2016,

Kulturpalast Wedding International e. V.

2016,

2007

Freienwalder Straße

20

Berlin

13359

kulturpalastwedding.com

Außenansicht, 2015, Foto: Stefanie Rumpler

Helter Skelter Festival, 2016, Foto: Stefanie Rumpler

For many decades Berlin has developed a lively, diverse, and independent way of producing culture and counteracting government decisions, based on, local, generous, and enthusiastic, but also worried, social communities that exchanged resources and ideas within a larger political debate. The city became a “natural” shelter and fertile environment for dissidents, artists, political refugees, and immigrants with any background also due to the need to overcome a traumatic past full of human generated atrocities that are still present in people memories and behaviour.It always feels quite special when an institution catches the zeitgeist of a moment. Project spaces have a lot more freedom in this sense, and they can truly, sincerely, reflect a moment or a movement as it is happening. They are essential to a critically active arts scene. Perhaps the orientation of project spaces has been forced to shift towards something more self-sustainable – but that might not be a bad thing.Art has the power to make people think and feel differently. Art has the power to activate change.