The writer China Miéville has informed us of his resignation from his DAAD Artists-in-Berlin fellowship 2024. We deeply regret his decision. As DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, we do our best to create open spaces and offer protection, support, and exchange to artists from all over the world. The diversity of voices we host, the diversity of perspectives we make visible and audible, demonstrate our commitment especially to the constitutionally protected freedom of art and science. We remain extremely committed to contributing to a vivid and diverse culture and are convinced that Berlin is exactly the right place for this.
Making it Matter: Digitizing and communicating of the archive
Thanks to funding from the digiS Research Center, the Artists-in-Berlin Program is cataloging and digitizing archive material in 2024 with an eye toward Berlin’s contemporary and cultural history from previously underrepresented perspectives. The focus is on collaborative communication in conjunction with the Writing Berlin research project at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Deutsche Kinemathek, and with the research project on Jewish film history at the Babelsberg Film University.
Among the materials being digitized and examined, for instance, are unpublished interviews conducted by Shelly Silver with Berliners in 1992, as well as the complex and largely unknown filmic work of Yugoslavian artist Irena Vrkljan, who came to Berlin in 1966 as one of the first female fellowship recipients. A variety of voices, sounds, images, and histories tell of experiences of exile, migration, and queer and feminist communities. The existing educational project Mapping the Archive forms a starting point for creating further access to digitized material with contemporary and cultural-historical relevance for Berlin.
The digitization of the archive is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Research and Competence Centre for Digitization Berlin (digiS).
Fellows of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program 2024
The outstanding artists who will be awarded residencies in Berlin in 2024 have been announced. Thanks to a cooperation with the Matschinksy-Denninghoff Foundation under the umbrella of the Berlinische Galerie, a new collective fellowship will be made possible for the first time, which will be awarded to the Filipino collective Green Papaya in 2024. The new fellows were selected from around six hundred applications from 105 countries in the fields of literature, film and music & sound. In the visual arts category, the Fellows were nominated and selected by an international jury. The list of Fellows and the members of all participating juries can be found on our website.
Website “Mapping the Archive” now online
Thanks to funding from Research and Competence Center Digitalization Berlin (digiS) and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, parts of our audiovisual archive have been digitized. Mapping the Archive now makes selected works freely accessible online for the first time. A map of Berlin shows the places that the Fellows were particularly interested in during their stay in the 1970s to 1990s. Mapping the Archive explores the Fellows relationships and movements through Berlin, thus tracing a previously invisible chronicle of the city.
New release: Mario Verandi, Lucent Shores
Lucent Shores features Mario Verandi‘s electroacoustic music compositions produced between 2002 and 2017. The album complement’s Verandi’s Orillas Distantes – Distant Shores, an album released in 2001 that contains his early electroacoustic music works (1995 – 2000). The two albums reveal the composer’s strong background in the tradition of acousmatic music whose roots go back to the musique concrete of the 1940s. Mario Verandi explores with intensity and imagination the use of recognizable sound sources in combination with electronic transformations of these same materials blurring the boundaries between real and abstract soundworlds.
The production was supported by the Artists-in-Berlin Program.
CD / 2023
Order here
OPEN CALL: OSCILLATIONS – Sonic Inquiries and Practices
Attuned to trans-hemispheric engagements in sound and knowledge production, the Akademie der Künste, the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur are pleased to announce the start of a joint project, OSCILLATIONS: Sonic Inquiries and Practices, and an open call for artist residency applications from sound artists, scholars and cultural practitioners based in southern Africa.
Under the sign of dialogue, exchange and cooperation, OSCILLATIONS aims to support artist residencies; sonic installations and exhibitions; listening and reading sessions; broadcast and podcast content; and workshops and archive experiments in Berlin, Cape Town and cyberspace.
This Open Call for Residencies is aimed at sound artists, scholars and cultural practitioners based in southern Africa. Directed at mid-career sound artists, the Berlin open call, partly supported by the DAAD Arts & Media Program, includes three residencies, each for a period of two months. In Cape Town, the call includes two two-month residencies for mid-career practitioners and two one-month residencies for entrants new to the field of sonic inquiry and practice. Residencies can be taken up in the June 2023 – March 2024 period.
Further information and Open Call for Residencies
Oscillations is a project by the Academy of the Arts, Berlin, Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town), and Deutschlandfunk Kultur / Klangkunst (Berlin)
Funded within the Fonds TURN2 der Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Funded by Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.
Supported by the DAAD Arts & Media Program, Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf, and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS)
Application process for 2024 scholarships opened
The application process for the 2024 fellowships of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm opened today. The application deadline is December 1, 2022.
The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program is one of Europe’s most prestigious grants. Each year, around. twenty outstanding practitioners from diverse cultural backgrounds are invited to Berlin to focus on their work and actively engage with the city’s vibrant cultural scene. To be eligible for this fellowship, artists must have developed their own distinguished artistic voice and body of work. The grant is not awarded to students, however, there is no age limitation upwards.
