About us – OSTPOL BERLIN Festival 5

… Central and Eastern European Artists in Berlin

Berlin lies in the East: For centuries, the German capital – whose beginnings once lay in small Slavic settlements on sandy riverbanks – has been a place where people write, sing, and speak in a wide variety of Central and Eastern European languages.

Numerous significant cultural works from these traditions were and are being created multilingually in Berlin. This city has always been home to influential artists, writers, and musicians from diverse Eastern cultures and languages: Berlin was and remains a multifaceted meeting point for European intellectual life. To this day, vital minds and protagonists from Central and Eastern Europe significantly shape Berlin’s cultural landscape. To make their influence visible, to give a voice to their current perspectives and themes, and to re-locate and draw the connecting lines between then and now, East and West – this is the mission of our OSTPOL BERLIN Festival.

Building on our previous projects on this subject (such as our Ostpol Berlin Symposium 2017, the Fluchtpunkt Berlin Symposium 2023 at the LCB, or the UNRAST Berlin Festival 2021 at the Maschinenhaus), as well as on the suggestion of many of our Eastern and Central European artist colleagues and following in the intellectual footsteps of the now unfortunately defunct Berlin “Osteuropatage” (Eastern Europe Days) we have designed a strictly non-commercial festival program with the help of experts and our advisory guest curators. This program opens itself to the diversity of Berlin’s Eastern European scene and invites everyone to get to know and culturally explore the “eastern side” of Berlin in all its variety. Through bilingual events and many German translations, with readings, concerts, lectures, performances, and discussions, we let the current aspects of our present shine in the vibrant colors of the arts.

Collaboration beyond what divides us with an open, cross-generational, and cross-genre cultural dialogue that broadcasts a multilateral vision for a new cultural reality in Berlin: In times of war and discord, local artists and authors dare to create a shared utopia of a polyphonic contemporary culture an open literature dialogue that sends out a vision for a new reality. The eight-day festival OSTPOL BERLIN brings together Central and Eastern European Berliners with German and international colleagues to enable the influential voices and discourses of these linguistic groups to achieve a sustainable positioning in Berlin’s daily cultural life.

Starting from Berlin’s contemporary literature and its protagonists and in accordance with the Eastern European tradition of cross-genre openness in the arts – we have embraced the ideas of our specialist curators to include musicians, performers, and other artists in the program: the living cultural reality of Eastern European Berlin. We thus address the broad, multilingual audience of Berlin (and beyond) and cordially invite you all! There are astonishing and remarkable things to discover here, and new impulses for cultural cooperation are intended to radiate from here into the international cultural scene: Berlin as a truly existing intellectual home that enables a lively, innovative, and shared culture – OSTPOL BERLIN.

Curators: Dorota Danielewicz, Ernest Wichner, Martin Jankowski. Advisory experts: Ani Menua, Elvira Veselinovich, Dorota Hülsen, Orsolya Kalász, Birger Hoyer, Jake Schneider et al. We would like to thank all of our dedicated contributors and selfless supporters!