It doesn’t always have to be the really big cultural institutions with established artists. This weekend, Berliners can also take a look at the young talents in art, design, music, dance and architecture: the University of the Arts opens its doors to the public on Saturday and Sunday.
After two years of restrictions due to the corona virus, the annual tour is taking place again in full size. More than 3,000 students show what they have learned, designed or designed in the last semester in the faculties distributed almost all over West Berlin. The tour traditionally marks the end of the summer semester.
There are guided tours through the workshops, studios and studios as well as dance performances and hands-on workshops, musical stage programs and artistic performances and interventions.
It is not easy to keep track of things, also because the official program, which can be viewed on the university website, is creative – not to say confusing – designed. It is advisable to look for your personal favorite cultural topic, visit the corresponding building and let yourself be surprised. Something always happens.
For example, in the Faculty of Design, on Straße des 17. Juni 118: when you enter the entrance hall, you may be faced with two people dressed conservatively in blue and black, offering a tour in a monotonous voice. The voices come from small boxes held in the hands of designated university guides.
The information material transmitted in this way is accompanied by dramatic, classical music. You are right in the middle of a performative tour by two fashion students. If you like things more factual, you can take part in a “fashion walk” and let the lecturers guide you through the four floors of the building. They explain what it takes to make clothes: design, cut, weave, knit, dye, print, present. You learn what the students learn.
Hardenbergstraße 33, the faculty for art and architecture, is a little more free. Here you can also walk through the rooms without a tour, the art is often self-explanatory. The quality of many exhibits, sometimes in rooms curated at museum level, is impressive. However, tear-off notices with flat share requests, graffiti tags and doors covered with stickers keep reminding you that you are in a university.
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For many young Berliners, the summer festival that took place here at the start of the tour was a tradition – a gigantic flat share party, the line in front of which often stretched across the entire street. However, because the focus on the work was lost with these dimensions, the big party on Hardenbergstraße should not take place this year. However, celebrations are not to be completely abolished; smaller, decentralized parties are planned in all faculties. But these must be discovered more by accident.
