‘What to do with the world?’ HKW introduces Billboard Campaign with Wolfgang Tillmans

What to do with the world?
Billboard Campaign in Berlin
Until 11.6.2023

Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) invited twelve people from different geographies, grappling with the state of the world in their work across disciplines and contexts, to respond to the question: ‘What to do with the world?’ Artist Wolfgang Tillmans created typographic and photographic interpretations of the twelve responses, which are currently displayed on billboards throughout Berlin. Ahead of the re-opening in June, this project is an act of going out and an invitation to the public to bring their worlds with them.

Contributors from Balbala, Bebedouro, Errington, Gordes, Hawaiʻi, Kathmandu, Kechurewe, Nogojiwanong, Paris, Port Antonio, and Tilcara sent poems, questions, declarations, and other messages, sharing their curiosities, concerns, hopes, and trepidations about the state of the world yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Artist and researcher Zoe Todd responds by expanding the question—‘what are these worlds to do with us?’—and this sentiment is further shared by poet Elicura Chihuailaf, whose quote concludes with the question: ‘The world wonders: what to do with humanity?’ Other responses are invitations to rethink human relationality to the world. Poet and essayist Ricardo Domeneck councils a return to the waters to ‘learn from the whales’, while scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson goes a step further—‘sing to the waters … against and in spite of the present moment’—a plea to reconnect to the world as a form of resistance.

In the spirit of engaging in conversation across time zones and geographies, HKW invited Berlin-based artist, photographer, and activist Wolfgang Tillmans to consider these responses, contextualize them within his artistic dispositions, and to interpret them for a visual public intervention in the city. Reappropriating the commercial advertising infrastructure as a space to field fundamental questions about the world today, a selection of the poetic text/image conversations are mounted on billboards and other advertising spaces in Berlin throughout the spring of 2023.

‘I wanted to make text-image combinations that work at different speeds—just how we experience the city—sometimes slow as we wait around and sometimes fast as we rush through it. In the choice of photographs I wanted to create an alternative palette of colour to be just as rich as that of the words I was entrusted with.’
—Wolfgang Tillmans

With this intervention, HKW takes this question to Berliners of all walks of life outside the walls of HKW. By way of visual and textual cues, the question ‘what to do with the world?’ echoes and reverberates across the city, encouraging multiple interpretations of the question and the responses to it. Ahead of the re-opening in June, this project is an act of going out and an invitation to the public to bring their worlds, rather than just their cultures, with them.

Contributors: Hemley Boum, Elicura Chihuailaf, Marysé Condé, Ricardo Domeneck, Ishion Hutchinson, Craig Santos Perez, Rita Segato, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Manjushree Thapa, Wolfgang Tillmans, Zoe Todd, Abdourahman Waberi

Design: Wolfgang Tillmans © Haus der Kulturen der Welt

Further information: hkw.de/en
Press photos: hkw.de/pressphotos

Contact
Jan Trautmann
Lead Communications Officer

Júlia Frate Bolliger
International Press Officer

Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
T: + 49 (0) 30 397 87 195
presse@hkw.de