Flohio – Credit: Janto Djassi
What a wonderful festival! Incredible!
festival
The time has finally come!
Dear friends of Pop-Kultur!
The time has finally come: on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, as guests at the Kulturbrauerei in Prenzlauer Berg, we will present our Commissioned Works, i.e. world premieres of music performances, concerts, talks, readings, films, and an exhibition, all specially produced for us. We’ve been busy for an entire year preparing for these three days. If you’d like to learn everything there is to know about the status quo of pop in the year 2018, you’ve come to the right place.
Let yourself wander and drift — after all, the most impressive experiences are often the ones we aren’t prepared for! And the most standout concerts are often the ones given by artists we never knew existed.
What’s left to say? Well, not much. We’ve described our programme in detail in past newsletters; you can find extensive information about all of our artists on Facebook and Instagram, both leading up to and during the festival; and of course you can also continue to consult our website. Visit our Ticketshop to purchase day passes and festival passes as well as 5€ tickets for the film and talk programme.
If we don’t see each other there, we’ll be hearing from each other again over the next year. We promise!
Warm regards,
Pop-Kultur
Live Programme and Commissioned Works / Talks, Lectures, and Films / Talks and Film Tickets
Dear Friends of Pop-Kultur!
Our programme is now complete, and it includes a total of about 100 events – phew!
Additions to the Live Programme
Before we offer a little glimpse into our programme of talk, panel, film, and exhibitions, there’s some big news on the live music front: The Last Poets are coming to perform for us. This group of African-American musicians and poets was founded in 1968 in Harlem. If it hadn’t been for them, it wouldn’t have been for rap, basically. Also new to the programme: North America’s … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Belgium’s Choolers Division, and Norway’s Sassy 009.
Talks and Lectures
The social, cultural, political and economic action of boycotting has been a recurring theme throughout the life of Israeli writer Lizzie Doron, who will speak with Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s Senator for Culture and Media, on the first evening of the festival. Here Lederer summarises the topic from his perspective: »Is the boycott of art and of cultural exchange an effective method of bringing about change and rapprochement in a complex conflict? I doubt it very much. Such boycotts harden fronts where art dialogues might make progress. Calls for boycott against Israel are defined by demonisation and double standards, and they serve and promote anti-semitic thinking patterns«. Meanwhile, the author Josefine Rieks (»Serverland«) promises »a combination of contemporary lecture und classic YouTube party«, and more talks traverse topics like the disappearance of subcultural spaces (Kosmetiksalon Babette, Jonny Knüppel) and the new communication style between fans and artists (one of the talks initiated by journalist Salwa Houmsi, with rapper Ahzjumjot and Backspin editor-in-chief Kevin Rühländer) or act as components of our commissioned works.
Commissioned Works
In the commissioned work »Pop-Hayat« curated by Yeşim Duman, the Golden Pudel resident, ByteFM presenter, female:pressure activist, and event organiser condenses her involvement in the queer club scene and the post-migrant discourse, bringing a diverse array of creative types onto the stages of our festival. Her project encompasses a screening of the film »Shakedown« as well as round-table discussions with writer Fatma Aydemir, rapper Lady Bitch Ray, MISSY Magazine journalist Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, and the artists Ebru Düzgün aka Ebow aka Gaddafi Gals. As another part of »Pop-Hayat«, we will set up the installation »T-Unlimited – the Pop-Hayat Çaystube« by the Berlin artist Nuray Demir in front of the Soda Club. And we’ve even put Friday night’s closing party at Frannz Club in Duman’s hands.
When in doubt, Lydia Lunch has always been in favor of being against things. Fittingly, the movement she and her contemporaries built in late-1970s New York was called No Wave. Because punk didn’t go far enough in its break with rock’n’roll, Lunch and her kindred spirits pushed the abandoned genre to its extreme, i.e. until it was on its very head. So where was No Wave headed, and where is it heading now? Lunch will answer these questions via a special commissioned work, a discussion, and a workshop.
Irmin Schmidt played with the best band in the world and hasn’t stopped writing »Musikgeschichten« [»Music Stories«] since. On three evenings at Pop-Kultur, he will share memories from a long life and show films that he himself or his band CAN set to music. Alongside screenings of »Mord in Eberswalde« [»Murder in Eberswalde«] and »Deadlock«, Schmidt will speak with Stephan Wagner, the director of the »Mord in Eberswalde«, about the movie’s soundtrack. TAZ editor Ulrich Gutmair will present the composer with recordings of unfamiliar music, and Schmidt will speak with the writer Max Dax about the recently-published band biography »All Gates Open: The Story of Can«.
The Full Programme
For detailed information about all programme elements, including those we couldn’t mention here because of limited space, visit our website—plus we’re also pretty darn active on Facebook and Instagram.
Tickets for Talks and Films
As was the case last year, we’re offering tickets—one for each of the three festival days—that allow entrance to all the given day’s talks and film screenings. They cost €5 + fees.
Pop-Kultur Nachwuchs
The deadline for our »Pop-Kultur Nachwuchs« workshop programme has passed. We’re looking forward to reviewing 779 applications from 63 countries and to welcoming illustrious mentors such as moderator Salwa Houmsi and artists such as ANDRRA, Balbina, Ilgen-Nur, International Music, Swutscher, and Vivien Goldman.
Pop-Kultur Lokal
The series »Pop-Kultur lokal«, which until now has taken place at Monarch and Refugio Berlin, will make another stop on June 20th at Schrippe Hawaii with the event »Mash Banger«. See you there!
Best wishes,
Pop-Kultur
We have to talk: Pop-Kultur 2017 presents diverse talk-, film-, and exhibition programmes
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)