The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (German: Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD) is a residential program for artists of all countries and ages run by the
German Academic Exchange Service
The German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD (german: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), was founded in 1925 and is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation.
Organisation
''DAAD'' is a ...
(German: ‘Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst', DAAD) in Berlin. Originally initiated by the Ford Foundation in 1963, the program has been run by the DAAD – with the assistance of the
German Federal Foreign Office
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Programme description
The Artists-in-Berlin Program sees itself as a platform for artistic and cultural exchange throughout and beyond Europe. Every year, it invites applications from around the world for approximately 20 fellowships, usually funding a one-year stay in Berlin. These fellowships are aimed at extraordinary and internationally established artists from abroad. The Artists-in-Berlin Program is designed to offer its guests space for their creative work, promote the diversity and variety of artistic viewpoints, and strengthen the freedom of the arts and the written and spoken word. Fellowship holders therefore have every freedom to develop their approach, to work on their art, and to interact with fellow artists.
Target group
Internationally established and outstanding artists from abroad who would like to come to Berlin in order to work on their art and interact with fellow artists. Age is irrelevant.
History of the Artists-in-Berlin Program
In 1963, a year and a half after the construction of the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the governme ...
, the Ford Foundation created a three-year program aimed at expanding and strengthening the cultural and educational resources of West Berlin. The Foundation made an initial donation of three million US dollars and placed
James B. Conant
James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916. ...
United States Ambassador to Germany
The United States has had diplomatic relations with the nation of Germany and its principal predecessor nation, the Kingdom of Prussia, since 1835. These relations were broken twice (1917 to 1921, and 1941 to 1955) while Germany and the United S ...
, in charge. 300,000 and 350,000 dollars respectively were allocated to the creation of two new courses at the
Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and ...
– one in American Studies, and another in Comparative Music Studies. 590,000 dollars were used to make it possible for ‘artists, writers, academics, scientists and composers’ to spend ‘an extended period of time living and working in Berlin.’
In 1965 the DAAD took over the running of the program, and renamed it the Artists-in-Berlin Program. It now gained additional support from the German Federal Foreign Office and the Senate of Berlin. Hansgerd Schulte, president of the DAAD from 1972 to 1987, called it ‘the jewel in the crown’ – a unique entity amongst the many programs run by the DAAD.
In 2013, the program is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. This will be marked by a two-day celebration hosted at the Berlin Academy of Art, featuring performances from
Antjie Krog
Antjie Krog (born 23 October 1952) is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book '' Country of My Skull''. In 2004, she joined the Arts ...
Jennifer Walshe
Jennifer Walshe (born 1 June 1974) is an Irish composer, vocalist and artist.
Biography
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1974. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, ...
and Phil Collins, among others. A 50th anniversary countdown blog has also been created, featuring contributions from various guests about their time in Berlin.
Guests
In essence, the Artists-in-Berlin Program consists of a grant, allowing an artist to spend one year in Berlin. Each year, following the recommendations of a jury, the program awards around 20 grants in the fields of the visual arts, film, literature and music. The program also assists its guests with displaying or performing the work they have produced in Berlin –for visual artists, for instance, individual exhibitions are organized in the program’s gallery, the daadgalerie, often accompanied by a publication. Since 1964, around 1000 artists have come to Berlin as guests of the program.
Between 1963 and 2013, around 394 visual artists have taken part in the program. They include Jorge Castillo (1969),
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...
Gunter Christmann
Gunter Christmann (23 April 1936 – 19 November 2013) was a German-born Australian painter.
Born in Berlin, Christmann emigrated to Australia in 1959. Regarded as a painter's painter, Christmann has been making abstract and figurative pain ...
Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996) was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based o ...
(1974),
Christian Boltanski
Christian Liberté Boltanski (6 September 1944 – 14 July 2021) was a French sculptor, photographer, painter, and film maker. He is best known for his photography installations and contemporary French conceptual style.
Early life
Boltanski wa ...
