Programme 2025

At a time when public debates and political developments increasingly threaten to divide people, Haus der Kulturen der Welt continues to focus on bringing people and their worlds together.

With the 2025 programme, we invite you to reflect on the possibilities of an open and shared future—and to encounter other people and other worlds at HKW.

Musafiri: Of Travellers and Guests
Exhibition and Research Project
8 March - 16 June
Opening 7 March

Public discourse and politics are increasingly characterized by fears—with Germany being one of the starkest examples of this. Fears that stem from a narrow, often hegemonic, and at the same time localized view of the world. As such, the exhibition Musafiri: Of Travellers and Guests constitutes an urgent plea to acknowledge and assert the polyphonic worlds brought together by the experience of those who have moved past their points of origin.

The Arabic word musafir equally translates to ‘traveller’ and ‘guest’. It resonates with stunning phonetic consistency across languages and within strikingly different cultural spaces, from Romanian to Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Swahili, Kazakh, and Uygur, among others, in a vast, uninterrupted geography. The exhibition follows worlds as they have been braided by intrepid travellers and unwillingly displaced individuals and communities in history, to the intensifying migratory movements of today. Musafiri: Of Travellers and Guests speaks of the necessity of a society in which travellers can arrive and be welcomed as guests.

Multimedia group exhibition with over 40 positions. An expansive cultural education programme of tours, workshops, and conversational formats accompanies the Musafiri programme throughout the duration of the exhibition.

In collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – Delegation in France as part of the PARTENARIATS GULBENKIAN programme to promote the Portuguese art scene in European institutions.

heimaten
2025

heimaten doesn’t ask about the where or where from, but the how and where to. How can a Heimat (a so-called homeland) be created? What happens when different ideas of belonging are given space to expand and become effective? This project, initiated by HKW and co-curators Ibou Coulibaly Diop and Max Czollek,  understands the German word Heimat—in the plural and as a verb—as a multifaceted process that is never complete and cannot be co-opted. The programme is envisioned to run until the end of 2027 and includes a conference, a series of talks and podcasts, publications, and the creation of a dedicated network. heimaten means recognizing the realities of a pluralistic society, critically questioning them, and actively shaping them.

heimaten kicks off in 2025 with a Public Screaming on the evening of the federal elections, 23 February. At election-watching events for plural democracy held at HKW and other locations throughout Germany,  the public is invited to come together to follow the projections, discuss the results and options for future actions, and, above all, to raise their voices. After all, screaming together is better than screaming alone.

The expected results of these elections and developments in neighbouring countries and around the world necessitate the  development and enablement of new strategies of resistance. In view of the shift to the right in political institutions and a climate of increasing discrimination, it is clear that civil society must be strengthened and must act together. The heimaten network is a structure that makes this possible. The alliance of over thirty cultural institutions and civil society initiatives organizes the decentralized heimaten festival in September 2025, with numerous events in all German federal states as well as in Austria and Switzerland.

140 years after the so-called Berlin Conference of 1884–85, which was instrumental in the exploitation and arbitrary division of the African continent by colonial powers, the Deberlinization Conference takes place at HKW as part of heimaten from 25–27 April 2025. Based on a concept by the artist Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, it is dedicated to the question of how decolonization can be specified and concretely implemented. Musicians, poets, activists, scholars, and practitioners from various disciplines come together to discuss the concept of deberlinization and its cultural, political, economic, and social implications. Their approaches and propositions will then be documented in a comprehensive commemorative publication.

The Heimatization series of talks also takes place from March to December 2025, during which various ideas and practices of belonging are negotiated. The events at HKW are accompanied by a podcast and supplemented by a heimaten publication series.

With this extensive and diverse programme, HKW—together with numerous other civil society actors—is working on the overdue reinterpretation of a term that, despite its difficult history, can and should become productive again. Wir heimaten.

Dates:
23 February
Public Screaming: Election Party for Plural Democracy
Screening, Live Commentary, Conversations, Music

March–December
Heimatization
Discussion Series 

25–27 April

Deberlinization Conference

September
heimaten Network 
heimaten Festival

Sonic Pluriverse Festival: Bass Culture
Concerts, DJs, Listening Sessions, Workshops, Lectures
June - August

Sonic Pluriverse Festival: Bass Cultures explores sound system culture as a global phenomenon. From reggae’s deep pulsations to dubstep’s thunderous drops, the programme weaves together experiences, dialogues, and sonic practices that trace international connections. Throughout summer 2025, live performances by artists deeply rooted in bass cultures blend rhythms and melodies that tell stories of resistance and solidarity. Taking place throughout the summer and encompassing a range of daytime activities followed by concerts and DJ sets in the evening, Sonic Pluriverse Festival: Bass Cultures stands as a space for cultural exchange and community dialogue, a place where voices, rhythms, and stories intersect. 

