House of World Cultures

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House of World Cultures
House of World Cultures in the Congress Hall, September 2009

House of World Cultures in the Congress Hall , September 2009

Data
place Berlin Tiergarten
architect Hugh Stubbins
Architectural style Modern
Construction year 1956-1957
particularities
Intermediary organization of the Foreign Office for Foreign Cultural Policy
Night lighting on the banks of the Spree , 2013

The House of World Cultures (HKW) is an exhibition space in Berlin for international contemporary arts and a forum for current developments and discourses . It presents artistic productions from all over the world with a special focus on non-European cultures and societies.

Since it was founded in March 1989, the House of World Cultures has been located in the former congress hall on the banks of the Spree in the Great Zoo and Government District . As an icon of architectural modernism, the congress hall became a prominent symbol for the German-American alliance. In Berlin vernacular , the building is also known as the “pregnant oyster” based on its shape.

administration

The Haus der Kulturen der Welt GmbH is an organization for cultural events and was registered as a company at the local court on November 3, 1988. Today the house is part of the company Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH , which u. a. organizes the International Film Festival (Berlinale). Since January 1, 2006 it has been under the direction of artistic director and cultural philosopher Bernd M. Scherer , who previously headed the Goethe-Institut in Mexico City and the central arts department at the Munich Goethe-Institut. He is supported by an international program advisory board. The management includes Charlotte Sieben, Dieter Kosslick and Joachim Sartorius as commercial managing directors . The Chairman of the Supervisory Board is the Minister of State for Culture ( Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media ), currently Monika Grütters (as of 2016). The HKW receives regular funding from the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media .

history

View from the roof terrace, 2019

The congress hall was created as an American contribution to the Interbau International Building Exhibition in 1957 and was intended to embody the freedom of exchange of ideas. In addition to cultural events, political and business meetings were held, such as trade union congresses. John F. Kennedy (1963) and Jimmy Carter (1978) gave a speech here, and the Bundestag also met here several times, most recently on April 7, 1965. This regularly angered the GDR and the USSR , as West Berlin was not a national territory of the Federal Republic , so that on that day they let military planes fly over West Berlin and the building for the first time. Thereafter, the West Allies forbade the Federal Government to hold further meetings in West Berlin. On May 21, 1980, the southern outer roof collapsed due to material fatigue due to construction and planning deficiencies. The renovation and renovation lasted from 1984 to 1987, and on May 9, 1987 the building was reopened for the 750th anniversary of Berlin . A comprehensive partial repair was completed in 2019, which tried to preserve the character of the total renovation of 1987.

Programs

Auditorium stage, 2012

The House of World Cultures divides its program of events into three subject areas:

  • Literature, society, science
  • Fine arts, film, media
  • Music, dance, performing arts

The House of World Cultures not only organizes its own events, but also makes its rooms and infrastructure available to external hosts and cooperates with national and international universities, museums and other cultural institutions.

From the beginning, the building was a "propaganda building", according to its architect Hugh Stubbins , and was intended to promote freedom of speech and Western modernity. At that time , modernity was understood to mean abstract , non- representational art , atonal music and modern architecture as an international style .

From 1989 onwards, in addition to the German-American focus, it was also intended to serve as a forum for non-Western culture, “a kind of Goethe Institute with the opposite sign.” Many of those responsible had previously worked at Goethe Institutes and now brought what they did had seen abroad, to Berlin, for example in the China Avantgarde program . But the German position was not questioned.

From the mid-1990s, non-European curators organized a large part of the program. Now the House of World Cultures saw itself as a place for “everyone marginalized by Western cultural hegemony.” But this approach, “a kind of reverse Eurocentrism”, also turned out to be problematic.

Since 2006, under Scherer's directorship, the house has been "converted from a forum for the post-colonial world into a think tank of contemporary society - and into one of the most ambitious cultural institutions in Germany." It "operates at the highest academic level without feeling committed to academic conventions, it shows art, but has nothing to do with a museum. And it combines one with the other. "

The program of the House of World Cultures is geared towards the unique architectural structure of the building: exhibition hall, concert hall, theater, conference room, production facility for knowledge and experiences, excursion destination, architectural monument, academy and a permanent radio station, which currently hosts the Internet radio Reboot.fm resides.

The in-house series Labor Berlin supported projects by international artists in Berlin from May 2010 to January 2013. a. in solo exhibitions (e.g. 2011/12, Bethan Huws : Reading Duchamp ).

