Stopover Berlin. Asia-Pacific Changes the World

Editor: Annette Hulek
26,6 x 21 cm, 168 pages
with photographies by Henning Maier-Jansen, Peter Riedlinger a.o.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2007
ISBN: 978-3-9812080-1-6 (English)
ISBN: 978-3-9812080-0-9 (German)
Price: € 20

Out of print, possibly available in antiquarian bookshops.

“We are the first generation to spend our entire life in the era following the age of Western dominance.”
- Thant Myint-U, Burmese historian and United Nations official

What changes in the world are attributable to changes in the Asian-Pacific area? The cultural events program of the Asia-Pacific Weeks in Berlin in September 2007 took a look at this question. The 14-day festival immersed participants in an intercultural exchange – as a kind of stopover and snapshot – with an open outcome.

The present book on the festival looks back on the artists and curators, the origins and planning of artworks and projects, the backgrounds and motivations of those involved. It documents over 200 selected events, whose preparation involved more than sixty institutions here in Berlin. It describes artistic strategies, observes musicians and their fans; gives directors, authors, fashion and product designers an opportunity to speak; it accompanies them as they go about their present lives and traces their histories. It also shows ways in which young Berliners are dealing creatively with all this artistic potential.

The book conveys a picture of diverse elements in a changeable network: with questionnaires, excerpts, collections, quotations, data, interviews and impressions that reveal dynamic re-evaluation processes. The written material is accompanied by large-format photographs that capture not only the events themselves, but also the equally intensive moments that preceded and followed them: such as a pop group getting ready to sign autographs, or models waiting to make their appearance. It communicates a picture of a world that seeks to impress not by uniformity, but by the diversity of the possibilities it contains.