Dates:

Friday 27 June + Saturday 28 June
Friday 4 July + Saturday 5 July
Friday 11 July + Saturday 12 July
Friday 18 July + Saturday 19 July
Saturday 2 August (as part of Bwa Kayiman)

Trickster Orchestra
Trans-traditional Music Laboratory
3 - 5 March

In the second encounter of its trans-traditional music laboratory, the Berlin Trickster Orchestra, together with guests from music, science, and society, examines aspects of collectivity and care in musical work processes. The Trickster Orchestra’s trans-traditional music laboratory is a public, experimental, and future-oriented work process that the audience is invited to experience live from the very beginning. With changing guests, the orchestra embarks on an artistic journey of exploration with an uncertain destination... more

The Beginning Is Near!
Discussion Series
March - November

After Theatre of Reconciliation and Overcoming the Present, the third season of Max Czollek’s series of talks, entitled The Beginning is Near!, looks to the future. Considering the calamities of recent years and those currently looming, this may seem counterintuitive, but that’s the point: to take these crises as a starting point from which to move forward to different and better things. It requires a twofold acknowledging that things must therefore start anew in order to change for the better. The question of what has not worked and is currently not working is closely linked to the question of the future. It forms the context for Czollek’s conversations with people who, in one way or another, are dealing with the question of how things can and must continue. These interlocutors  develop ideas and provide stimuli for the motto of this third season: The Beginning is Near!

Dates:

26 March
26 April
21 May
25 June
24 September
29 October
19 November

Surreal Continuum: Revisiting, Remapping, Reimagining Surrealism
Literature Festival
11 - 12 April

Surreal Continuum: Revisiting, Remapping, Reimagining Surrealism is a two-day festival programme that re-examines the movement on its centenary, reimagining and remapping it by celebrating its overlooked artists, interrelated movements and histories typically regarded as disconnected or rendered completely unseen.

‘Jazz is my religion, and surrealism is my point of view’, writes Ted Joans, capturing in just a few words the eclectic, transformative quality of Surrealism. Often mistaken for strangeness, Surrealism has been a profound medium for exploring and achieving liberation, rebellion, and the remaking of reality. Emerging in the period following the First World War, Surrealism sought to combat western rationalism by expressing the profundity of the mind through automatism, writing, poetry, and psychoanalysis. André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism defined it as ‘psychic automatism’, describing a mode of thought unfettered by reason and morality. But despite its global resonance, Surrealism has often been narrowly framed as a male, European (primarily French) movement. Surreal Continuum: Revisiting, Remapping, Reimagining Surrealism counters this narrow narrative by engaging with under-recognized contributors to Surrealist thought and practice across different geographies, such as Suzanne Césaire, Joyce Mansour, and Ted Jones, while also forging new connections to the works of contemporary practitioners such as Ben Okri, Yoko Tawada, Sergei Parajanov, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Jan Švankmajer, and others.

AI: The Collective Brain
Lectures, Conversations, Performances, Workshops
30 - 31 May

Taking as a starting point the convergences between neuroscience and broader ideas of intelligence—from plants, fungi, and spirits to digital humans and collective neurons—AI (Ancestral Immediacies): The Collective Brain explores critiques of normative ideas of the individual brain that deem it the proprietor of consciousness, intelligence, and subjectivity... more

Internationaler Literaturpreis 2025
27 May Announcement of the shortlist / 17 July Prize Ceremony

The International Prize for Literature (ILP) is awarded for the seventeenth time in 2025. It honours an outstanding work of contemporary international literature and its first translation into German. This dual focus makes it unique in the German award landscape... more

Shaped to the Measure of the People's Songs
Temporary Pavilion
June - November

2023 marked the inception of a tradition at HKW: the construction of a yearly pavilion. The series continues in 2025 in the frame of heimaten with an artistic intervention in public space by Mae-Ling Lokko (Soil Sisters)... more

Bwa Kayiman: On Liberation and Resistance
Performance Festival
1 - 3 August

Every year, HKW invites its audience to join artists, scholars, activists, and musicians to commemorate the Haitian Revolution that led to the independence and birth of the first Black nation... more

Global Fascisms
Exhibition and Research Project
13 September - 7 December 2025
Opening 12 September

The exhibition and research project Global Fascisms critically examines the aesthetic, social, and political dynamics of fascism, questioning its appeal and ideological mechanisms. A key aim of the project is to understand fascism not only as a historical phenomenon, but also as an ongoing global challenge that transcends its historically confined definition, manifesting in diverse political, cultural, and social contexts today. Focusing on the historical and contemporary contexts in which far-right ideologies thrive, the project offers interdisciplinary and artistic perspectives on identity, community, and belonging.

