Where Water Gathers

We are excited to reveal the programme for the main festival week of Sonic Territories 2026.

Sonic Territories 2026 takes shape differently. Rather than unfolding within a single festival week, this year’s programme extends across several months, moving through different sites, collaborations and artistic formats across Vienna. From the Otto Wagner Areal and the Lobau to the Wasserturm Favoriten and the festival week in October, each context becomes part of an evolving programme shaped by the conditions of the places it encounters.

Water became a thread for thinking about that change. As both material presence and connective force, it moves, gathers, circulates and transforms. It carries histories and connects places, while also pointing towards infrastructures, dependencies and forms of access that often remain unseen.

Some of this year’s programme took place in direct proximity to water. Elsewhere, water appears through the infrastructures that run through and beneath a city, through architecture, bodies, pressure, resonance and memory. Sometimes its absence is part of the story. Where Water Gathers follows these less visible relations as much as the water we can actually see.

From 19–25 October, these different strands come together over seven days. The first evening, The River Mouth, begins with convergence: eating, speaking and listening around a shared table. On the second day, Porous Practices opens the programme towards exchange, bringing different practices and forms of knowledge into contact. By Wednesday, Waters Adrift shifts into improvisation and temporary formations, while Listening Collectively: Acoustic Flows begins to run through the middle of the festival as a shared space for research and embodied listening.

Thursday turns towards softness and care with Healing Waters / Echoes of Softness. Friday, What the Water Carries, moves through resonance, memory and traces held by bodies and spaces. Saturday reaches The Other Shore, with passage, ritual and transformation at the centre. On the final day, Where We Gather brings the different strands, artists and communities together once more.

The week moves through meeting, drifting, carrying and crossing, before gathering again. Where Water Gathers stays open as a question, changing with the places, practices and people that pass through it.

Mimie Maggale, Artistic Director — September 2026