BERLIN

About BERLIN

Since its founding in 2003, BERLIN has positioned its creations on the border between documentary and theater. Every creation starts from reality: a city, a trivial event or testimony. They jump into the depths of a situation and untangle the different storylines, never limiting themselves to just one discipline in the creative process.

The content determines how a story is told: through images, live music, technology, text, as an installation… Based on this philosophy, BERLIN emphasizes the humanity of the person depicted, how [micro]communities function, the universality of the everyday. For twenty years, BERLIN has been working on two projects series: Holocene [the geological epoch], where the starting point is always in a city or town somewhere in the world, and Horror Vacui [the fear of emptiness], where remarkable, true stories come to light.

In 23-24 BERLIN will be celebrating its 20th anniversary. An excellent opportunity to revisit the rich database of film recordings that it has collected over the years. This “pool” of material forms the basis for the long-term YouTurn project. With YouTurn, Berlin will repurpose the artistic material it has created over the past two decades. We delve into our archive and use it as a starting point to investigate alternative ways of dealing with repertoire and to enter into new (sometimes unexpected) artistic collaborations.

YouTurn gives students, artists, researchers and BERLIN stalwarts access to a large part of the archive and encourages them to work on new projects based on the material that appeals to them. YouTurn will run for five years [2023-2027] and will be a collaboration with various partners worldwide. The project is divided into two parts: Approximately 100 hours of footage goes to schools [mainly. students of film and visual arts] and fellow artists can also [re]activate part of BERLIN history and use it for their own project.

We will start the schools component in September 2023, where mainly young people [at the start of their career in the arts] will start working with a fresh perspective. With one new school every academic year. We are working with five art institutions [in five different countries] to realize this project. The institutions bring us into contact with local schools/universities/… C-TAKT is the partner for cooperation in your own country.

Not only students but also fellow artists and BERLIN stalwarts get access to the broader BERLIN archive [in addition to the film material used by students, set objects, scripts, music, etc. can also serve as a source of inspiration for new artistic work].