REVIEW

Raquel Fernández greeted us right at the Basel Zoo tram stop with a performance that set the mood for a day full of surprises and discoveries. Accompanied by a demanding four-legged friend, the dancer and artist moved across and towards borders - thoughtful, cautious and at the same time playfully humorous, her performance told a personal yet abstract story of closeness and distance, of strangeness and familiarity, and awakened new thoughts in the audience about their own barriers that need to be overcome or built up.

The author was waiting for us in a meadow below Landskron Castle with excerpts from her forthcoming novel. With a view of the vastness of the meadows and fields, we followed her words into the barn, took a loving look at the cows, caught a glimpse of the feeling of taking responsibility for the land and animals and realised how nature can reclaim everything at any moment by doing nothing. Her insight gave us an idea of the stories that could be hidden behind the fields surrounding us.

Our bellies and brains filled with new impressions, Rebecca and Pawel then got us moving. Together with the dancers, we each took a moment for ourselves, slowly got moving again, and finally jumped and danced with and around each other in the hilly Alsatian landscape. Exhilarated and refreshed, we also took the last ascent to the castle in an unusual way - walking backwards, new perceptions of the surroundings and of our walking together opened up to us.

A murmur went through the crowd when Rebecca Solari from Creme Solaire appeared in a yellow, fizzy and creamy costume in the ancient gate high up in the castle. Together with Pascal Stoll, she conquered the castle with a stormy voice and a physical presence that not only made us sway and marvel, but also the castle itself. Creme Solaire knocked us out of our composure with their performative power, the rhythms and melodies had us cheering and stomping and singing along with and without words. When the exuberance couldn't get any bigger, a spontaneous duet with Baby Volcano completely blew the audience's socks off.

The castle hall began to glow as the first beats of Baby Volcano boomed out of the speakers. Hidden behind mystical woollen masks, Baby Volcano and their two musicians / DJs slowly began to cast a spell over the audience. After the first whispering, rhythmically enticing notes, we were already very close to Baby Volcano, following their explosive movements into an ever-expanding, driving and also furious experience, until our bodies almost spent themselves in an activist rave of trap beats, Guatemalan rhythms and inciting Spanish-French vocals.

The two authors and performers accompanied the last visitors back down to the city in the glowing moonlight. As if infected by the golden moonlight, the two in their golden suits turned the glaring tram into a sparkling story train and, with their poetic words about encounters, love and relationships, radiated the right good-night atmosphere that made the tired but enthusiastic visitors dream imaginatively on the way.

His lighting turned the old castle hall into a warm, dark and mysterious, sparkling place in which the old stones began to glow and Baby Volcano was able to drift into another world with the audience, passing through different dimensions of time, colour and place in a floating, dancing, pulsating rhythm.

After a walk from Flüh in Baselland through the forests across the border to France, we met Lukas Merkelbach on the side of the road. The biologist talked about the work of the conservationists who have turned the forested area back into a paradise for rare plant species and for the goats of the Domaine du Geissberg farm. He drew our attention to green, buzzing and flying things and philosophized about the concept of the natural. Infected by his enthusiasm, the last part of the walk became even more buzzing and colorful.

Having already roamed the meadows with our ears and eyes and heard about working in and with nature, Domaine du Geissberg invited us to explore the flavours of their work on their biodynamic farm in the neighbouring village of Biederthal. From fresh goat's cheese and the unmistakably flavoursome Munster to crunchy saussisson and freshly baked soft bread, we feasted with murmurs of appreciation on the products made from the milk of the cows we watched graze.

After Rebecca and Pawel had led us to the castle in an inspiring and activating way, they explored the entrance to the Landskron with their own bodies in a mutual dance game. They rolled through the ancient tunnel, stirred up the stony dust and turned the walls into elastic take-off points for their acrobatic-organic movements. 

On the tower, the two musicians welcomed us with an acoustic and visual spectacle. Their sounds of modular, guitar and voice floated out into the landscape with the billows of smoke above the audience, and with them the swarms of flying ants that had just pixelated our field of vision left us. Whispering, murmuring voices overlapped with snatches of conversation from other places and frequencies. Evocative tones, sometimes delicate, sometimes powerful chants and distorted, distorted guitar sounds, together with the neon-coloured, billowing sunset, intensified in their performance as if in a lava lamp to create a ceremony that set us into devout, spherical vibrations.

The Bernese author likes to explore his surroundings not only with his feet, but also with words. At Landskron 2, he took visitors from the castle to Füh, on the tram back to the city. His stories picked up speed and kept stopping at the place names of the stops. Together with his words, we briefly got off the tram and took a look behind the meaning of these place names and the stories that may lie behind them. The journey back to the city became a poetic journey of discovery along the way and awakened even more wanderlust for new perspectives in the visitors.

With Leontine Soulier's artwork, we were able to make our way from the city to the countryside up to Landskron Castle before Landskron 2. In the bright, warm sunshine through colourful hills, with the artists' names in our heads for anticipation, past grazing cows, surprising views and insights, up to the castle's sun spectacle shimmering in all colours and the mystical glittering moonlight over ancient walls. And even now, in retrospect, her drawing still tells us about a day full of impressions and encounters that will remain in our memories as colourful as her colours.

Landskron 2 offered all sorts of bubbly and grapes from the region. From local crémant, white wine and rosé to Alsatian Meteor beer, one of the last large family breweries in Alsace, the castle bar with seating and hanging areas made from wooden leftovers was an invitation to enjoy. In the second edition, the Wallasitter association from Leymen ensured satisfied bellies with the universally popular Flammekueche, which even celebrated its premiere at Landskron in its vegetarian version.