Reopening of the House of World Cultures: celebration with voodoo and nature spirits

When the new director Bonaventure Soy Bejeng Ndikung reopens the House of World Cultures (HKW) this Friday afternoon, he will usher in a new era with a welcome in the open air. After 17 years, he replaces HKW boss Bernd Scherer. And brings with it: a new program, a pluriversal world view, a more colorful look.

Flags dedicated to various nature spirits flutter in the driveway, murals glow on the wall, the concrete columns are covered with fabric installations. The entrance area features an installation made of used coffee sacks by Ibrahim Mahama, as seen at Documenta 2017. The ideology of the Cold War is swept out of the “pregnant oyster”, the architectural icon that the Americans built for the Interbau in 1957 and gave to West Berlin as a free congress center.

Jute bags, murals and carnival decorations

Benjamin Franklin’s concept of freedom, which is purely related to the West and which can be read in the foyer of the house, is overwritten with quotations from international philosophers, writers and sociologists, all halls, the foyer, cloakroom and roof are now named after artists and radical thinkers from India, Jamaica , Cuba and South Africa named.

The program in the House of World Cultures was also international, discursive and extended beyond the European horizon under Bernd Scherer. Under Ndikung, it becomes anti-imperialist, decolonial, “radically solidary with all those who work against exploitation, oppression and poverty worldwide”.

One breaks away from the spirit of the Western world rulers, missionaries, colonizers, from their understanding of art and archives and opens up to perspectives from Africa, the Americas, India and the South Seas. It should be done in a friendly and joyful way. On the opening weekend and thereafter.

A German cultural institution meets voodoo, meets carnival decorations, meets genealogies of black power. A large exhibition can be seen to mark the restart, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth will speak in the auditorium and several cleaning and renewal rituals have been announced.

Voodoo priest Jean-Daniel Lafontant from Port-au-Prince invokes Papa Legba, a door opener, guardian of the crossroads, mediator between the earthly and spiritual world. Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, along with representatives of the local Candomblé House of the Afro-Brazilian Cultural Forum, will summon nature spirits in a procession.

There should be room for something new

All of this is to be understood as an invitation to broaden your horizons. The way should be clear for peace, equality, togetherness. There is talk of conviviality, a joyful togetherness. The blueprint for the changes are the liberation struggles of indigenous societies around the world.

And in particular the concept of “quilombos” – settlements founded by freed people escaping slavery since the 17th century. In Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere, people from very different cultural backgrounds came together in new communities and acted together.

The philosophy of quilombismo, as formulated by the Brazilian artist, writer and politician Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011), is the common thread of the splendid exhibition “O Quilombismo” that spreads through all the rooms of the house. The diversity of visual expression is celebrated, with installations, ceramics, abstract paintings, fabric paintings, performances and music. It should be a feast for the senses. And hopefully something will open up for a friendlier, more equal coexistence.