Since 2015, the House of World Cultures has been carrying out the large-scale project Anthropocene beyond the boundaries of specialist disciplines with a variety of forms and media: exhibitions, conferences, academies, workshops, photo projects, installations, publications. In May 2016, the Mimicry Games of the artist Philip Kojo Metz were given space, which he, in collaboration with Christoph Schlingensief's Operndorf Afrika, played by African football professionals in the jerseys of their former colonizers parallel to the 2016 UEFA European Championship in Dakar : a panel of experts commented on the game “ Germany versus France, live from Senegal ”from the House of World Cultures and discussed the questions raised as part of the art project about the traces of colonization that still exist.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : House of World Cultures  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Foreign Office and intermediary organizations in the field of foreign cultural policy . German Music Information Center (MIZ); accessed on June 8, 2016.
  2. ^ Rüdiger Schaper : House of World Cultures. Far West, Middle East . In: Der Tagesspiegel . August 18, 2007.
  3. ↑ Steffen de Rudder: A house makes propaganda. The Berlin Congress Hall and the Cold War. In: Bernd M. Scherer (Ed.): The house. The cultures. The world. 50 years: from the congress hall to the House of World Cultures. Nicolai, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89479-430-9 , pp. 28-41.
  4. ^ MS, AB: Episode 33/1988: The establishment of the House of World Cultures GmbH and Berlin as a European city of culture . House of World Cultures (HKW); accessed on June 8, 2016.
  5. ↑ dpa : House of World Cultures in Tiergarten is being renovated and closes in July . In: The world . January 9, 2006.
  6. ↑ Bernd M. Scherer . ( Memento of June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Humboldt University Berlin ; accessed on June 8, 2016.
  7. ↑ Imprint . HKW; accessed on June 8, 2016.
  8. ↑ RS: Berlin institution. House of Cultures: Foreign Office plans cuts . In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 7, 2010.
  9. ↑ Axel Besteher-Hegenbarth: John F. Kennedy: This is my country. US President in the Congress Hall. In: Bernd M. Scherer (Ed.), Axel Besteher-Hegenbarth (Red.), Dina Koschorreck (Red.): Das Haus. The cultures. The world. 50 years: from the congress hall to the House of World Cultures. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89479-430-9 , pp. 76-79.
  10. ↑ a b April 7, 1965. Controversial Bundestag session in West Berlin . rbb , The Berlin Wall , 2014; accessed on June 14, 2016.
  11. ↑ Steffen de Rudder: Architecture in the Cold War, Figure 4 . berliner-kongresshalle.de; accessed on June 8, 2016.
  12. ↑ Episode 10/1965 : Theater am Himmel. Soviet jet fighters dive into the congress hall . House of World Cultures (HKW), 2007; accessed on June 14, 2016.
  13. ↑ Jörg Schlaich , Karl Kordina , Hans-Jürgen Engell : Partial collapse of the Congress Hall Berlin - causes of damage. Summary report. In: Beton- und Stahlbetonbau , 75, No. 12, 1980, pp. 281–294, doi: 10.1002 / best.198000490 , source of supply and researchgate.net (registration required ).
  14. ↑ Episode 32/1987 : For the birthday: the reopened congress hall . In: HKW. accessed on June 14, 2016.
  15. ↑ Stubbins : "That was actually a propaganda building that was aimed at the Soviets , who were only a mile away." Quoted by Florian Heilmeyer: Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin . ( Memento from June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Stadtwandel Verlag, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86711-022-8 ; accessed on June 8, 2016.
    Original quotation in Steffen de Rudder: The architect Hugh Stubbins - American Modernism of the 1950s in Berlin. Jovis, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939633-23-5 , p. 66: “I knew at once, this was essentially a propaganda building aimed at the Soviets just half a mile away.” De Rudder's note: "Hugh Stubbins, Handwritten Memoirs, 1993". Translated into: Steffen de Rudder: A house makes propaganda. 2007, ISBN 978-3-89479-430-9 , p. 29.
  16. ↑ Frances Stonor Saunders: Who Pays the Bill ... The CIA and Cold War Culture. Siedler, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88680-695-2 .
    Frances Stonor Saunders: Modern art was CIA 'weapon'. Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural cold war. In: The Independent . October 21, 1995.
  17. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jörg Häntzschel: Cultural Institutions - The Ministry for Ideas. In: sueddeutsche.de . March 10, 2016, accessed May 6, 2016 . And in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 59, March 11, 2016, p. 13.
  18. ^ Labor Berlin . HKW; accessed on June 8, 2016.
  19. ^ Labor Berlin: Review . HKW; accessed on June 8, 2016.
  20. ↑ Mimicry Games TV broadcast with project description and video . HKW; accessed on September 17, 2016.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '8 "  N , 13 ° 21' 55"  E