What kind of a future do we want to live in? How do our respective living conditions impinge upon each other? Haus der Kulturen der Welt stands as a reference point to discover and discuss answers and possibilities through contemporary arts and culture and that’s why we want to introduce the HKW and its program to you.
A cosmopolitan place for contemporary art
Art has more and more become a medium to initiate dialogue and call attention to present-day matters. In our time, when local issues are inseparably related to international developments, Haus der Kulturen der Welt enables voices from all over the world to be heard in their great diversity and gives them a productive place in the inner-societal dialogue.
With a special focus on non-European cultures and societies, its diverse program includes artistic productions that range from visual and performing arts to music, literature, film and digital media. Whether art means for you experimenting, questioning, discovering or communicating, here you can have an all-inclusive experience that will widen your perspective and help you understand how closely related art, culture and society are.
In few words, imagine a place where you can reflect upon relevant global issues and be an active participant in establishing connections and engaging discussions – all through art and open cultural exchange. Haus der Kulturen der Welt represents a point of connection with the world that everyone has access to, essential for a city that has undergone such massive changes and is now one of the main crossroads of cultures from all over the world.
Experimenting at HKW
Haus der Kulturen der Welt not only provides impulses by hosting exhibitions, conferences, festivals and screenings, but it also continually strives to open up new perspectives and foster creativity. Through the Education program, which offers artistic workshops and opportunities for year-round learning, everyone can discover art, make music and investigate current issues. Hausradio also invites active participation in its cooperative productions of live broadcasts and podcasts with Klubradio Ltd.
Another core point within HKW’s scope involves bringing diverse societal groups in the immigrant-rich metropolis of Berlin into conversation with one another. An example of a great initiative, started about a year ago, is Berlin Mondiale: My House is your House. By collaborating with the refugee shelter Haus Leo under the motto “Mi casa es tu casa” (“My House is your House”), HKW has been developing artistic strategies to help break the refugees’ isolation and give them a place in the city as full-fledged members of our society.
The Architecture
You might have come to know about the existence of HKW on that day long time ago when, while discovering Berlin’s wonders, you ended up somewhere close to the Reichstag and, most likely by chance, you noticed it. Indeed, its position doesn’t contribute in making it a place where to hang out so often, yet this unique piece of Western modernist architecture is with no doubt worth at least being seen both from inside and outside, if not experienced through one of the events that take place there.
The Congress Hall, as it was called at the time, was built in 1957 as part of the international building exhibition INTERBAU and is the embodiment of free exchange of ideas and America’s support for post-war European reconstruction. The American architect Hugh Stubbins, who had been Gropius’s assistant at Harvard before the Second World War, started designing and planning the building in 1955.
The form of the curved roof resembles that of wings. In Stubbins’s view, it symbolised the promise that there would be no restrictions on the freedom of intellectual work – a vision shared by the Benjamin Franklin Foundation , which commissioned the building.”
Nevertheless, it was in 1989 that Haus der Kulturen der Welt was founded. It couldn’t have happened with a better timing, as in that very year the need for intercultural exchange and dialogue was more urgent than ever. Since that moment, this cultural institution has become a symbol of unification and place of encounter for people from all over the world to promote and value the importance of respecting one another’s cultural differences.
Program Highlights in September
This month’s program is as interesting and thrilling as you’d wish it to be. You will be actively confronted with the question “Can design change society?“. Keep up your mod for cinema until the screenings of Nuevo Cine Argentino start and don’t miss the opening of the 3-year-long project “100 Years of Now“, which will gather artists, scientists, activists and observers of our times.
Symposium and Exhibition: Can Design change society? // 2nd till the 20th of September
This symposium and pop-up exhibition addresses questions regarding the goals, roles, design methods and the social processes in which designers are embroiled, starting with “Can design change society?“. Further questions that will be discussed are: How can we integrate emancipating ideas into a continuously progressing modernization? Has the aspiration of the Bauhaus and the classical avant-garde to positively change society through design been validated? Would the absence of design offer liberation?
Screenings: Nuevo Cine Argentino // 9th till the 20th of September
Nuevo Cine Argentino is one of the most creative, complex and significant cultural phenomena of modern-day Argentina. Within only twenty years, two generations of filmmakers radically re-defined the country’s cinematic conventions, creating unique contemporary productions. In this at once very Argentinian and universal cinema, aesthetic innovation is juxtaposed with the crucial desire to uncover the blind spots of a society that has made crisis its virtually natural state, its empire and its passion.
Long-term project: 100 Years of Now // 30th of September till the 4th of October
“World Politics – Dream States – Data Streams: 100 Years of Now“ combines diagnoses of our times with scopes of action. In its latest long-term project, which will be running until 2018, HKW examines the interrelations between global conflicts, classification systems and technologies, and investigates current social problems within the context of historical perspectives. The kick-off between September 30 and October 4, 2015 will gather artists, scientists, activists and observers of the times in unusual constellations.
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