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Among the materials being digitized and examined, for instance, are unpublished interviews conducted by Shelly Silver with Berliners in 1992, as well as the complex and largely unknown filmic work of Yugoslavian artist Irena Vrkljan, who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.
Fellows of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2023
The list of outstanding artists selected to receive Berlin residencies in 2023 is now set. From about five hundred applications from 88 countries were selected:
Visual Arts
Esvin Alarcón Lam, Guatemala
Helena Uambembe, South Africa
Sam Vernon, USA
Jiyoung Yoon, South Korea
Film
Gustavo Vinagre, Brazil
Susana De Sousa Dias, Portugal
Radu Jude, Romania
Literature
Lana Bastašić, Bosnien
Amanda Lee Koe, Singapur
Nhã Thuyên, Vietnam
Rajesh Parameswaran, USA
Cristina Rivera Garza, Mexiko
Kinga Tóth, Ungarn
Music & Sound
Ting-Jung Chen, Taiwan
Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, Thailand
Muqata’a, Palästinensische Gebiete
Sonja Mutić, Serbien/Kroatien
The artists were selected by the following expert jury panel:
Visual Arts: Nana Adusei-Poku, assistant professor in African Diasporic Art History, University of California Berkeley; Daniel Garza Usabiaga, curator and researcher, Mexico City, Nida Ghouse, visiting lecturer at Princeton University and co-artistic director of the Singapore Biennale 2022, New York / Berlin; Angela Harutyunyan, associate professor, American University, Beirut; Paula Nascimento, architect and curator, Luanda; Haegue Yang, artist and professor, Städelschule, Berlin / Seoul
Film: Enoka Ayemba, film curator and scholar, Berlin; Enrico Ippolito, journalist and author, Berlin; Birgit Kohler, co-director, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V., Berlin; Maria Mohr, filmmaker, Berlin; Ines Johnson-Spain, filmmaker, Berlin
Literature: Yevgeniy Breyger, poet, translator and editor, Frankfurt a.M.; Olga Grjasnowa, writer, Berlin; David Hugendick, literary editor and journalist, ZEIT ONLINE, Berlin; Benjamin Loy, literary scholar, critic and translator, Vienna; Samir Sellami, literary scholar and critic, Berlin; Eva Tepest, writer and journalist, Berlin
Music & Sound: Ketan Bhatti, composer, musician & artistic director, Trickster Orchestra, Berlin; Ash Fure, composer & artistic co-director, The Industry, Boston / Los Angeles; Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen, executive & artistic director, Ultima, Oslo; Talía Vega León, cultural Manager, director and curator of Radical Sounds Latin America, Berlin; meLê yamomo, researcher, theatre maker and composer, Amsterdam / Berlin; Du Yun, composer and performer, New York City
The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program awards internationally highly regarded fellowships. Since 1963, over 1300 outstanding international visual artists, authors, filmmakers, composers, and sound artists have been invited to live and work in Berlin. As part of its long-term support of artists, works by current and former guests are presented at the daadgalerie in Kreuzberg as well as at partner institutions in Berlin, around Germany and also abroad.
For further information, please contact Silvia Fehrmann, Director Artists-in-Berlin Program (presse.bkp@daad.de)
Publication by Mahmoud Khaled out on February 1st, 2022
This book is an extension and continuation of an artwork titled Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man by artist Mahmoud Khaled, in which he imagines a house museum for an anonymous person who has entered Egypt’s queer history as an “unknown crying man” and iconic image.
Mahmoud Khaled was able to continue and complete his work on the performative publication A Book on a Proposed House Museum for an Unknown Crying Man during his residency as a Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020 and 2021.
With texts by: Sara El Adl, Bassam El Baroni, Edwin Nasr, Hannah Elsisi, Lina Attalah, Ismail Fayed, Hicham Awad
The book is edited by Mahmoud Khaled & Sara El Adl, published by DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and was designed by Engy Aly.
Press Release – Fellows of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2022
The list of outstanding artists selected to receive Berlin residencies in 2022 is now set:
Visual Arts
Patricia Belli, Nicaragua
MADEYOULOOK (Molemo Moiloa & Nare Mokgotho), South Africa
Tuli-Mekondjo, Namibia
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Poland
Zoncy Heavenly, Myanmar
Film
Burak Çevik, Turkey
Paula Maria Gaitán, Colombia / Brasil
Shireen Seno,Philippines
Literature
Anuk Arudpragasam, Sri Lanka
Jay Bernard, United Kingdom
Volha Hapeyeva, Belarus
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Uganda
Maaza Mengiste, Ethopia / USA
Faruk Šehić, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Music & Sound
Merche Blasco, Spain
Nandita Kumar, India / New Zealand
Elaine Mitchener, United Kingdom
Bárbara Lázara, Mexico
The artists were selected by the following expert jury panels:
Visual Arts: Zoe Butt, curator & artistic director Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City; Mariana Castillo Deball, artist & professor, Berlin; Miguel A. López, curator, writer and researcher, Lima; Nontobeko Ntombela, department head, art history, Wits University, Johannesburg; Alya Sebti, curator & director ifa Galerie, Berlin; Joanna Warsza, co-curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale and Program Director of CuratorLab at Konstfack University, Berlin.
Film: Ines Johnson-Spain, Filmmaker, Berlin; Birgit Kohler, co-Director Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art e.V., Berlin; Zhenhua Li, Founder of Asiatischer Künstlerverein, Film curator for Art Basel Hongkong & Founder of Laboratory Art Beijing, Zurich / Beijing; Maria Mohr, filmmaker, Berlin; Cristina Nord, Director Berlinale Forum, Berlin; Can Sungu, Artistic Director, bi’bak & Sinema Transtopia, Berlin.
Literature: Ibou Diop, literary scholar, Berlin; Lena Gorelik, writer and journalist, Munich; Federico Italiano, poet and literary scholar, Vienna; Verena Lueken, writer and critic, Frankfurt; Alexandra Ortiz Wallner, literary scholar, San José / Berlin; Mathias Zeiske, literary mediator and curator, Berlin.
Music & Sound: Ata Ebtekar, musician (aka Sote) & curator, Tehran; Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen, managing director & artistic director, Ultima, Oslo; Rebekah Heller, musician & curator, New York; Luka Mukhavele, musicologist & musician, Weimar; Elke Moltrecht, musicologist & curator, Berlin; Susanna Niedermayr, Editor & Co-Producer ORF Ö1 Zeit-Ton & Co-Curator, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, Vienna.
The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program awards internationally highly regarded fellowships. Since 1963, over 1000 outstanding international visual artists, authors, filmmakers, composers, and sound artists have been invited to live and work in Berlin. As part of its long-term support of artists, works by current and former guests are presented at the daadgalerie in Kreuzberg as well as at partner institutions in Berlin, around Germany and also abroad.
For further information, please contact Silvia Fehrmann, Director Artists-in-Berlin Program (presse.bkp@daad.de)
Download Press Release here