EVENT: NEXT LEVEL FESTIVAL (NOVEMBER 13–16 2025, DORTMUND, GERMANY)

Next Level – Festival for Games, Interactive Art and Digital Theatre

Festival dates: 13–16 November 2025

Curated by Lex Rütten and Viv Lennert

Several exhibitions remain open through 18 January 2026; check individual listings for times and site-specific details.

• Akademie für Theater und Digitalität — Speicherstraße 17, 44147 Dortmund. 
• Digitale Werkbank — Kanalstraße 25, 44147 Dortmund. 
• Dortmunder U — Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse, 44137 Dortmund. 
• Koproduktionslabor — Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse 2, 44137 Dortmund.
• Künstlerhaus Dortmund — Sunderweg 1, 44147 Dortmund. 
• Nansen — Speicherstraße 15, 44147 Dortmund. 
• Projektspeicher — Speicherstraße 33, 44147 Dortmund. 
• Schauspiel Dortmund — Hiltropwall 15, 44137 Dortmund.

Next Level – Festival for Games, Interactive Art and Digital Theatre returns 13–16 November 2025 with a city-wide programme spanning exhibitions, VR experiences, performances, concerts, and talks under the theme “TRANSmission.” Anchored by Theater Dortmund and the Academy for Theater and Digitality, the festival unfolds across multiple venues, including Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Dortmunder U, Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, Schauspiel Dortmund, Digitale Werkbank, Nansen, and Projektspeicher.

The curatorial framework, TRANSmission, examines thresholds (between physical and digital spaces, individual and collective bodies, human and nonhuman intelligences) while mapping how artistic research and game-engine cultures circulate across institutions and publics. The festival’s Games Parcours and media exhibition open on 13 November and extend beyond the core dates, creating a distributed parcours through Dortmund’s cultural infrastructure.

Programme highlights

• Künstlerhaus Dortmund: exhibitions and Games Parcours
  The media exhibition at Künstlerhaus Dortmund functions as one anchor of the festival and situates contemporary digital art in dialogue with game aesthetics and procedural images. Running in parallel, the TRANSmission: Games Parcours offers an expanded, playable circuit of installations and works across the venue. Select works continue through 18 January 2026, broadening public access beyond the main weekend.
• Dorijan Šiško, The Core (Künstlerhaus Dortmund)
  An abstract videogame-labyrinth navigated via a speculative, crystal-ball-like interface. Decisions branch possible futures, foregrounding speculation and choice as aesthetic method. On view 13 November 2025 – 18 January 2026.
• Mélanie Courtinat, All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost (Dortmunder U)

A VR work on catastrophe, memory, and resilience, which premiered at Venice Immersive (2022) and subsequently exhibited internationally, will be presented between 13–16 November 2025.

• dmstfctn with Evita Manji, Waluigi’s Purgatory (Akademie für Theater und Digitalität)
  A simulations-based, audience-steered performance about AI, deception, and collective decision-making: part of the duo’s GOD MODE trilogy. 13–14 November 2025.
• Robin Baumgarten, Quantum Jungle (Künstlerhaus Dortmund)
  An interactive light installation translating quantum behaviour into a tactile, communal interface. 13 November, with extended opening hours during the festival.

• Babak Ahteshamipour, Violent Violins Exposed (Dortmunder U)
  A large-scale installation spanning architecture, video, and sound, drawing on game-engine dramaturgies of space; presented 13 November 2025 – 18 January 2026.

Additional entries in the programme include interactive installations, XR pieces, and live events: QUEUE (OBLIQUE SENSATIONS), a dystopian multi-user XR experience inspired by Beckett (13–14 November); HYSTERESIS (Daniel/Dani Ploeger), a multimedia installation connecting VR, tuner subcultures, and automotive ritual (13–16 November); and a sequence of concerts and live-coding performances at Dortmunder U on15 November.

Talks, labs, and discursive nodes

The festival’s discourse strand includes TRANSmission: Enjoy Community at Dortmunder U on 14 November, a one-day gathering of artists, curators, researchers, and labs (participants include Total Refusal, Jonathan Harth, Sarah Buser, V2_), and XR-Kontingenztheater, a talk examining extended reality as a theatre model, with Harth, Junicke, Buser, and Bieseke.

A parallel platform, TRANSmission: No End To The Road at Projektspeicher, introduces an immersive playground and new commissions from fellows Lukas Schäfer, Rhys Connolly, Philippe Waldecker, Julie C. Stamm, Mayuko Kudo, and Carina Hommel, alongside interactive installations habitat and Stromkörper.