Dear Pop-Kultur audience,
Once again, Pop-Kultur looks forward to an extensive programme outside of our live concerts and new Commissioned Works. It’s about time that we introduce our talk programme and everything beyond that. The big themes are pop, culture, art, creative spaces, role models, future, and past.
The opening talk on August 23rd features Berlin’s cultural senator Dr. Klaus Lederer, Anke Fesel, and Christian Reckmann of the festival »Zurück zu den Wurzeln«. It will focus on the importance of the city’s creative free spaces. Aside from that, we’ll speak with Yeşim Duman, Hengameh Yaghobifarah (Missy Magazine), and shooting star Ilgen-Nur about the ever-current topic of gender, though from a special perspective. Diana McCarty, co-founder of the international art radio station reboot.fm and Mo Loschelder and Bettina Wackernagel of the festival »Heroines of Sound« are all too aware of the persistence of a »Gender Gap«, and they call for an urgent appraisal of this situation. Other topics in the talk programme address the relationship between religion and pop music, the pop-cultural significance of the vocoder, and, in a collaboration with Off-Kultur, the essential question: »Pop-Kultur – Is This Even Necessary, Anyway?«
More than any previous edition, Pop-Kultur 2017 is united through recurring themes that facilitate interdisciplinary exchange and new perspectives. A special installation will resurrect the Berlin club Antje Øklesund, which was sadly demolished in 2016. Pop-Kultur 2017 will also join forces with female:pressure to present the results of their now-third FACTS survey for the first time, and then together with journalist Christine Kakaire, researcher Annie Goh, producer & label owner Sky Deep, and curator Marlene Engel will discuss the steps that need to be taken next.
Fans of qualitative pop documentation will get a glimpse into the world of the Sleaford Mods (in the film »Bunch Of Kunst«), the comeback of THE THE (in »The Inertia Variations«), and the colourful world of the female electronic music scene in Berlin (in »Raw Chicks.Berlin«). All film screenings will be followed by a discussion.
We’d also recommend taking a close look at our exhibition programme, which will be presented on the grounds of the Kulturbrauerei. The photographer Roland Owsnitzki introduces his exhibition »Keller – 80 Photos from the 80s«, which gives a comprehensive glimpse into the concert culture of West Berlin before the fall of the Wall – crazy hairstyles and outfits included. In addition, an exhibition curated by Tim Tetzner about Hype Stickers awaits you in the gallery of the cinema. Right, exactly: those are the ones stuck on your record sleeves and CD cases – the things you were never quite sure if you should take off.
And there you have it. As you can see, plenty of variety awaits you. The complete Pop-Kultur 2017 programme can be found here . And you can buy festival passes as well as day tickets for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday right here.
Foto-Credits /// Klaus Lederer (SenKultEuropa), Ilgen-Nur (Pressefoto), Sky Deep (Alexa Vachon), Max Dax (Luci Lux)