5-5-5-5 cut
Raimund Kummer / Daniel Ott

The underlying spatial idea of the intervention in the 5 historical exhibition rooms at Pariser Platz is the establishment of a central axis cutting through all of the rooms. Up to 5 instrumentalists will move along this cross-sectional axis, which Raimund Kummer uses as space for a vivid interplay of 5 fragments of his work, for at least 5 hours a day, performing a site-specific composition by Daniel Ott live over a period of 5 weeks. The composed instrumental music uses musical cuts as a principle and reacts to a jointly produced soundtrack that makes walking audible as a recurring sound. The project is conceived as a musical, choreographic and spatial experiment and entices visitors to make spatial and auditory discoveries and encounters with the musicians within the space.

With Jone Bolibar Núñez (clarinet), Jana De Troyer + Ruth Velten (saxophone), Rike Huy + Paul Hübner (trumpet), Josa Gerhard (viola), Adam Goodwin (contrabass), Max Andrzejewski + Mikołaj Rytowski (percussion)

Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson

With “Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson”, the Akademie der Künste explores the legacy of two extraordinary figures of the 20th century. The political and artistic endeavors of Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson (1895 – 1965) and Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) were an expression of a way of thinking that understood the world in relations and of an uncompromising resistance to all forms of oppression. An exhibition and a festival both present contributions by contemporary artists and musicians, as well as materials from the Paul Robeson Archives of the Akademie der Künste.

“Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. [...] The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” This urgent appeal was made by Paul Robeson on 24 June 1937, during a solidarity concert at the sold-out Royal Albert Hall in London, in support of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The African American singer, actor, trained lawyer, and activist reached a global audience through numerous films, theater and concert performances, political rallies, radio broadcasts, records, and newspapers. African American author, anthropologist, UN correspondent, artist manager, and activist Eslanda Robeson wrote about her travels to Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa and was actively involved in reconstituting the “world community” after World War II, focusing on internationalist women's organizations. Together, the couple linked the anti-racist struggle for civil and human rights in the United States with anti-fascist freedom movements in Europe, international labor movements, and anti-colonial liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in the spirit of socialist internationalism.

Paul Robeson’s concerts and engagements, alongside Eslanda Robeson’s research, allowed both to engage with the Black diaspora worldwide, seeing themselves both as part of this diaspora and as global citizens. Eslanda Robeson regarded her writing, and Paul Robeson his voice and keen ear (which likely enabled him to sing in over 20 languages), as “weapons” they strategically deployed. Their stage performances, films, recordings, publications (such as the newspaper Freedom, founded with W.E.B. Du Bois in 1950), as well as postal services and telephone lines, became vital media for their transnational activism and tireless, creative resistance – even against the anti-communist repression, surveillance, and intimidation by the U.S. government during the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1965, in the midst of the Cold War, the Paul Robeson Archives was founded at the former Academy of Arts of the GDR as the first systematic collection of material on the life and work of a Black American artist and on the work of a Black activist and intellectual. Today, the Paul Robeson Archives represent a productive interface of current post-socialist and post-colonial discourses. On the occasion of the archive's 60th anniversary, the project “Every Artist Must Take Sides” opens up a resonance space to relate the legacy of the Robesons and their struggles to the pressing questions of our present.

Head of project: Johanna M. Keller, Tomke Braun

Artistic Directors: Anujah Fernando, Lina Brion

Curatorial team: Tomke Braun, Lina Brion, Ibou Diop, Aidan Erasmus (The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape), Anujah Fernando, Julia Gerlach, Baruch Gottlieb, Johanna M. Keller, Katharina Schultens (Haus für Poesie)

Archival support: Peter Konopatsch

Project coordination: Anja-Christin Remmert, Denise Baumeister, Luise Langenhan

Artistic-technical direction: Roswitha Kötz

Exhibition assistance: Matthias Appelfelder

Contributions by Heiner Goebbels, George E. Lewis, Robert Machiri, Neo Muyanga, Shana L. Redmond, Kirsten Reese, Matana Roberts, and many more.

“Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson” is a project by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, in collaboration with Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, and Haus für Poesie, Berlin.

 

Funded by the German                 Funded by the Federal Government
Federal Cultural Foundation        Comissioner for Culture and the Media