The New Alphabet

Is fascism a negation of modernity or one of its constitutive features? Whose Universal? is a conference devoted to theorizing the poorly understood connection between settler colonialism and fascism, taking up Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.

Established histories of humankind reproduce imperial myths of civilization. A conference addresses the planetary crisis and the possibility of social change.

Inside the film: The exhibition presents Jean-Luc Godard’s Le livre d’image as a dynamic projection.

Five decades of activist filmmaking: Alanis Obomsawin's documentaries give insights into the lives and concerns of Indigenous communities.

Concrete between dynamic and static, the camera as a subject and the radical departure from narrative conventions: For the first time, the Counter Gravity retrospective shows the director’s collected architectural and recent narrative films.

In the collapse of the liberal capitalist world order, its illiberal core is exposed – the unfreedom of the dispossessed and the willingness of the propertied to use violence. Art, too, is the venue for these forces. A project on artistic life’s work: Perhaps what became art doesn’t necessarily have to remain art?

Schools are laboratories for the society of tomorrow. But how can they enable democratic, self-determined and sustainable action? In school year 2020/2021, with projects at eleven Berlin schools and a project group in Naples, students, along with artists and everyday experts, explore the question of how school can teach agency and engagement in young people’s lives.

All politics and social practices are a mere continuation of music by other means. That is one way to describe the approach of artist and musician Nicholas Bussmann.

As part of Education Shock, students teamed up with artists ans engaged with their school buildings of the 1960s and 1970s. They devised a manifesto for the design of good learning environments. Starting in June 2021, the eight participating Berlin schools and the students’ visions can be explored on audio walks.

In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg (1866-1929) created his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond to contemporary culture. His approach provides inspiration for today’s visually and digitally dominated world. At HKW all 63 panels of the Atlas will be recovered for the first time from Warburg’s original images.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite into orbit, winning the first stage of the “space race.” The West reacted to the “Sputnik crisis” with an unprecedented education offensive that soon dominated the social debate. Education Shock looks at the decades following the “shock” of the Sputnik crisis , in which education expanded on a global scale.

The pandemic forces us to pause in opposition to the economization of all spheres of life. How are artists and people who think about alternative forms of thought and action experiencing this existential situation?

Is music conceivable without musicians, instruments and recordings? “Traditional” instruments are becoming less and less important; easily accessible programs now make it possible to produce professional tracks even on a smartphone and software tools like auto-tune are becoming normalized. How does this change music, how does it change the live experience? And how are musicians dealing with the actual disappearance of concerts during the current pandemic?

Isipabbarabhumi is a Prakrit phrase from Jain cosmology referring to a special place above the heavens shaped like a parasol. It is where the disembodied souls of the perfected ones go to live in eternal isolation. There, sealed off from the rest of the cosmos, they are unable to interact with other souls, unable to hear them or be heard.

Copyright is in crisis. Since digitization at the latest it’s become clear that the many design flaws in copyright law impede the work of creative people. Musicians in particular struggle with the lack of legal certainty and inscrutable payment mechanisms. Digital technologies not only transform creative practices in music and media culture, but also how supply and access are regulated, such as by content filters.

Participatory art is more than art that invites participation. It relies on cooperation and dialog between all actors. So it’s about a kind of “re-literacy” of the understanding of art. But art, which sees itself not as a finished, material work, but as a collaborative process, eludes control.

Whether on the subway, on social media, at the museum – in fractions of a second, people classify the bodies surrounding them, often in categories like female/male, young/old, sick/healthy, alien/familiar, normal/different. Bodies are complex sign systems. They send intentional and unintentional messages, reflect traditions and current trends, which are often interpreted unconsciously by others.

The archive is omnipresent and always temporary. It reflects the realities of the past—while archived knowledge at the same time shapes the present. How do archives and their objects translate historical realities into contemporary narratives? What does this mean for the structure of archives, for their users, technologies, and forms of knowledge production? What can archives do for today’s societies?

From record collections to streaming services, from ethnological sound archives to remixed tracks, from audiotapes of wartime radio stations to reissue hype – the way we handle musical material from the past is changing. A discursive music festival on the questions: How is music collected, preserved, selected and reactivated today? What do collections and archives represent? And what can be found in them?

Are binary code, algorithms, and DNA the alphabets of today? The current explosion of knowledge is accompanied by the segmentation of the world into the smallest units. The binary code – with only two elements the greatest abstraction of the alphabetical principle – makes the polymorphism of the analog calculable.

How to unlearn established modes of referring to the world? As kick-off for the The New Alphabet School, HKW will set up a unique space for gathering, discussion and workshops in January 2019 – an (Un-)Learning Place.