Arts

Elemental Imprints – Bio Design Lab South Asia

OPEN CALL - Bio Design Lab South Asia
Elemental Imprints

Sri Lanka Lab - Seaweed: Fronds for Thought
18–29 May 2026 | Valaippadu, Kilinochchi | Based in Jaffna

An immersive research residency exploring seaweed as a sustainable, living material for design. The lab brings together designers, scientists, and interdisciplinary practitioners to experiment with seaweed through growing, shaping, and material exploration.

Focusing on biodesign and ecological thinking, the project investigates how seaweed can support regenerative, low-impact production systems and offer alternatives to resource-intensive materials. Through collaboration with local communities and ecosystems, participants will develop innovative, context-driven approaches that rethink the relationship between nature, design, and technology.

A transdisciplinary project
Travelling Plants

Travelling Plants is a transdisciplinary project curated by Lina Vincent and conceived by the Goethe-Institut Chennai, in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Madras and the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP). In Colombo the project will be presented in collaboration with Alliance Française de Colombo.

Current

Open Call
The Routes we take

We are looking for individual creatives, organizations or businesses whose creative work is centered around circular practices or symbiotic relationships with people and the planet. If this is you - apply now to be part of Sri Lanka’s first Creative Green Map! We are accepting applications starting from the 19th of March to the 14th of April 2024.

Music from the fringes of Sri Lanka
Thattu Pattu

Like knocking stones together to spark a flame, “Thattu Pattu” derives its meaning from two loan words between Sinhala and Tamil — the languages predominantly spoken in Sri Lanka. Thattu Pattu intends to spark a renewed interest in music from the fringes of Sri Lanka.

JISR - ON TOUR IN SOUTH ASIA

JISR is Arabic for “bridge”. The popular international ensemble performs in a wide variety of instrumentations with top-class virtuoso musicians. Rooted in several musical genres, this unconventional musical project builds bridges between Arabian, Afro, jazz, rock and classical music and takes the path of maximum musical variation and improvisation.

Music

Ruben Jeyasundaram as Guest Principal Cellist
Residency with the Chamber Music Society Colombo

Ruben Jeyasundaram is a versatile, multistylistic cellist, composer, and recording artist based in Hamburg, with over 30 years of experience and an international career.

Live Stream Concerts
Sound Room Sessions

The Sound Room Sessions are a series of live-streamed concerts from the Sound Room at Musicmatters in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka.

Audio-visual live performance
INTERFACE 2.0

The INTERFACE has been re-built from the ground up by technologist Lalindra Amarasekara and showcases a musical performance by electronic musicians Nigel Perera, Asvajit Boyle in collaboration Shivantha Fernando and Divanka Sewmin.

Nightlife
Bordermovement

Merging electronic music from South Asia and Germany.

PETTAH INTERCHANGE 2016 (Transworks House)

M.A.P // A.M.P

A project by Goethe‑Institut seeking to capture, document, explore and invite music, poetry, research and discourse on the intersections of music and activism in South Asia. The thematic frame of M.A.P // A.M.P interfaces with other topics, especially pertaining to civil society, minorities, feminism, and queer activism.

Dance and Theatre

A Dance workshop by Tiffani Achilleas and guests.
Adayalam in Motion

This movement workshop invites dancers and performance artists to engage in experimental choreography and movement exercises across genres.

The dancer and choreographer Tiffani Achilleas will facilitate the workshop by assembling techniques of different styles such as contemporary, jazz, modern dance, hip-hop as well as ancestral dances and bring in her experience in acting and collaborative live art. The focus of the workshop lies in exploring limits, question and (re-)define the concept of identity through dance and on how the body is informed by flows of identity, communal rituals and informal storytelling

11 – 16 June 2023
Voices in Motion

A four-day residential dance retreat on the South Coast of Sri Lanka for dancers and choreographers.Tell your own stories through the medium of dance and be intensively guided by Paul Upali Gouëllo, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand and Farah Deen.

Contemporary
Dance in Sri Lanka

The possibility to exchange ideas with different formats to professional dancers as well as students who would like to think outside the box of their traditional dance spectrum.

Exhibitions and Visual Arts

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 exhibition TECHNO WORLDS approaches this multi-layered phenomenon through the works of international artists. The exhibition will be on display at Rio Hotel & Cinema Complex in Colombo from 13 - 28 September 2024. The Colombo display of TECHNO WORLDS will feature an additional section on the history of Pettah Interchange (2012 -2016) in Sri Lanka.

Multidisciplinary Contemporary Art Festival
Colomboscope

Colomboscope is a contemporary arts festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue that has grown steadily within the cultural landscape of Colombo since 2013.

Residency program for lens-based artists
Shared Tides

A residency program for lens-based artists and photographers from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka intending to work with local resources to research and develop cross cultural bodies of work on shared histories, cultures and environments, supported by Goethe-Institut Chennai and Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka and implemented in collaboration with the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation and Kälam.

In Search of a Common Ground
Critical Zones

»Critical Zones. In Search of a Common Ground« was on view from 11 - 27 November, 2022 at J.D.A. Perera Gallery in Colombo. Mira Hirtz and Daria Mille are the curators of this traveling exhibition that was conceived and first exhibited at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and is based on a concept by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel.

Capturing the Current, submission by Nayanahari Abeynayake

Photo Documentation Seed Grants
Capturing the Current

While Sri Lanka is going through turbulent times alternating between despair and euphoria, the Goethe-Institut together with the Chennai Photo Biennale is pleased to present four emerging photographers' documentary projects that have been 'Capturing the Current' in Colombo, Galle and Jaffna during May and June 2022.

a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal

A trans*oceanic platform
kal

kal traces decolonial and feminist futures and pasts that are connected through bodies of water lapping at different shorelines.

Photography
Humanity & Earth

The photo project Humanity & Earth enabled young Sri Lankan photographers to concentrate on the relationship between humans and earth. The photographic documentation of ecological focal points in Sri Lanka and their aesthetic presentation were the thematic key elements.

Top

Arts

OPEN CALL - Bio Design Lab South Asia Elemental Imprints

A transdisciplinary project Travelling Plants

Current

Open Call The Routes we take

Music from the fringes of Sri Lanka Thattu Pattu

JISR - ON TOUR IN SOUTH ASIA

Music

Ruben Jeyasundaram as Guest Principal Cellist Residency with the Chamber Music Society Colombo

Live Stream Concerts Sound Room Sessions

Audio-visual live performance INTERFACE 2.0

Nightlife Bordermovement