Lustholmen Festival 2025 at Skeppsholmen in Stockholm continues its tradition to celebrate the arrival of the summer through dance, performance, music and arts. For this year’s edition a special collaboration has been developed between Public Art Agency Sweden and Moderna Dansteatern – The Island Dialogues.
The starting point will be the many changes the island underwent along the years: from a royal retreat covered in secrecy for the early Vasa kings, to a closed off base for the royal navy; from rope-making, ship-building, the hardship of daily life and the use of wood and iron for the construction of a bellicose machinery, to the leisurely activities taking place in its bath houses; from the torpedo test rooms, to the final conversion of the island into a museal and cultural destination, and the renewed drive towards militarization of the world today.
Island Dialogues has invited three diverse artistic practices to reflect on these shifting relations – between pleasure and violence, joy and destruction, secrecy and openness – that ripple through the island’s visible and hidden layers. The invited artists explore Skeppsholmen as both a former military stronghold and a space of ebullient festivities, indulgence and recreation. By critically engaging with the land, its stories and spectral memories, their works seek to tease the imagination and spark new conversations about pressing issues of our time.
