AUTONOMY

Enjoy every car ride as if it were the last!

No technical invention over the last 100 years has shaped us as much as the car. Our cities are car cities, our society consists of auto-nomized individuals, and our philosophy is called individualism. Bertha Benz is our mother and Mannheim, the city of our birth.

Now that the age of automobility is coming to an end, we will look back and ahead on 10 festival days: What was the great promise of the car? How did we become who we are—a nation of carmakers and speed freaks? Where is the journey taking us? Who sits behind the wheel? How does the road sound, and what do we do with all the space that is being freed up?

With artists and scientists, bicycle activists and car lovers we will perform across the city in September 2019. We will cruise the streets in self-driving concept cars, build bicycles from cars, create autonomous regions, compose the sound of silence and fetch the stars from the sky. Wunder der Prärie 2019 is dedicated to the connection between technology and society, how the car industry has shaped our culture and how a new culture must shape the industry of the future. Together with the Heinrich Böll Foundation Baden-Württemberg, SWR and the Mannheim public, we will discuss the cultural aspects of the mobility turnaround on four evenings. And because we no longer just want to stand on the sidelines while others are planning our future, we will build our own means of transport, redesign the roads and make our own demands. Because autonomy means doing it yourself!