The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin-Programme: creating a space for art

Fotograf büyültme (© Jan Greune)

The list of guests of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme, Berliner Künstlerprogramm (BKP), reads like a Who’s Who of international contemporary cinema, music, literature and art. About 20 new names from all over the world are added every year. For twelve months, the artists live and work in Berlin at the invitation of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Berlin Senate (city government) and the DAAD, engaging in an exciting exchange with the city and the German cultural scene. Creative freedom and artistic dialogue are the central ideas behind the programme. The aim is to enable the artists, while in Berlin, to devote themselves fully to their work, free from the pressures of market mechanisms and censorship. An exhibition at the Federal Foreign Office in November 2010 gives an impression of the diversity of ideas inspired by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme.

A violin, a keyboard and a clarinet lie on the desk. In between there are two laptops and a large screen, some cables and headphones; several megaphones are within reach. We are visiting the home of composer Simon Steen-Andersen, who is currently in Berlin. It is evident from the first glance that the Dane has a highly creative way of dealing with sounds. This multiple-award-winning musician, born in 1976, enters undiscovered worlds of sound, works on experimental listening experiences, always looking for something new. He likes to use everyday sounds; he then dissects them and reassembles them in a surprising new context using classical instruments. In his work he often finds himself walking an artistic borderline between video art and performance. The results are stimulating and exciting – and sometimes simply funny.

Twelve months as a guest in Berlin

Simon Steen-Andersen is presenting his latest composition “Double Up” at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010, one of the most important events presenting New Music. “I’ve just completed it,” he says. “In Berlin I really enjoy being able to concentrate fully on my work – free from economic constraints.” This is exactly what the Artists-in-Berlin Programme (Berliner Künstlerprogramm, BKP) of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) wants. Simon Steen-Andersen is one of 18 composers, filmmakers, visual artists and writers from 17 different countries who were invited to the German capital in 2010. When the juries make their choice, their most important criterion is a high aesthetic quality in the work. Most of the funding for the programme stems from the Federal Foreign Office, with a smaller proportion coming from the Berlin Senate. This finances a spacious apartment and provides enough money on which to live. The BKP also helps the guests from Iceland, Haiti, the USA, Lebanon or Brazil to build up new creative networks in Berlin and Germany, and to enter into an artistic dialogue with the German cultural scene.

Interaction with the German art scene

Since 1963, more than a thousand artists have lived and worked in the city for a year at the invitation of the BKP. In the meantime the list of guests reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary cinema, music, literature and art. It also includes a lot of big names: Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, Luigi Nono, Susan Sontag, Mario Vargas Llosa – to name but a few. What does the BKP expect from its guests in return? “Nothing at all,” replies cultural manager Katharina Narbutovič succinctly. “We want the guests to find the greatest possible freedom for their artistic work in Berlin.” She has been director of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme since 2008. “You don’t need to tell artists to do something. Artists never sit around – and even when they do, their heads are working all the time.” It happens almost automatically that, during their time in Berlin, the guests enrich cultural life not only in the capital, but throughout Germany – with discussions, readings, film screenings, concerts, exhibitions, some of which are presented in the DAAD’s own gallery called “daadgalerie”. Furthermore, conversations with German fellow artists, with journalists, publishers, curators, academics or politicians lead to exciting interactions. As do the regular meetings the guests have with each other, e.g. at their five o’clock-tea or at the various events. “After a brief settling-in period, the artists are soon walking around the city, usually with wide open, highly sensitized membranes, and are suddenly working on projects they perhaps knew little or nothing about beforehand,” says Katharina Narbutovič. “The essence of the programme is the artistic freedom that the BKP has been offering its guests for almost 50 years.”

