21 Sunsets: Readings & Performances

Connecting literature and sound: In listening sessions and performances, the literary program on the roof terrace provides the words for the political midsummer, follows the stories of a street and its residents and explores the potentials of the human DNA. With Sandhya Daemgen, Asal Dardan & Annett Gröschner, Flaneur Magazine, Das Wetter and many others

21 Sunsets: Concerts

In a summery, open-air atmosphere, concerts on the roof terrace span the spectrum from electronic avant-garde to jazz and dancehall. With Freak de l’Afrique Soundsystem, Golden Diskó Ship, Keshavara, Meredi, Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Nasser Kilada and many more

21 Sunsets: Cinema

In cooperation with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, HKW’s Westgarten is the setting to watch films by James Benning, Madhusree Dutta, Emily Jacir, Avi Mograbi, Marta Rodríguez, Philip Scheffner, Anton Vidokle and many others. They’re about the resistance of indigenous peasants, a manual about military occupation and a mysterious tree transport.

The Berlin Declaration of The Many

Freedom for the arts! With the declaration, the association Die Vielen e.V. distinctly articulates unity and solidarity in the arts and culture as parts of civil society standing against right-wing populist and nationalist leanings. Haus der Kulturen der Welt has signed the Berlin Declaration of The Many and, together with many other cultural institutions, stands up for unity.

Investigative Commons

Racist policing, border systems, cyber-surveillance, ecological violence and the ongoing violence of colonialism: The exhibition looks at current human rights violations and the involvement of state institutions. With collaborations by Forensic Architecture, ECCHR, Bellingcat, Laura Poitras/Praxis Films, Mnemonic and many more

Purple Sea

In October 2015, Amel Alzakout filmed aboard a shipwrecked boat: 43 people died in the Aegean Sea. Forensic Architecture reconstructed the incident and the policy of closure at EU borders. As part of Investigative Commons, HKW is showing Purple Sea – the film that incorporated Alzakout’s footage.

transmediale out of doors

Counter-narratives, queer resistance and dances against repressive regimes: On four evenings, transmediale out of doors brings oppositional gestures of refusal to the Westgarten of HKW. Film screenings, music, performances and talks locate the aesthetics of resistance at (non)political intersections.

Miss Read: Book Launch

How is it possible to decolonize the art book market? The books Decolonizing Art Book Fairs – Publishing Practices from the South and Idea Poll present ideas about publishing. The editors read from the works and discuss the current situation in the art and publishing sectors.

Volume 8: Looking at Music

What role does visibility play in the experience of music? How important is live playing for the future of music performance? From laptop performances to algoraves and virtual reality shows, this volume explores how new forms of production and performance are changing the perception of music.

Redefining the Power / After Dürer

What significance do slavery and racism have in the modern culture of memory? With Redefining the Power, Kiluanji Kia Henda presents photography works on the fate of colonial monuments in Luanda. Alongside it, Andreas Siekmann’s work After Dürer explores the dispossession of the poor population within Europe, based on Albrecht Dürer’s Monument to the Vanquished Peasants of 1525.

The Walking Archives

Between the imagined and reality: In her blog entry on #Survivance, Sónia Vaz Borges writes about the liberation struggles in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, focusing on the personal fates, memories and daily sacrifices of the fighters.

The 2021 Awardees

This year, the Internationaler Literaturpreis goes to Fatima Daas and Sina de Malafosse for the novel Die jüngste Tochter. “For all the turmoil and pain that the novel deals with, every line radiates narrative joy and curiosity, it is open to the world and the future, it is vulnerable and preemptive, it is – in the best sense of the word – young,” said the jury. 

Statement by the “Initiative GG 5.3 Weltoffenheit”

As representatives of public cultural and research institutions in Germany, we share a mandate from the state to promote arts and culture, historical research and democratic education and to make these accessible to the general public. Toward this end, we rely on a public sphere that welcomes controversial debates in accordance with the norms of the German constitution. At the center of our initiative lies a common struggle against antisemitism, racism, right-wing extremism and any form of violent religious fundamentalism.

New director: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

HKW warmly welcomes Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung: The supervisory board appointed Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung as the new director at the HKW. He will take over from Bernd M. Scherer on 1 January 2023.

Forensis

Education Shock

New Alphabet School

The Whole Life: An Archive Project

Making

Alphabets can be used not only as representations, but also as tools. What possibilities open up beyond known bodies of knowledge? In artist contributions and essays, the volume looks at the practices and politics of production.

Politics of Learning, Politics of Space: Architecture and the Education Shock of the 1960s and 1970s

Many of the current debates concerning learning and teaching environments, physical and virtual, echo those of the 1960s and 1970s, the “Education Shock” era. The English volume  is a collection of four texts by curator Tom Holert complementing the German publication.

Carrier Bag Fiction

How is the world of symbols connected to the world of things and actions? In the latest volume, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction serves as a means against alienation. The articles by Jenna Sutela, Enis Maci, Sophia Al-Maria and others accompany Le Guin’s essay and form an experimental laboratory for new alphabets.

Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War

During the Cold War, modernist art became a flagship of freedom in the West. The publication examines the cultural diplomacy of this period and how the activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) were a major force behind the culturalization of economic liberalism on an international scale.

New Alphabet School

How does language influence thought? How can we develop other forms of learning and acting? From the politics of translation to practices of weaving: Speakers and workshop participants from the New Alphabet School share their questions, observations and studies on solidary practices of knowledge production on the blog.

Anthropocene-Curriculum.org

The research platform Anthropocene Curriculum explores novel epistemic, aesthetic and educational challenges of the age of humankind. The global network of initiatives is engaged with developing experimental and experiential approaches to co-learning and co-producing knowledge in a rapidly changing planetary situation.

The Broken Archive

What narratives do justice to the problems facing the Mediterranean region? Villa Romana’s web platform Broken Archive compiles artistic projects and films dealing with the past and present there and researches archives in the Mediterranean region.

Wörterbuch der Gegenwart

What comes after universalism? The volume uses key words such as Thing, Justice and Body to ask about ways to redesign the world linguistically and visually. With new and historical contributions by, among others, Philippe Descola, Nikita Dhawan, Liz Johnson Artur, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Sharma and Wole Soyinka.