Save the date: 16 | 17 | 18 May 2025

A weekend with a view

Look closely at what is happening.
Ilse Aichinger

Treibhaus

Treibhaus and Gemeindemuseum Absam commemorate the sceptical physician and publicist Werner Vogt from Zams in Tyrol, a pioneer of civil society.
Since the attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in which around 1,200 mostly Jewish-Israelis were brutally murdered and 253 people were taken hostage, and according to UN figures, more than 30,000 people have died as a result of the ongoing attacks by the Israeli military on the Gaza Strip (March 2024) and many are threatened with starvation, the region has become the focus of global media coverage. However, journalistic work in the war zone in Gaza remains extremely risky: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists at least 95 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in Gaza since the war started. How does a Jewish-Israeli editor see the challenges for reporting now in a new time of war? How does she rate the media landscape(s) in the region? What perspectives does she see for the region?
Since the attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in which around 1,200 mostly Jewish-Israelis were brutally murdered and 253 people were taken hostage, and according to UN figures, more than 30,000 people have died as a result of the ongoing attacks by the Israeli military on the Gaza Strip (March 2024) and many are threatened with starvation, the region has become the focus of global media coverage. However, journalistic work in the war zone in Gaza remains extremely risky: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists at least 95 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in Gaza since the war started. How does a Palestinian journalist from Gaza see the challenges for reporting now in a new time of war? How does he rate the media landscape(s) in the region? What perspectives does he see for the region?
In recent years, people like former CIA employee Edward Snowden or Australian investigative journalist Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, have put their own safety and freedom at risk to enlighten the public by disclosing secret information about state crimes. For this courage, the whistleblower pay a huge price. In exile in Moscow, Snowden is dependent on the benevolence of autocrat Vladimir Putin, while Assange has been imprisoned in the UK for five years and faces life imprisonment if extradited to the USA. Human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo, who arranged Snowden's escape, and British whistleblower and former ambassador Craig Murray discuss with Ilja Braun from Reporters Without Borders/Germany how to better protect those who bring the truth to light.
The streets and roads of Innsbruck belong to all who live here. And yet cars enjoy priority in the public space. The Radlobby Tirol has analysed critical points in the city centre and will explain on the city walk how much space is available for which form of mobility. And we will question if this is really fair. The route is around 1.6 km long and leads to the freight terminal, where the discussion will continue.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked a major reevaluation of Europe’s business, energy and political ties to Russia, vindicating those investigative journalists who had been raising the alarm about Russia’s corrupting influence in Europe for years. More than two years into the war, which topics are still under-reported, how can journalists approach them, and has the media caught up with the new reality? Ukrainian and German journalists and civil society experts will share findings from their research and reporting, and discuss what’s next when covering the Kremlin’s influence in Europe.
The Ensemble Yagódy is one of the most charismatic Ukrainian folk ensembles from Lviv. Founded in the year 2016 at the Theater-Faculty, Yagódy launched their debut album in 2020. The four founding women travelled through several Ukrainian oblasts to track down the musical traditions of the people there. From this inexhaustible number of songs about life, Yagódy create their own exciting and unmistakable sound. The musicians feel at home in the theatre and realize their musical ideas for the stage according to dramaturgical principles. Their songs are love letters from the past, which have not arrived yet.
"Your arrival in the kitchens of the world was your death sentence", is how Rocío Puntas Bernet's report begins, which can be experienced as a staged reading at the Journalismusfest Innsbruck: a report about the coveted bluefin tuna. Within 30 years the former large stocks collapsed. The global boom in sushi has led to massive fishing pressure, particularly in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In the Turkish part of these seas it is considered extinct. In order to satisfy the global hunger for sushi, the huge animals are fattened in large numbers in the Mediterranean. A story about the legal grey areas in the food industry and an ode to tuna. The Bühnen Bern and the journal Reportagen present their original stage format for the first time in Austria.
The Mediterranean region is a hotspot in which crises and challenges overlap. The sea is warming up more than the global average, the ecosystem is being severely affected by oil and gas extraction, climate change is having a socio-economic impact on coastal areas and large-scale fishing is robbing traditional fisheries of their livelihoods. But there are also pioneers of sustainability and there is a great deal of commitment to rescuing refugees. The journalist Stefano Liberti and the photographer Francesco Bellina are travelling throughout the Mediterranean for a large documentary project: The research trip leads them to Murcia and Favignana off Sicily, to Tanger and the Kerkennah Islands off Tunisia, to the Nile Delta and the Suez Canal, to Cyprus, to the islands of Antikythera and Jabuka, all the way to Venice.
On October 3rd 2013, a boat sinks off the coast of Lampedusa. More than 300 people die and the then mayor Giusi Nicolini knows: something needs to happen. A few days later, she holds an impressive speech at the EU summit. In 2015, one year after the discontinuation of the Italian state-run rescue operation Mare Nostrum, the organisation for the rescue of life at sea SOS Méditerranée was founded. Since then, it saved 38,500 lives and was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2023 for its operation. By now, civil-operated sea rescue has become a difficult undertaking. Europe is closing down its external borders, at times, resorting to violence. Time and time again, we see reports about EU Border Guard Agency Frontex being involved in pushbacks of migrants on the Greek coast.