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

memperbesar gambar (© 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.

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,” says the Dane. “In Berlin I really enjoy being able to concentrate fully on my work.” 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 BKP’s funding comes from the Foreign Office, which finances a spacious apartment and provides enough money to live on. The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme also helps the international guests to build up new creative networks in Germany.

Since 1963 more than a thousand artists have lived and worked in the city for a year at the invitation of the BKP. What does the Artists-in-Berlin Programme expect from its guests in return? “Nothing at all,” replies BKP director Katharina Narbutovič succinctly. “We want the guests to find the greatest possible freedom for their artistic work in Berlin.” For some guests this also involves the unusual basic freedom of living in a democratic country without any censorship.

memperbesar gambar (© Jan Greune) 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 has not been published in Farsi to date. “I didn’t even submit it to the censors,” says Cheheltan, who was born in 1956 and is one of Iran’s most important authors. The year in Berlin meant a lot to him, he says.Even so there is no doubt in his mind that he will return to Tehran. He is simply too rooted in his city. But it’s still possible that Berlin might play a role in one of his next novels. Their time in Berlin finds its way into many of the guests’ work. In November 2010 an exhibition in the courtyard of the Federal Foreign Office will give an impression of the diversity and richness of the stimuli emanating from the BKP. The exhibition’s 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