Magazine #26

Magazine #26, released in May 2016, presents one of our major funding programmes, one that highlights the culture of the Sinti and Roma: the RomArchive. Manuel Gogos asked international artists and cultural producers how they respond to clichés and how they view the controversy surrounding the self-assertion of this discriminated ethnic group. Do they wish to be defined as Roma who are also artists, or rather as artists who just happen to be Roma?

Once again in 2016, Berlin will be hosting the Berlin Biennale. Gregor Quack spoke with Lauren Boyle, one of the four curators of the 9th Berlin Biennale, about the basic ideas behind the international art show and learned more about her New York perspective on Berlin. The Dance Congress is another cultural institution of excellence which takes place every three years and will be staged in Hannover this year. It will open with a specially developed production by the internationally acclaimed French choreographer Boris Charmatz, whom Margarita Tsomou interviewed for this issue of our magazine.

What is the current state of Jewish cultural “identity”, particularly when drawing comparisons between Jews who have immigrated to Germany from countries around the world and those who have recently decided to move to Berlin from Israel? We asked members of the young generation what it means to live in Germany as a Jew, a country which puts store in its culture of remembrance.

And finally, the cultural scholar Kenneth Anders addresses the reinterpretation of the countryside as “landscape” as viewed from the eyes of an urban dweller. A fundamental and yet highly insightful piece for all those who are impacted by transformation processes in rural regions and who wish to shape them, as we hope to do with our new TRAFO programme.