(1975),
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Charles Weiner (February 10, 1942December 2, 2021) was an American conceptual artist. He was one of the central figures in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s. His work often took the form of typographic texts, a form of word ...
(1975),
On Kawara
was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in New York City from 1965. He took part in many solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976.
Early life
Kawara was born in Kariya, Japan on December 24, 1932. After graduating fr ...
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...
(1983),
Erwin Wurm
Erwin Wurm (born 1954) is an Austrian artist. He lives and works in Vienna and Limberg in Austria, and in New York City.
Early life
Erwin Wurm was born in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, in 1954. His father was a detective, who did not approve of ar ...
(1987),
Ilja Kabakow
Ilja is a given name and surname. The given name is cognate to Ilya.
Notable people with the given name include:
*Ilja Bereznickas (born 1948), Lithuanian animator, illustrator, scriptwriter and caricaturist
*Ilja Bergh (1927–2015), Danish pia ...
(1989),
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is ''The Ballad of Sexual Depend ...
Andrea Zittel
Andrea Zittel (born 1965) is an American artist based in Joshua Tree, CA whose practice encompasses spaces, objects and modes of living in an ongoing investigation that explores the questions "How to live?" and "What gives life meaning?"
Early ...
(1995),
Pipilotti Rist
Pipilotti Elisabeth Rist (born 21 June 1962) is a Swiss visual artist best known for creating experimental video art and installation art. Her work is often described as surreal, intimate, abstract art, having a preoccupation with the female bo ...
Allan Sekula
Allan Sekula (January 15, 1951 – August 10, 2013) was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts. His work frequently focused on large econom ...
(1997),
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra HonFRPS (born 2 June 1959) is a Dutch photographer. She lives and works in Amsterdam.Steve McQueen (1999),
Mark Wallinger
Mark Wallinger (born 25 May 1959) is a British artist. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation ''State Britain''. His work ''Ecce Homo'' (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the ...
(2001),
Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum ( ar, منى حاطوم; born 1952) is a British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist who lives in London.
Biography
Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Palestinian parents. Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum ...
Shahzia Sikander
Shahzia Sikander (born 1969, in Lahore, Pakistan) is a Pakistani-American visual artist. Sikander works across a variety of mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, animation, installation, performance and video. Sikander currently lives ...
AA Bronson
AA Bronson (born Michael Tims in Vancouver in 1946) is an artist. He was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair.
Ea ...
(2013). Due to the extremely high demand for grants in this field, the program no longer takes on applications from individual artists – they must instead be sought out and suggested by a committee. In all other fields, potential guests are welcome to apply on their own initiative.
The program has also hosted 334 writers. They include the aforementioned
Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author.
Biography
Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of Olga (née Haas) and Matthias Bachmann, a schoolteacher. Her f ...
(1963),
Peter Handke
Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored ...
(1968),
Ernst Jandl
Ernst Jandl (; 1 August 1925 – 9 June 2000) was an Austrian writer, poet, and translator. He became known for his experimental lyric, mainly sound poems (''Sprechgedichte'') in the tradition of concrete and visual poetic forms.
Poetry
Inf ...
(1970),
George Tabori
George Tabori ( György Tábori; 24 May 1914 – 23 July 2007) was a Hungarian writer and theatre director.
Life and career
Tabori was born in Budapest as György Tábori, a son of Kornél and Elsa Tábori. His father Kornél (Cornelius) was m ...
Friederike Mayröcker
Friederike Mayröcker (20 December 1924 – 4 June 2021) was an Austrian writer of poetry and prose, audio plays, children's books and dramatic texts. She experimented with language, and was regarded as an avantgarde poet, and as one of the lea ...
(1973),
Stanislaw Lem Stanislav and variants may refer to:
People
*Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.)
Places
* Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine
* Stanislaus County, Cal ...
Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are '' The Death of Artemio Cruz'' (1962), '' Aura'' (1962), '' Terra Nostra'' (1975), '' The Old Gringo'' (1985) and ''Christop ...
(1988)
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...
Antonio Lobo Antunes
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular ...
