From 14 September 2024, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) invites over 50 artists, scholars and activists from Berlin and around the world to reflect on religious, social, class-related, national, sexual, disciplinary and other forms of transgression and transgression.
Image above: Design: Studio Yukiko / HKW
If the so-called norm has always excluded, is the ‘deviant’ possibly inclusive and more hospitable? And what role can artists play in imagining deviance from the norm as a method?
A person who crosses borders, who is marginalised and excluded, does not need to ask for forgiveness because they are a ‘guest worker’ or their descendant, because they are seeking refuge, because they do not believe in someone else’s god or in their own gods and ancestors, because they are queer, because they are working for a better environment and future or, in short, because they are considered to be deviant from the norm. A deviation that is not concerned with undoing something, but rather with making room for a multitude of possibilities of coexistence and togetherness and even interlocking.
Through a series of artworks, performances and discussions, this research and exhibition project reflects on the nature of border crossing and questions both the normativity and the structures that uphold it.
The project Forgive Us Our Trespasses is about thwarting and queering everything that claims normativity. It is about bending over backwards, treading the winding paths of life, getting lost and finding your way back. It is about transgression as a means of resistance – without asking for forgiveness.
homelands. A project of the House of World Cultures
Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld is the first statement of the heimaten project of the House of World Cultures.
According to Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the German Basic Law, all state authority emanates from the people. Some things can be said with certainty about this people: almost 30 per cent have a history of migration, people desire different things, have different political opinions, belong to different religious communities, are of different ages and have different amounts of income and property.
But this also means that all state power emanates from a pluralistic society. The heimaten project of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) addresses this reality. It understands heimaten as a verb – to heimaten – because home is a thing that we actively shape and that is constantly recreated in the moment of shaping. But also heimaten as a plural noun, because Germany is a place of plurality.
The project defines the concept of heimaten and launches a four-year, Germany-wide cultural programme.
WHEN?
Opening: Friday, 13 September, 18:00
Exhibition, performances, talks, lectures, activations:
Saturday, 14 September – Sunday, 8 December .2024
Opening hours:
Wed – Mon 12:00 – 19:00
WHERE?
House of World Cultures
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
COST?
Opening: Free admission
Free admission every Monday and every first Sunday of the month (Museum Sunday Berlin)
Tickets: 8 EUR / 6 EUR reduced
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