House of World Cultures: reopening with big words

When the program was presented a few weeks ago, the atmosphere was programmed for a party, with an international group of curators celebrating themselves and the new director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. This coming weekend, the House of World Cultures in Berlin will open its doors with a “choreography of conviviality”. Community is in the foreground, more precisely: “an activation of the archives of our bodies and the central role of the physical as a place of discourse and social transformation.”

change of horizon

The HKW was founded in 1989 in the former congress hall, in clever anticipation of a world that would soon change dramatically. At that time, Russia was one of the countries with a future and was popular. And no matter how the world turned, the HKW developed into a success story. What is best recognized by how global perspectives have prevailed in other institutions in this country and especially in Berlin institutions.

Colonialism in the Castle

At the Technical University there is an international conference this week on the subject of “Cameroon’s hidden cultural heritage in Germany – making the invisible visible.” The art historian Bénédicte Savoy is in charge of this, and she and her team have undertaken an inventory of the colonial-era Cameroonian objects in German museums . The exemplary research concerns forty museums and archives.

Here, too, there is a lot of catching up to do: The Humboldt Forum is dedicated to the complex “The Emperor, the Berlin Palace and German Colonialism” on its own behalf, while the Maxim Gorki Theater, which has always been action-packed, is presenting an extensive program with “Gezi – Ten Years After”. It is reminiscent of the uprising of civil society against the recently re-elected Erdoğan regime. And the strengthening of authoritarian powers worldwide.

Wherever you look, the culture industry is about new horizons and the correction of old ones. A considerable politicization can be observed in almost all areas. The discourses do not break off, touch and promote each other. Sometimes they also obscure, even linguistically. Can they make a difference? That would also be an important question.