Wild mix of styles, inclusive not only on paper and interesting for all age groups: Impressions from the Pop-Kultur festival in Berlin.
L Twills (Lila-Zoé Krauß) performs her commissioned work at the Festival-Pop-Kultur in Berlin Photo: Roland Owsnitzki
The times when the big social narratives could be tied to pop music are long gone. On the other hand, the need to get involved in a mind game or a performance via pop, or simply to find dissolution of boundaries, seems greater than ever – this is the impression after three days of pop culture festival, which took place from Wednesday to Friday in the Berlin Kulturbrauerei last week.
Last but not least, what was remarkable was the simultaneity of the most diverse pop narratives, which unexpectedly overlap in the heart, head and stomach: for example, in the powerful yet jazzy, nimble post-punk by Crack Cloud, a Canadian collective. Its members have met each other in rehabilitation programs for addiction and other psychological problems – as therapeutic supporters and patients. Now they seek catharsis in the sucking sound.
Or with the musician and actress Mariana Sadovska, who presents traditional songs and poems from the Ukraine in a new context with the Vesna project. With the urgency that Ukrainian artists are forced to bring to the stage in these times of war, the Ukrainian artist also gets through to the audience.
The Berlin avant-pop artist L Twills, who is presenting her album “After her Destruction” as a commissioned work at the festival, moves on completely different terrain. In video chapters and supported by dancers, her protagonist wants to find out whether her brain has mutated. Commissioned works like these are a special feature of the festival and sometimes more convincing, sometimes less: interesting on the sound level, L Twill’s project would be more effective if there was less science fiction booth magic and more contemporary in it.
A speech as if ChatGPT generated it
After all, digitization is penetrating more and more areas of life in real terms. Algorithms decide on worlds of experience and thus also the food for our brains. You can get nervous about that.
The roaming around at this ninth edition of the festival also offers a counter-offer with its moments of serendipity. In contrast, talk of social division and culture as an antidote has become commonplace. And so the cultural-political self-locations are similar, at least on paper, at least in the democratic spectrum: (pop) culture as the cement of a society that is drifting apart – the speakers at the opening can also agree on this.
Joe Chialo (CDU), Berlin’s new culture senator, is introduced by Katja Lucker, who as managing director of Musicboard Berlin is also festival director, as someone who “wants to turn a luxury department store into a library”. Today, however, there are no original ideas. Chialo’s speech seems so piecemeal, as if ChatGPT generated it.
Gender Reality in the Music Business
More personal motivation shines through when he later, animated by an audience encounter with an acquaintance from Tanzania, the home of his parents, hijacks the stage again in a somewhat aggressive manner and promotes a different view of Africa. For cultural transfers in both directions – which are already lived at this festival. This can be experienced, for example, at the joint show by Aka Kelzz and Ria Boss, which emerged from an Accra-Berlin artist residency.
More substance comes from Anikó Glogowski-Merten, cultural policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group. After depressing statistics about gender reality in the music business, she passionately addresses how creative artists are left alone with regard to the compatibility of work and family life – which seems a bit bizarre against the background of the discussions of the last few weeks and the positions of her party on the subject of basic child security.
But at least Glogowski-Merten puts his finger on the sore point that in many cultural institutions that see themselves as progressive, work structures are often more backward than in many a listed company.
In addition to gender-fair booking – this year it feels like there are significantly more women on stage – inclusion is a core concern of the festival. What in the recent past was sometimes a bit didactic and bloodless seems like lived reality this time – and is celebrated accordingly, for example at the Drag Syndrome show. The London collective of drag queens and kings with Down’s Syndrome perform in futuristic DIY costumes to pop songs; Euphoria shimmers through the room.
Local forces instead of headliners
In the meantime, a free supporting program is running in the courtyard and in the adjoining cinema. This consists of karaoke in the Çaystube or this year’s focus “Can We Kick it?”. The emancipatory potential of football is pursued, which, however, seems a bit superimposed.
In contrast, talk of social division and culture as an antidote has become commonplace
On the other hand, the increasingly consistent renunciation of headliners in favor of local forces proves to be consistent: for example Nashi44, a rapper with Vietnamese roots, who dissects projections of Asian-read women in a funny and sharp-tongued manner. Meanwhile, the indie musician Katharina Kollmann, aka Non-Seattle, is supported by her Kaufhallenchor from Prenzlauer Berg, which makes the audience’s hearts beat faster. She rehearses every week with this colorful mix of hobby singers.
Charlotte Brandi, once a drummer with Me And My but much more interesting solo since then, has the longest line to get in with her unsettlingly beguiling chanson art pop.
Unlike some previous festival editions, where an over-30 audience finds its way to the Kulturbrauerei, the Berlin rapper Wa22ermann performs in front of an enthusiastic crowd, in whose midst you feel like you are at a school party in the auditorium – while the New York slowcore combo Codeine introduced a song from 1993 with the words that the majority of the audience was probably still in elementary school. Rarely has pop culture been so mixed.
2023-09-05 02:30:07
#Festival #Pop #Culture #Berlin #Rhythm #Algorithm
