Arts

Videostill Kristina Paustian, Positions, 2018 © die Künstlerin / n.b.k. | 1x1

Reflections on the public sphere
Beyond the screen

From September 2023 to early February 2024, the Goethe-Institut Montreal presents a programme of 20 video works from n.b.k Video-Forum’s extensive video art collection, curated by Anna Lena Seiser.

Techno Land

Techno in Germany
Techno Land

The dossier on the “Techno Land" attempts to provide an insight into Germany's electronic music scene of the early 90s, a unique era in German cultural history. With interviews and playlists with protagonists of the time!

Artbits

Street Art
#artbits

Covering walls and surfaces in cities around the world, Street Art is appreciated by thousands every day as they go about their daily business. In our constantly growing blog about this unique art form, we have captured art in the streets of Montreal, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Toronto and Washington, D.C., Berlin and other places.

Where the Wild Tunes Are

Music festivals in Germany
Where the Wild Tunes Are

Music festivals are an integral part of the German cultural landscape, and for many Germans they are among the most enjoyable activities of the year. Get to know some of the most interesting ones acoustically and in pictures!

Music

Musikrückblick 2023

The German Music Scene
Retrospective 2023

The German music scene reinvented itself in many ways in 2023. We look back on a year that was (among other aspects also) musically eventful, in which new collaborations emerged, new technological paths were broken and there were some surprising discoveries to be made between tradition and innovation.

Popcast

Music from Germany
Popcast

Rock, pop, hiphop, electro: at the beginning of every month we shine our search beacon into the nation’s studios and clubs from Kiel up north to Weilheim way down south. Together with Zündfunk, Bavarian Radio’s scene magazine, we showcase the latest music by riveting off-the-charts bands. Pop made in Germany can also be downloaded here by subscription.

Architecture

Brick, concrete and timber: architect Florian Nagler and his team experimented with the construction of energy-efficient housing using standard materials as a basis, with three model buildings in Bad Aibling.

Climate-friendly building
Less is more

Sophisticated building technology and wall insulation have for some years been considered a panacea for reducing CO2 emissions in the building industry. But it doesn’t take much to construct houses with a good climate balance. Also in building the truth is: less is more.

Tempelhofer Feld

The Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin
Experiment and Open Space

A 380-hectare open space in the midst of a major city: since Tempelhof Airport ceased operations in 2008, the grounds have evolved into Berlin’s largest city park.

kadawittfeldarchitektur, Keltské muzeum Glauberg

Top Ten
German Architects

High quality, utility and sustainability: German architects are internationally successful. The architectural critic Falk Jaeger presents his favourites among Germany's creative architects in short portraits.

Don Bosco in Augsburg | Thomas Wechs

Brutalist Architecture
Back to concrete!

Grey, rough, inhuman: Brutalist architecture has a bad reputation. But that is currently changing. Fact is that the concrete monsters that arose from the 1950’s through the 1970’s can also be described in other ways: as engrossing, immediate and bold.

The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg

Elbe Philharmonic Hall
Landmark with a mission

The Hamburg Elbe Philharmonic Hall has opened its doors. From former critics there is now little to be heard. But it remains to be seen whether the Elbe Philharmonic can fulfil the promise its proponents have been making throughout the years.

The Hamburg district of Wilhelmsburg – A petty-bourgeois idyll on the outskirts or a ghetto fantasy?

Urban Development
Strengthening Social Cohesion

Urban developers have long since realised that residential areas with large numbers of disadvantaged families need special attention. This can lead to the atmosphere significantly improving for the residents.

More on the arts

© deuffert&plischke

A project of deufert&plischke
A Worn World

Artistic assistance: Olivia Sofia

July, August, September 2022
Los Angeles, Montreal, Kuopio

With the support of the German Foreign Office and Exportförderung NRW

Initiated by the German duo deufert&plischke, A Worn World-Le monde que l'on porte addresses the themes of modesty, desire, pleasure and fear expressed through clothing. In close contact with the skin, the sensitive organ they "touch", they are the direct expression of a personal affirmation: they convey our stories, our memories, evoke our cultures and specific places, reflect sociological and economic biases, exalt our feelings of belonging and our resistance. Clothing has the power to address important themes such as self-image, gender identity, coming of age, family.

A Worn World - Le monde que l’on porte focuses on the personal, individual, and emotional movements that arise in the clothes we choose to wear and make them vehicles for social interaction.

From August 1 to 13, the Goethe-Institut Montreal was be transformed into a creative space where you could sew, draw, design, tell stories, reject them and sew them back together. All the encounters and projects realized during the workshops resulted in an installation and a photographic project, which culminated in a Ball of the Imaginary, a dance party celebrating this unique experience.

