Akademie Talks
The Akademie Talks discuss cultural policy and art aesthetics. They address current topics, feature prominent guests, and are specially staged.
Akademie Talk on 17 July 2024: Helmut Oehring, composer and member of the Music Section, Johanna M. Keller, Head of Programming at the Akademie der Künste, Dagmara Kraus, author and member of the Literature Section, Manos Tsangaris, composer and Akademie President, Valery Tscheplanowa, actress and member of the Performing Arts Section, Hanna Hartman, composer, sound artist and member of the Music Section, Anh-Linh Ngo, architectural publicist and Vice-President of the Akademie (f.l.t.r.)
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Akademie President Manos Tsangaris and Vice-President Anh-Linh Ngo invite visitors to the Akademie Talks. The talks alternate between cultural policy and aesthetic issues or aspects of artistic practice. Artists, politicians, academics and journalists engage in discussion with one another. The Akademie’s Plenary Hall on Pariser Platz, with its view of the Brandenburg Gate, becomes the stage for a lively exchange of ideas. The event itself is set in motion, with podiums, catwalks, and unusual seating arrangements distributed throughout the space.
Since 2006, initiated by the then Akademie President Klaus Staeck, the Akademie Talks have addressed artistic, political and cultural policy topics. From 2015 to 2024, Akademie President Jeanine Meerapfel was responsible for the series, which she expanded in 2017 with the Akademie Dialogues.
Akademie Talk on 15 July 2024: Joe Chialo, former Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, Regine Keller, landscape architect, urban planner and Deputy Director of the Architecture Section, Anh-Linh Ngo, architectural publicist and Vice-President of the Akademie, Volker Heller, board member and General Director of the Berlin Central and Regional Library (ZLB), and Katharina Schultens, writer, Director of the House of Poetry, member of the Literature Section (f.l.t.r.)
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In recent talks, topics have included the reuse of the former Galeries Lafayette department store as the library’s new home for the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, a discussion on the obscure as a driving force behind creative work, political plans to introduce codes of conduct, polarising opinions in the cultural sector, and the question of what “real” means in art.
Akademie Talks, 2015–2024 and Akademie Dialogues, 2017–2023
In the 24 Akademie Talks held during Jeanine Meerapfel’s presidency, topics included the political situation for artists in various countries around the world, the catchwords “integration”, “community of values” and “floods of refugees”, cultural film funding, art and AI, the climate catastrophe and the Last Generation, the future of public broadcasting, and the political shift to the right in Germany.
In the Akademie Dialogues, Jeanine Meerapfel engaged in intensive dialogues with renowned personalities from the arts, sciences, politics and cultural policy. Guests included Wolfgang Benz, Hazel Rosenstrauch, Klaus Lederer, Wilfried Wang, Max Czollek, Anna Schapiro, Deborah Feldman, Peter Lilienthal, Delphine Horvilleur, Natan Sznaider, and Lea Wohl von Haselberg.
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Akademie Talks, 2006–2015
In a total of 62 Akademie Talks, the then Akademie President Klaus Staeck discussed topics such as changes in copyright law, the cultural mission of public broadcasters, the role of art in the social upheavals of 1968 and 1989, the design of Berlin’s Museum Island, the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the power and influence of Google, a condemnation of the death penalty, climate change as a global threat, poverty in Germany, Europe’s refugee policy, and the situation of threatened artists such as Ai Weiwei and Roberto Saviano.