Luxembourg
Esch opens the festival year as Capital of Culture 2022
The town hall in Esch-sur-Alzette will be colorfully illuminated as a rocket center at the opening of Esch 2022 as European Capital of Culture. Photo: Harald Tittel/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The residents of the European Capital of Culture 2022 were offered a lot at the opening ceremony. The town hall of the Luxembourg city was the center of attention.
With a brilliant open-air spectacle, Luxembourg’s second largest city Esch started its program as European Capital of Culture 2022 on Saturday evening.
Around 25,000 guests celebrated in the historic center of Esch and in the hip university district of Esch-Belval – with live music, DJs, dance, light installations, performances and projections.
“We are showing that a region shaped by the steel industry can also have culture,” said the mayor of the city of Esch and President of Esch2022, Georges Mischo. To this end, Esch has brought 18 other communities in southern Luxembourg and neighboring France on board – with a total of 200,000 people from 120 nations.
Around 160 projects with more than 2000 events are planned this year under the motto “Remix Culture”: theatre, festivals, exhibitions, dance, performances, workshops and digital art. “We want to contribute to giving the city and the region a new identity with Esch2022,” said Esch2022 Director General Nancy Braun.
Spectacular light show
In the course of the “Remix Opening” opening ceremony, the town hall was transformed into a “rocket center” and the university quarter into a multimedia launch pad with a light show and projections. Later in the evening, staged rockets were to be shot into space with real steam and smoke from blast furnaces that had long since cooled down – symbolic of the start of the cultural year. Esch has around 36,000 inhabitants.
The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine was also present. “Our thoughts are with the Ukrainians,” said Mischo. Culture Minister Sam Tanson stressed that what is currently happening in Ukraine is “intolerable”. «We celebrate peace. We celebrate freedom of expression. We celebrate the fundamental right to culture. And we do not forget about the citizens of Ukraine. We think of them, we suffer with them.”
The first exhibitions begin on Sunday (February 27) in Esch-Belval on the former steelworks site. There will be media art in a renovated Möllerei: “Hacking Identity – Dancing Diversity” from the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM) is on the program. And in the old Massenoire, where stuffing compound used to be made, the industrial history is illuminated.
This year, Novi Sad in Serbia and Kaunas in Lithuania are also European Capitals of Culture. Novi Sad opened the festival year on January 13th. Kaunas started on January 22nd.