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Haus der Kulturen der Welt

The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) is one of Berlin's most established institutions that translates discourses from performative and fine arts, philosophical theory and political activism into a complex agenda of a locally diverse and international programme. Reflections on artistic practices and their functions and media, on technological thinking and forms of community as well as a critical approach to a nonhomogeneous understanding of the world characterise the profile of the HKW. 

In 2023, Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung became the Artistic Director and Chief Curator. Since then, the new team has been transforming the institution's direction and focus. The HKW now emphasizes cultures of hospitality and conviviality in its programming and institutional design, viewing the world as a multiplicity of cultures, knowledge systems, sociopolitical structures, spiritualities, and ways of being.

Featured Activities

Festival | Middle Ground: Festa Literária das Periferias (2025)

In 2025, for its third edition, Middle Ground joined forces with Festa Literária das Periferias (FLUP)—a festival born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro—to ask: what does it mean to write from the experience of rupture? Drawing upon 'escrevivência', a neologism merging the Portuguese words for ‘writing’ (escrita) and ’experience’ (vivência) coined by Afro-Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo, this edition of Middle Ground creates space for the messy, complicated truth of writing from lived experiences.

con·stel·la·tions 07 | Cinco voces · Fünf Stimmen

This bilingual publication brings together five significant voices in contemporary Brazilian literature for the first time in German. The stories, poems, essays and experimental literary forms by Eliana Alves Cruz, Conceição Evaristo, Ana Maria Gonçalves, Leda Maria Martins and Amara Moira deal in complex ways with the echoes of history in the body, Afro-Brazilian traditions, femininity* and sexuality, violence and Latin America's political past.

Festival | Surreal Continuum: Revisiting, Remapping, Reimagining Surrealism (2025)

Organised by HKW Berlin in collaboration with EXC 2020, this two-day festival programme marks the centenary of the surrealist movement by critically revisiting its legacy. It reimagines and repositions surrealism through the lens of intersecting movements and marginalized histories – often dismissed or obscured – while spotlighting overlooked artists and offering alternative frames of reference.

Opening | Die Verwörterung der Welt: Literarische und wissenschaftliche Interventionen (2019)

Als Teil des Grand Openings des Clusters entwickelten Mitglieder des Exzellenzclusters kleine Führungen durch die Ausstellung »Liebe und Ethnologie. Die koloniale Dialektik der Empfindlichkeit (nach Hubert Fichte)«, die mit ausgewählten Ausstellungsstücken in Dialog gingen. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor und Lesley Nneka Arimah lasen aus aktuellen Werken.

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