shape cultural life for many months to come and offer valuable models for other organizers navigating the cultural sector's "new reality."

THE IRRITATED CITY is part of TANZPAKT Stuttgart. The festival presents 24 dance productions, artistic interventions, performances, urban walks, concerts, and installations selected through an international open call. All participating projects were invited to engage with Stuttgart's distinctive urban landscape, its places and stories, and the dreams, concerns, and experiences of its residents.

THE IRRITATED CITY is a project by Akademie Schloss Solitude, Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Produktionszentrum Tanz + Performance, Theater Rampe, and the Department of Culture of the City of Stuttgart as part of TANZPAKT Stuttgart.

The festival is funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund through the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), the City of Stuttgart, and the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung.