# 1: Physical Exercise

Bring along comfortable walking shoes. The Festival kicks off on Wednesday, the 6th of April, with a collective marathon through more than 25 galleries, project spaces and art-institutions throughout the city centre, presenting exquisite international character design and art along the way.
Starting from the valley of Character Totems by Inky Goodness to a heaping mountain of Sozi's ideas by Rilla Alexander, you'll be passing through the secret treasury vault of Gallery LJ and the precious glassworks of The Bee Kingdom. A Journey with Savage by Iosefatu Sua leads you past the mystical Household continent of Blackheart Gang all the way to Orwell's character infused dystopia by this year's residency artists Doppeldenk.

All details will go online within the next week, but you'll also be handed a special map to help you navigate through the unknown character territory. And even if you get lost, after sunset we all meet up safely for the first festival warm-up party at the .HBC.

# 2: Mental Stimulation

Early April 7 we gather at the Kino Babylon for a 3-day intense conference with inspiring artist lectures, workshops and presentations by international pioneers, such as Jeremyville, Keita Takahashi, McBess, Amandine Urruty, Allyson Mellberg Taylor or Nick Cave. Latest additions to the line-up: PicPic Andre take us on a roller coaster ride through their latest projects (looping: Panic au Village!), followed by Mark Jenkins, who will lecture on the surreal street installations he creates using not much more than box sealing tape, while Matt Jones aka Lunartic takes us by the hand for a "Plastic Surgery" resin casting workshop.

Additional endless retina stimulus is promised as the latest generations of characters in motion hit the big screen during our animation programs. Should you still have the brain capacity, Ryan Quincy will be putting together his favorite episodes for a special South Park pajama party, while Marek Michalowsky returns with Keepon for an in-depth investigation into current robotic strategies. Sleep not included.

# 3: Transcendent Hypnotic Bliss

The biggest surprise of this year's festival must be the grand finale on the revolving stage of the theatre opposite the conference venue. "The Missing Link Show" at the Volksbuehne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz promises an over-the-top celebration of contemporary characterism, with our newly hatched Yeti species staging their re-unification. And they've managed to gather a rather impressive line up of live-acts to turn the evening into a truly transcending experience.
Motomichi Nakamura contributes to the visual overfeed with a special VJ live-set, while singer/songwriter Maximilian Hecker provides the melancholic soundtrack to the Missing Link's lonesome existence in a solo piano concert. Topping it all off, absurdist composer and electronic musician Dan Deacon, delivers an hypnotic high-energy live performance, after wich the interspecies ritual party by the hairy hosts will make sure to fill in the gap between humans and characters.

All the above and more is yours - but only if you manage to secure a seat, so head over to pictoplasma.com, order your festival pass and make sure that you'll soon be able to fully Immerse Yourself in Character

See you there,

peter & lars