Walden: Tremor

Walden is a festival for sound, music, and performance set in the forest of Künstlerhof Frohnau in the north of Berlin. Between trees, clearings, and traces of a layered history, temporary situations of listening, perception, and encounter emerge. The sixth edition of the festival will take place on July 4, 2026 under the title Walden: Tremor.

A tremor is a trembling. A barely visible quiver in the body, a vibration in the tissue, a subtle shift in the balance of things. Geologically, it signals an approaching earthquake. Medically, it indicates a disturbance in the system. In music, however, trembling becomes movement itself: oscillation, pulse, frequency.

Our present moment, too, seems permeated by such tremors. Political certainties are dissolving, landscapes are burning, public language is becoming at once shrill and empty. In the face of the absurdity and often alarming thoughtlessness of political decisions, artists are frequently left in a state of trembling: between disbelief, anger, and a diffuse sense of foreboding. Yet trembling is not only a sign of weakness. A tremor sets things in motion. Vibrations travel through bodies, through air, through wood and earth. They connect places, voices, and materials.

Walden: Tremor seeks to make this trembling audible. Artists working in sound art, experimental music, performance, and installation develop works that respond to the specific conditions of the forest. The forest becomes both instrument and stage. Voices, sounds, resonances, and movements unfold between the trees, forming a network of vibrations.

For us, Walden is a practice of sensitive perception in nature: a way of listening to and sensing vibrations and sounds, of attuning to the rhythms of the environment. At the same time, Walden means inscribing oneself into these movements, responding to them, imitating or varying them, and thus becoming part of a larger constellation of voices, bodies, materials, and landscapes.