Theme Day

The Whole Earth Catalog. Berlin Edition

Theme Day with Berlin Schools

Wed, Sep 4, 2013
10.30 am
Admission free

Tools for the future: students from four Berlin schools, working together with artists, film-makers, media educators and teachers, have realized their ideas for tomorrow. The starting point was the “Whole Earth Catalog” which was developed in the 1960s in the US. Now, the HKW’s “The Whole Earth Catalog. Berlin Edition” once again invites several schools to engage in artistic research and to present the analog results in the digital space.

What images do we have of tomorrow’s world? How can we meet our responsibilities toward the blue planet? These were the questions posed in the 1960s by the American Stewart Brand, who later coined the term “Personal Computer”, when he set about developing a handbook for the counter-culture. The result was the “The Whole Earth Catalog”, a compendium of the tools and manuals needed to apply individual initiative and a new consciousness to shaping an alternative future for humanity’s existence on the planet.

Based on the catalog and the exhibition “The Whole Earth”, which took place in the spring of 2013 in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, students developed analog objects, literary texts, images of all kinds and cinematic essays, reports and audio recordings as an artistic expression of their ideas, stories and Utopias. The results have been collated in a digital encyclopedia and will be presented during the theme days.

10:30 a.m.: Presentations and workshops for students and teachers (not open to the public)
3:00 p.m.: Public presentation
3.45 p.m.: Panel discussion: Analog/Digital/Whatever?
Students, teachers and project leaders discuss their artistic experiences in the analog and digital spaces.

An educational program accompanying the “Anthropocene Project” and the exhibition “The Whole Earth. California and the Disappearance of the Outside”.

In cooperation with: Oberstufenzentrum Kommunikations-, Informations- und Medientechnik (OSZ KIM) - Berlin Wedding, Anna-Seghers-Schule - Berlin Treptow-Köpenick, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule - Berlin Kreuzberg, Privatgymnasium der bundtStift_Schulen – Strausberg.