Genius Loci Festival Competition Open Call 2025: "Faust"

The 12th edition of Genius Loci Weimar is dedicated to Goethe's literary masterpiece: Faust – in reference to the theme year 2025 of the city of culture Weimar. During the festival, the Stadtschloss will be transformed into a unique stage for light art and contemplation. The southern façade of the Schloss and the adjacent Ensemble Bastille will be immersed in projections that interweave Goethe's most famous work with the real history of the site.

Meanwhile, the Faust myth shines brighter than ever: at a time when Faustian hedonism, fanned by populist Mephisto figures, seals the fate of the Gretchen's of this world, Goethe's questions of guilt and morality take on a new urgency.

The Competition

Until June 15th 2025, applicants can submit a 30-second video clip for the projection on this year’s building, the southern facade of the Weimar City Castle and the Ensemble Bastille.

This year, Genius Loci Weimar is once again in search of the very special spirit of the chosen place and a convincingly atmospheric, but also experimental visual language and dramaturgy. A realization in animation, 3D animation and also as a live action film is conceivable. We expressly encourage short film makers, motion graphic artists, and video and film artists of all disciplines and genres to apply for the selected location with their different aesthetics, animation techniques, and narrative styles.

The two winning artists will be awarded prize money totaling 25.000 Euros for the realization of a 05–10 min high-resolution audio-visual production, to be presented during the festival.

Competition regulations and detailed information about the locations can be found at www.genius-loci-weimar.org/wettbewerb/.

The Festival

Genius Loci Weimar is an annual festival for site-specific audiovisual art, especially façade, space and object projections. The festival combines the historical spirit of Weimar and the contemporary technique of video mapping, a projection technique that incorporates the object into the image design, giving objects multi-layered dimensions and audiovisual narratives.

Through the international competition, the Genius Loci Weimar Festival offers an inventory of current video mapping productions worldwide. As a meeting place for the international video mapping scene, the festival attracts culturally interested audiences from the fields of architecture, media art, design, performing arts and fine arts to Weimar. With almost 50,000 visitors, the festival is one of the highlights of the Weimar Summer.

Genius Loci Weimar takes place in cooperation with the festival organisation MXPerience gUG. The festival is also supported by the City of Weimar, the Sparkasse Mittelthüringen, rebeam GmbH and Logando.

www.genius-loci-weimar.org