Organizer Information
The call is issued by PACT Zollverein (Performing Arts Choreographisches Zentrum NRW – Tanzlandschaft Ruhr), a center for dance, performance, and interdisciplinary art housed in the former colliery wash house of the UNESCO World Heritage site Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany. Since its foundation in 2002, PACT Zollverein has served as an engine and platform for developments in dance, performance art, theatre, media, and visual arts, and supports and fosters dance and performance as independent art forms. The Choreographisches Zentrum NRW is organized as a registered limited company supported by a non-profit foundation.
Within this framework, PACT·LAB runs IMPACT, a transdisciplinary symposium initiated in 2004 that invites artists, practitioners, theoreticians, and advanced students from dance, theatre, performance, visual arts, new media, film, music, architecture, and other extended practices in art and science to engage with shared research interests, working methods, and artistic strategies.
Title & Description
IMPACT26 – Friction Energy: On Practices of Encounter, Negotiation and Cooperation
IMPACT26 is the 2026 edition of PACT Zollverein's annual transdisciplinary symposium, dedicated to transformative practices of coexistence in a present shaped by competition, exploitation, the ideology of progress, power, and social recognition. The symposium takes as its starting point a growing decoupling in economic, technological, and administrative systems, where decisions are often made in isolation from their consequences, and asks whether art — as a field where these logics converge — can facilitate unexpected forms of cooperation, and what it might mean to learn from other actors and fields of knowledge when human and non-human participants recognize one another as collaborators. It brings together practices and blueprints from the arts, sciences, urban space, architecture, and other fields of research.
The 2026 edition unfolds across two phases: the first two days are open to the public and include brief presentations of the selected projects, followed by two days of closed sessions devoted to exchanging ideas among participants.
Theme
Friction Energy — On Practices of Encounter, Negotiation and Cooperation. The call welcomes projects, practices, and research approaches rooted in artistic, scientific, social, activist, or technological fields that engage with coexistence, cooperation, and negotiation amid competing systems of power and progress.
Categories
- Performance
- Theatre
- Visual Arts
- New Media
- Research
- Interdisciplinary Arts
- Architecture
Eligibility
- Open to artists, practitioners, theoreticians, and advanced students
- Fields include dance, theatre, performance, visual arts, new media, film, music, architecture, and other extended practices in art and science; the call itself is open more broadly to artistic, scientific, social, activist, or technological projects and research approaches
- Individual applications accepted; group applications accepted with up to two representatives per project or group invited
Program Benefits & Awards
- Remuneration for selected contributors sharing and discussing their work during the IMPACT26 assembly
- Travel costs reimbursed
- Local accommodation provided
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 13 August 2026
- Notification of Outcome: by e-mail, by the end of August 2026
- Symposium Dates: 30 October – 2 November 2026
Location
PACT Zollverein, Bullmannaue 20a, Essen, Germany
Additional Details
- For group applications, a maximum of two representatives per project or group can be invited to attend
- All complete applications will be considered by a jury