About deufert&plischke

The work of deufert&plischke goes beyond dance and theatre. It deals with individual participation and social everyday life within the artistic activity.

The works of deufert&plischke are open social spaces in which the public and things meet to live and exchange physical and sensory experiences. These spaces invite people of all generations to develop artistic and social situations. The work of deufert&plischke is interdisciplinary and connects people in different parts of the world.

deufert&plischke live and work in Schwelm near Wuppertal (NRW). Their projects have taken place in Berlin, Potsdam, Schwelm, Wuppertal, Essen, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hanover, Leipzig, Vienna, Bucharest, Prague, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Sofia, Helsinki, Kuopio, Bergen, Stamsund, Warsaw, Poznan, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Utrecht, New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Singapore.

deufert&plischke

“Petalclouds” by Art+Com at Changi Airport in Singapore.

Design Agency Art+Com
Art and communication blended into one

David vs. Goliath – who invented Google Earth? Thanks to a Netflix series, the design agency Art + Com is now known to a wider audience, but Art + Com has been regularly winning prizes for 30 years.

Panorama of Aleppo

Mohammad Al Attar’s “Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence”
What Does Theater Mean for the Revolution?

What form of theater can reflect changed realities? The journalist Katja Petrowskaja and the artist and playwright Mohammad Al Attar discuss Noam Chomsky and the international left, migration and military conflicts as lived experience, and theater as a political tool.

Author Meinecke at a reading.

Thomas Meinecke
A feminist at the turntable

An author, a DJ, and a musician, Thomas Meinecke is a versatile artist. He samples, quotes and deconstructs role models and the concept of what it means to be an author.

The working conditions for artists in Berlin are often hard, and few can make a living off their art alone.

Working conditions in the arts
Fair-trade music downloads

Many artists live in precarious conditions, and few can make a living off their art. Initiatives like fair music providers and fair-trade certificates for music labels show how a more equitable value chain could be created.

Creative minds often work together in coworking spaces.

The cultural and creative industries
Getting started: the ABCs of the creative industry

We explain the most important terms used in the creative industry, including defining a start-up, what innovation means, and how an incubator differs from an accelerator.

Gudrun Gut has been a driving force in the music scene since the 1980s.

Female DJs
More women working the turntables

female:pressure – a network helping to boost the number of female DJs.

Theatres often select classics because they are very popular with audiences. Actor Lars Eidinger plays Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Schaubühne in Berlin.

Financing theatre
Public funding and freedom of art

Public funding and freedom of art – do the two sit well together? There is no right to state arts funding and cultural establishments face – hypothetically at least – a constant threat of cuts. Labour‑intensive activities like theatre are particularly affected.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe | Resor House, project (Jackson Hole, Wyoming): Perspective of living room through south glass wall. 1937-1941 (unbuilt). New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) The Mies van der Rohe Archive

Modern Spatial Compositions
The architect Mies van der Rohe as a visual artist

“I never create an image when I want to build a house.“ Thus Mies van der Rohe stated during interview with the Bauwelt magazine in 1964. He did, however, produce a wealth of collages and montages. These spatial compositions are some of the most interesting and most beautiful works of Modernism.

Raumzeitpiraten - Exploded Cinema

RaumZeitPiraten in Montreal
The space is decisive

Inspired by the concept of extended cinema, based on art history, the RaumZeitPiraten created a conglomerate of optoacoustic devices and machines, the Exploded Cinema, in March 2019 in Montreal.

ulian Rosefeldt, 2015 | Cate Blanchett x 8: In the video installation “Manifesto” she recites the postulates of the avant-garde in a wide range of roles. |

Film Artist Julian Rosefeldt
Manifesto and Masquerade

The installation "Manifesto" by Julian Rosefeldt could be seen at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until 20 January 2019. In this project, apart from the opulently staged images, focus is placed on the eloquence of artistic manifestoes.

Anne Imhof | Faust | German Pavilion in Venice

Anne Imhof
Recalcitrant Bodies and Powerful Images

Anne Imhof occupies the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2017 with her performance "Faust". As with her previous works, the overwhelming images for Faust were developed collaboratively.

How about physically interacting with a historical building? Could heritage parkour be a new form of cultural mediation?

Cultural heritage
Heritage Parkour

Imagine climbing to the top of the Acropolis, running along the flanks of the sphinx or balancing on the gable of Cologne Cathedral. Parkour as cultural mediation is the focus of a pilot project.

Project Archive

TECHNO WORLDS - Visual BW

Project page
Techno Worlds

As a global phenomenon, techno has not only shaped music history, but has also set impulses that have impacted contemporary culture, art, pop culture, media consumption and technologies.

The Goethe-Institut's exhbition TECHNO WORLDS approaches this multi-layered phenomenon through the works of international artists.

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