Programmation du Haus der Kulturen der Welt de Berlin

The two-year Anthropocene Project came to a close in Berlin in December 2014. Through a multifaceted program of events, it introduced a broad public to the geoscientific hypothesis of the Anthropocene—the “geological age of man.” Its impact will continue to be felt well into 2015. In February, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, will be mounting the exhibition Anthropocene Observatory, by Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog), Armin Linke, and Anselm Franke. The Anthropocene Project will resonate into the spring with an interdisciplinary conference at the Tate Modern in London. In cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the results of the Anthropocene Curriculum and Anthropocene Campus are to be published as a course book and an online course site.

In January, HKW hosts the Radical Philosophy Conference 2015, organized by the UK-based Radical Philosophy journal. Shortly thereafter this year’s transmediale festival, titled CAPTURE ALL, is dedicated to the quantification of work, play and life. In late February, HKW will present the exhibition Labour in a Single Shot by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, featuring short cinematic portraits by filmmakers from 15 cities around the world. The exhibition will open with a conference devoted to the changing realities of labor, along with a full day of talks in commemoration of the late Harun Farocki.

In April, the exhibition Ape Culture, curated by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg, will present commissioned artistic works as well as documents from popular culture and science. The project will consider the role of apes as signifiers in human representations and trace the changing paradigms in primatology that concern the very definition of “culture,” as manifested by the shifting boundaries between humans and the great apes. During the exhibition the 2015 edition of the SYNAPSE curators’ network will take place.

The coming year will also see the seventh presentation of the International Literature Award – Haus der Kulturen der Welt in July. Shortly thereafter, the summer festival Wassermusik will trace the worldwide connections of India’s many musical forms. The fourth LifeLines festival will be devoted to the electronic music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius, tying in with HKW’s involvement with internationally groundbreaking German artists such as Ulrike Ottinger, Alexander Kluge, and Harun Farocki. A film festival will immerse itself in the New Argentine Cinema, curated by the Argentine film critic and writer Alan Pauls.

HKW is proud to announce its next large-scale, transdisciplinary thematic project, 100 Years of Now, to open in September. It will address the transformations that have led to today’s global situation, characterized by finance capitalism, increased fossile fuel exploitation and the ever accelerating pace of technological changes. Under the artistic oversight of Director Bernd Scherer, HKW curators Detlef Diederichsen, Silvia Fehrmann, Anselm Franke and Katrin Klingan, and their respective departments are developing a variety of programs that will run from 2015 through to 2018. 100 Years of Now will investigate current social problems from various historical perspectives, offering a diagnosis of our time in the form of discursive events, essay-exhibitions, music festivals, commissioned art works and educational projects.

100 Years of Now will be launched with a congress from September 29 to October 3, 2015, that will address the question as to what knowledge is relevant to understand the sociopolitical processes of our times. The autumn exhibition Wohnungsfrage will exemplify the project’s methodology, drawing on historical approaches as it seeks a redefinition of architecture as a sociocultural practice. Conceived by Jesko Fezer, Nikolaus Hirsch, Wilfried Kuehn, and Hila Peleg, Wohnungsfrage seeks to stimulate a practical yet radical discourse on self-determined, affordable housing by initiating collaborations among international and local players in the fields of architecture, urban planning, politics, the arts, science, and activism.

HKW is a partner in further events and programs, including the Berlin International Film Festival’s Generation section (February 5–15), in which children and teenagers discover new films from all over the world, and Rencontres Internationales (June 23–28), presenting films situated between new cinema and contemporary art, to be shown both at HKW and La Gaîté lyrique in Paris.

Summarized by Bernd Scherer, Director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt since 2008, “As the pace of change in the world is accelerating, new concepts to describe reality are needed. HKW is the venue for ideas in the making.”

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as well as by the Federal Foreign Office.

Contact 

Anne Maier, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
D-10557 Berlin
T +49 (0) 30 39787 153/196 / anne.maier@hkw.de