Applications for literature, music & sound (12 months residency) and film grants (6 months residency) can be submitted from October 17 until December 1, 2022. In the visual arts section, an appointment committee proposes invitations to internationally renowned artists; i.e. applications in the visual arts section are not possible.
If you would like to apply, please use only the current information and forms at Berliner Künstlerprogramm Application.
International Relief Fund 2021
The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program Supports Twelve Cultural Projects Abroad
On the initiative of the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Foreign Office, the International Relief Fund for Organizations in Culture and Education was set up in 2020 with various partners to support organizations from culture and education abroad in dealing with the anticipated effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Given its visible effectiveness and the ongoing urgency, the partners have decided to re-launch the International Relief Fund in 2021 and expand the funding amount and funding period. From September 2021 to February 2022, funds totaling around six million euros will be distributed to selected cultural and educational organizations in fifty-nine countries. The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program will again be participating in this consortium in 2021 and will support twelve cultural projects with its own program priorities. The projects were selected from twenty-seven submitted proposals.
Thanks to this funding program, twelve organizations will be able to implement their projects between September and December 2021 with a focus on further training for cultural practitioners, archival work, and the organization of fellowship programs in the fields of literature, film, and visual arts. Also listed are twice-supported projects that already received funding during the first phase of the Relief Fund.
Abuja Literary Society, Abuja, Nigeria: “ALITFEST” – Abuja Literary and Arts Festival
Beirut DC, Lebanon: “Maskoon Fantastic Lab“, continuing education for filmmakers
Asociación Cultural Bisagra, Peru: “Commoning Future”: discursive platform for arts practitioners
Archivo de la Memoria Trans, Buenos Aires, Argentina: archive for transgender history
Fold Media Collective Initiatives, Colombo, Sri Lanka: „Colomboscope“, festival for contemporary art
Les Archives Bouanani, Rabat, Morocco: inventorying the archives of director Ahmed Bouanani
Malaysia Design Archive, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: archive of Malaysian visual culture
Más Arte Más Acción, Nuquí, Chocó, Colombia: “Reactivating the Territory for Coexistence”
Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Tamale, Ghana: “Tech Class”
SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico: fellowship program for arts practitioners
Studio Klampisan, Banyuwangi, Indonesia: „Mama’s Imagination Kitchen“: artistic research, lectures, videos
Fundación TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica; fellowships for Central American cultural workers
The funded organizations are characterized by their, in some cases, long-term collaborative partnerships with former fellows of the Artists-in-Berlin program. Their local work is supported with 252,000 euros from funds from the German Federal Foreign Office.
Background:
The International Relief Fund 2020 was set up in 2020 on the initiative of the Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut together with partners in order to quickly support organizations from culture and education abroad in dealing with the anticipated effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Foreign Office provided around three million euros in basic emergency aid, which was increased to approximately six million euros in 2021. The Goethe Institute coordinated the selection process and the allocation of funds. Cultural organizations and private foundations from Germany also added further funds or participated with their own projects including the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, the German UNESCO Commission, the S. Fischer Stiftung, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, and the Siemens Foundation. www.goethe.de/hilfsfonds
Federal Cross of Merit for Svetlana Alexievich
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded the Belarusian Nobel laureate in literature Svetlana Alexievich the Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on June 15 in Bellevue Palace. Especially in her works “War Has No Female Face” and “The Last Witnesses” she impressively portrays the atrocities of the Second World War and the suffering of the civilian population.
Svetlana Alexievich is a Fellow of the Martin Roth Initiative at the DAAD’s Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program.
Video recordings of Emre Dündar’s Portrait Concert online now
The video recordings of Emre Dündar’s Portrait Concert are online now!
Récit ductile (2017-2019) 16‘
for clarinet and string quartet
Vagabond III (2020) 10‘
for flute, accordion and violoncello
Parergon to »De vulgari eloquentia« (2017/2020)
for speaker, contrabass clarinet, keyboard and electronics
World premiere
Soirée gothique (2018) 25’
for soprano and ensemble
on poems by Emily Dickinson
Recorded live at Ultraschall Berlin – festival for contemporary music on January 23rd, 2021 with Ensemble KNM Berlin and guests.
camera+editing: Eunice Maurice + Ursula Böckler
Music is the central theme of Turkish composer Emre Dündar’s work. For many years he has collected sonic memories, vocal recordings, sounds, phonetic peculiarities and melodies of the countless dialects and, in some cases, dying languages of Turkey, which he then incorporates into his music.
A selection of his works has been presented to Berlin audiences for the first time in an ultraschall Festival portrait concert, organized in cooperation with the Artists-in-Berlin Program. Ensemble KNM performed this chamber concert under the direction of Titus Engel and featuring soloists Theo Nabicht (bass clarinet) and Eva Resch (soprano). For the piece Parergon to de Vulgari Eloquentia, Emre Dündar also performed on stage.
Concert information can be found here.
Emre Dündar was music division fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020-21.
Listen online now: Portrait concert Emre Dündar
Portrait Emre Dündar on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Hörspielmagazin (in German)