(1989), Michael_RosenzweigHarold_Brodkey_(1992),_Wladimir_Sorokin.html" ;"title="Harold_Brodkey.html" ;"title="Michael RosenzweigHarold Brodkey">Michael RosenzweigHarold Brodkey (1992), Wladimir Sorokin">Harold_Brodkey.html" ;"title="Michael RosenzweigHarold Brodkey">Michael RosenzweigHarold Brodkey (1992), Wladimir Sorokin (1992), Imre Kertész (1993), Ryszard Kapuscinski (1994), Richard Ford (1997), Jeffery Eugenides (1999), Laszlo Vegel (2006), Svetlana Alexievich (2011), Liao Yiwu (2012), Erik Lindner (2012), and
Lance Olsen
Lance Olsen (born October 14, 1956) is an American writer known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge.
Biography
Lance Olsen was born in New Jersey. He received a ...
(2015).
Around 282 composers have received a program grant for music. They include
Iannis Xenakis
Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde ...
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in p ...
Roberto Paci Dalò
Roberto Paci Dalò is an Italian author, composer and musician, film maker and theatre director, sound and visual artist, radio-maker. He is the co-founder and director of the performing arts ensemblGiardini Pensiliand he has been the artistic ...
(1993),
Nicolas Collins
Nicolas Collins (born March 26, 1954 in New York City) is a composer of mostly electronic music, a sound artist and writer. He received his BA and MA from Wesleyan University, and his PhD from the University of East Anglia. Upon graduating from ...
(1995),
Olga Neuwirth
Olga Neuwirth (born 4 August 1968 in Graz) is an Austrian classical composer, visual artist and author. She gained fame mainly through her operas and music theater works, which often deal with topical and decidedly political themes of identity, ...
(1996) and
Giulio Castagnoli
Giulio Castagnoli (born Rome, 22 November 1958) is an Italian composer.
Castagnoli, great-grandson of the Florentine composer and pianist Edgardo Del Valle de Paz, graduated in literature ( Turin University), piano and composition ( Turin Conse ...
(1998).
105 filmmakers, such as
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental.
Sebastián Lelio
Sebastián Lelio Watt (born 8 March 1974) is a Chilean director, screenwriter, editor and producer. He received critical acclaim for directing the films ''Gloria'' (2013) and '' A Fantastic Woman'' (2017), the latter of which won an Academy Award ...
(2012) and
Xiaolu Guo
Xiaolu Guo FRSL () born 20 November 1973) is a Chinese-born British novelist, memoirist and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities.
Guo has directed a doz ...
(2012) have also participated in the program.
The first grant for dance and performance was awarded in 1989, and the program has since welcomed 13 such artists, including
Wendy Perron
Wendy Perron is an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher who was the editor-in-chief of ''Dance Magazine'' from 2004 to 2013. She is the author of ''Through the Eyes of a Dancer, Selected Writings'', published by Wesleyan University Press ...
(1992).
The daadgalerie
From the very beginning, the Artists-in-Berlin Program was intended to provide more than just funding and accommodation. Its mission was to connect isolated West Berlin with a wider cultural and creative world. As such, the program coordinators invited guest artists to city events, introduced them to influential figures in the German cultural scene, and ensured that they were able to publicly perform and display their work. To give these activities a concrete physical focus, the daadgalerie was created in 1978, providing the program’s artists with a set platform for their creative activities. To begin with, it was based in silent film star
Henny Porten
Frieda Ulricke "Henny" Porten (7 January 1890 – 15 October 1960) was a German actress and film producer of the silent era, and Germany's first major film star. She appeared in more than 170 films between 1906 and 1955.
Biography
Frieda Ulric ...
’s former villa in the Kurfürstenstraße, in what was then West Berlin. However, in 2005 it was moved to new premises in the Zimmerstraße, close to
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), as named by the Western Allies.
East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and mane ...
in the centre of Berlin. It continues to host a wide range of events, including readings, concerts, film showings and performances.