A “Free Port of the Arts”

This free space in today’s borderless Berlin generates a kind of artistic spontaneity, perhaps a desire to conquer new musical sound worlds with a megaphone, as Simon Steen-Andersen is currently trying out. For some guests this also involves the unusual elementary freedom of living in a democratic, pluralistic country without any censorship. The Hungarian writer György Konrád – who was a guest in Berlin 1977 – called the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme a “Free Port of the Arts”. You might call it a child of the Cold War. In the walled-in city of Berlin the aim was to create a wide-open window to topical international art and to attract creative stimuli into the city. At the same time the BKP invited “almost the entire non-conformist cultural elite of central and eastern Europe” to the city, says Katharina Narbutovič. The first academic studies have already been written on the role played by the BKP during the change processes that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain two decades ago. Today, the programme’s geographical focus is shifting, and the BKP is increasingly opening up to the new epicentres of the globalized world. Even more than in the past, Katharina Narbutovič would like to direct the focus towards artists from non-European, non-Western cultures. “The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme should take a lead in dialogue with these regions,” she says. At the same time she would like to find “new networks, interlocutors for artistic dialogue and cultural ambassadors for Germany” through the scholarships. Fotograf büyültme (© Sonja Werner)

Inspiration from Berlin

Amir Hassan Cheheltan from Iran was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme in 2009. In the same year his novel “Teheran Revolutionsstrasse” (Tehran Revolution Road) was published in German translation – the book’s first publication anywhere in the world. It is a moving book combining drama with everyday life in vivid, blunt language. But it has still not been published in Farsi. “I didn’t even submit it to the censors,” the author says. Cheheltan, who was born in 1956, is one of Iran’s most important authors. His keenly observed essays have also been appearing regularly for years in the arts sections of major German newspapers. “Many Germans have said that the novel enables them to understand for the first time what moves people in Iran,” he says. He was glad to hear that. “After all, one of the most important tasks of literature is to create understanding.” Cheheltan is recognized and admired in his homeland – but he also has enemies there. He has survived two assassination attempts. The year in Berlin meant a lot to him, he says; it had been a “wonderful opportunity”. He was really enthusiastic about the city: “Berlin is perhaps the only major city that does not have the negative sides of a metropolis. The city is full of people, I love that, but everything also follows an order.” Even so, he misses Tehran, that chaotic lively city, as well as his neighbours and friends, the shops and smells – and above all the language, his most important tool. Although his scholarship has expired, Cheheltan is initially staying on in Berlin to work with his translator on the German editions of two new novels. But there is no doubt in his mind that he will return to Tehran, even though there is always a certain amount of risk involved in living there as an author. He is simply too rooted in his city, its people are the focus of his books. Even so, he says, it’s still possible that Berlin might play a role in one of his next novels.

“Writing the Berlin Way”

In one way or another, their time in Berlin finds its way into many of the guests’ work – as in the case of Micha Ullman’s “Bibliothek” (Library) memorial on Bebelplatz, Cees Nooteboom’s book “Berliner Notizen” (Berlin Notes), or Lars Gustafsson’s novel pentalogy “Risse in der Mauer” (Cracks in the Wall). Some keep coming back to Berlin, while others have settled permanently in the city. In November 2010 an exhibition of 35 photographic portraits of world famous authors from among the guests of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme will be opened in the courtyard of the Federal Foreign Office, providing an impression of the diversity and richness of the stimuli emanating from the BKP. The exhibition title is a quote from the Chinese poet Yang Lian, who was a guest in Berlin in 1991: “Writing the Berlin Way” – which means writing “that does not look at the price of freedom of thought”.

Text: Janet Schayan/Societäts-Verlag

Facts and figures

Founded in 1963 as the Artists-in-Residence Programme by the Ford Foundation, the Artists-in-Berlin Programme (Berliner Künstlerprogramm) was taken over by the DAAD in 1965. // More than 1,000 international artists have come to the city to date with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. // As a rule, the scholarships are awarded to visual artists, writers and composers for a period of twelve months. // Filmmakers are invited to Berlin for six months. // The selection process is based on applications, with the exception of the Visual Arts category, where the guests are nominated.// Three alumni of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme have so far been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.