The exhibition brings together works by 50 international artists who respond to the rise of fascist ideologies through a variety of media, including painting, film, performance, discourse, publications, and digital formats. Historical artworks complement the group exhibition, creating surprising connections between past and present. The exhibition offers insights into the ideological seduction and aesthetics of fascist ideologies, while analysing the social and technological developments underlying these movements. 

From the role of social media in creating echo chambers that amplify radicalization, to the invocation of nostalgic myths of ‘golden ages’ as tools of authoritarian rhetoric, the exhibition explores the mechanisms that sustain these ideologies. It also considers the interplay of contemporary issues such as economic inequality, migration crises, and the politicization of religion in fuelling nationalist sentiments.

By integrating art with interdisciplinary research, the project promotes new ways of understanding and confronting these pressing issues at a critical moment when electorates worldwide are shifting dramatically towards right-wing, far-right, and authoritarian movements. It positions art not only as a medium for reflection, but as an active force in challenging authoritarian aesthetics and ideologies.

Supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.

Middle Ground: Festa Literária Periferias
Literature Festival
10 - 12 October

For the 2025 edition of Middle Ground, the annual series that invites literature festivals from around the world to explore literary and oralture practices and networks, HKW is pleased to cooperate with Festa Literária das Periferias (FLUP) from Brazil.

Anchored in Rio’s favelas, FLUP was founded in 2012 by Écio Salles and Julio Ludemir and works to counter a deeply entrenched hegemonic articulation of Brazil’s literary world by spotlighting works by Black, favela-based, and peripheral writers.  FLUP’s programming continually reimagines how literature can promote communities often left on the margins of mainstream narratives. Through its hosting of debates, poetry slams, and community storytelling events, FLUP embodies the ethos of Middle Ground—creating dynamic relationships and redefining cultural and literary networks.

A Felasophical Gathering
Concert and Discourse Programme
15 October

On 15 October every year, HKW celebrates the life and work of one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century, Fela Kuti. The initiative’s title, A Felasophical Gathering, alludes to the fact that Fela was not only a musician, but also an activist, political being, and philosopher... more

L is for the Way you Look at Me
Discursive programme

L is for the Way You Look at Me unfolds a series of workshops, screenings, talks, reading groups, and convivial events that constitute HKW’s discursive programme between 2025 and 2027. Seeing ‘discourse’ as a system of knowledge-production and meaning-making that comes into effect through the verbal, the corporeal, and the sensory, this programme moves among different disciplines while exploring the re-imagination and re-enactment of love... more

Fertile Void
Lectures, Workshops, Performances, Installations
1 - 10 November

Fertile Void looks at the promises and narratives of quantum technologies through the lens of culturally situated, more-than-human, and counter-hegemonic epistemologies and the arts. Examining the fundamental relationship between matter and energy (or ‘life force’), a theme central to many cosmologies across time and space and inherent to how quantum mechanics understands the very composition of the world, the programme seeks to broaden our understanding of the technologies in development and the philosophical conceptions they entail... more

Politics of Rhythm
Dance Workshops Series, Talks, Convenings
2025

HKW continues the Politics of Rhythm project initially established at the house with the Bullerengue workshops in 2023 and followed by a programme centred around Sabar drumming traditions in 2024, both which continue throughout 2025.

Kid's Disco
2025

HKW invites kids of all ages and their families to the Kids’ Disco: through the magic of music and under the glitter of a disco ball, a lively environment is created in various locations at HKW for children to have fun, feel the rhythm, and make new friends in the process. Alternating DJs provide a constant stream of new sounds—the closest thing to a club for the little ones, always on Sundays or Saturdays, from 15:00 to 17:00.

Childcare is available in parallel to Kids’ Disco sessions and also alongside many other events. There are also special offers for children’s day care centres (Kitas) to take a tour through HKW and its exhibitions.

All these programmes for children are free of charge at HKW.

Dates:

23 Feburary
9 March 
6 April 
18 May 
22 June
30 August 
28 September
9 November 
7 December

Press photos: hkw.de/pressephotos

Visit Information

Opening Times
Wed.–Mon. 12:00–19:00
Extended opening hours during evening programmes.

Free admission on Mondays and on selected sundays

Childcare with programme
HKW offers free childcare for many of its programmes. For further information visit hkw.de

Current information about visiting and accessibility.

Weltwirtschaft Restaurant is open daily from 12:00

Contact

Jan Trautmann

Pressesprecher
Lead Communications Officer
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin

T: + 49 (0) 30 397 87 157
presse@hkw.de