Haus der Kulturen der Welt News

Ong Ken Sen, Curator of the Performing Arts Festival In Transit 2002 and 2003, and Artistic Director of TheatreWorks won the Fukuoka Asian Arts and Culture Prize 2010

Award Citation: "Ong Keng Sen is one of the most prolific theatre directors in the world. His productions are shaped by modern sensibility which brings together Asian and European performance traditions in striking way. ...
In all his activities, Ong Keng Sen is always asking himself the fundamental question, 'What does it mean, today, to live as an artist?' As a theatre director, he has fixed his gaze at the geographically vast expanse of Asia and the Western world, and also across a long stretch of historical memory. ... Mr. Ong Keng Sen is one of the leaders of the international performing world, whose work has successfully broken down the simplistic dualism which traditionally separate the classical from the contemporary arts, and the East from the West. By thus transcending barriers between genres and nations, he has contributed greatly to a revaluation of the fundamental and universal power of art through his sharp awareness of contemporary issues. For this contribution, he is truly worthy of the Arts and Culture Prize of the Fukuoka Prize. "

Lebenskunst - The Art of Survival

Initiative for Culture and Sustainability. An ecological crisis caused by climate change can only be thwarted if all social groups form an alliance and a global agreement can be secured. How can art, science, civil society and education cooperate successfully in bringing about new ideas for an ecological art of living for the 21st century, and thus create a different social practice? With a worldwide “Call for Future” the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal Cultural Foundation) is starting early 2010 an initiative for culture and sustainability in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. From the collected ideas, we will develop innovative projects that offer a high degree of practicality for everyday needs (architecture, mobility, nutrition, etc.) which will be presented at a major festival called: 'Lebenskunst - The Art of Survival' at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in the summer of 2011. In cooperation with the German UNESCO-commission, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes will also create a moderated program for the development of cultural projects on sustainability for young people in collaboration with schools and cultural institutions.

www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de

In the Desert of Modernity: Exhibition opens on the 2nd of October in Casablanca

From October 2 until November 30, 2009, Casamemoire in Casablanca and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt will be presenting the exhibition in Casablanca after it had been shown in Berlin in summer 2008.

The exhibition programme In the Desert of Modernity presents works of architecture and urban concepts that arose under the state of emergency that was colonial rule, a state influenced, in turn, by the anti-colonial liberation struggles and trans-national migration in North Africa and Western Europe. The example of the building projects dating from the 1950s and 1960s shows that European modernity would have been inconceivable without colonialism.

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New Opera from Liu Sola: The Afterlife of Li Jiantong

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Javier Téllez at the Kunsthaus Baselland

Javier Téllez film work, Caligari und der Schlafwandler (Caligari and the Sleepwalker, 2008), which materialized during the exhibition Rational/Irrational at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, will be launched at the Kunsthaus Baselland on 25 April. The museum will be presenting two other works by the Venezuelan artist. In 2004, in co-operation with a group of women patients at Rozelle Hospital in Sydney, he made the 2-channel video installation La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Rozelle Hospital) and Twelve and a Marionette. For the InSite biennale, which is devoted to art in public places, Téllez came up with One Flew over the Void. For this occasion, he organized a kind of public spectacle in co-operation with patients at the CESAM State Psychiatric Hospital near Mexicali.

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From April 18 – Junie 14, 2009 the Kunstverein Braunschweig is presenting the artist in a solo exhibition.

Cultural managers from 13 countries of Africa in Germany

For the first time, Goethe-Institut, in collaboration with InWEnt, is conducting an advanced training programme for cultural managers from 13 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of the project is to advance the management skills of cultural institutions, to develop a sustainable inner-African network and to promote the cooperation of African and German cultural institutions.

After the initial workshop last year in Munich, the second phase of the project will start on 16 March: the participants – producers, curators or employees of cultural institutions with several years of experience – will take part in a four-week advanced training course on topics such as project management, marketing, fundraising and public relations in Berlin.

Salif Sanfo from the cultural organization Afrik'heur (Burkina Faso), which seeks to gain international recognition for African artists and to establish art as an element of social education, will be attending the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin as an observer.

After returning home, the cultural managers will realise their own projects in cooperation with the local Goethe Institutes – the starting point for potential co-productions and long-term connections between the cultural institutions in Africa and Germany.

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