heimaten

According to Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, all state power comes from the people. Some things can be said with certainty about this people: almost thirty percent have a history of migration, and that percentage will only continue to increase in the future. People desire in different ways, have differing political opinions, belong to different religious communities, are of different ages, and have different incomes and levels of wealth at their disposal.  

If, as stated in the Basic Law, all state power comes from the people, this also means that all state power comes from a plural society. This reality is where heimaten comes in; heimaten, used as a verb, derives from Heimat—meaning home or homeland—and is something that is actively shaped and thereby constantly recreated. But heimaten can also function as a plural noun because Germany is conceived of as a place of plurality where people, through loose associations and institutions, initiatives and organizations, shape what is today called German society and culture.  

heimaten aims to reinterpret the concept of Heimat according to  this plural composition of Germany’s population. It comprises a four-year programme of discourse, music, film, and literature. After focusing on exchanging and networking at the start of the project—including a conference on the topic of Deberlinization and the discussion series Heimatization, accompanied by publications and a podcast—2026 sees the parallel series Sound Base Berlin, Common Exceptions, and Plural Citizenships take place, which show how productive the process of making a home for oneself in the fields of music, film, and literature can be. 

The decentralized heimaten Festival for Plural Democracy takes place together with numerous partner institutions, making visible this plural society as well as the work of many individuals and initiatives to date in upholding and advocating for it. It is organized by the heimaten Network, an association of civil society initiatives and cultural institutions in the sixteen German federal states as well as in Austria and Switzerland. 

heimaten is a project conceived and curated by HKW. 

Curation 2024–2025: HKW, Max Czollek, Ibou Diop

To the overarching curatorial statement by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Co-curator’s concept by Max Czollek and Ibou Diop, September 2024