Ten years, one festival – Ballhaus Naunynstraße celebrates the tenth anniversary of Black Berlin Black, the largest producing festival of Black perspectives in Germany.
Since 2013, since Black Lux – a home festival of Black Perspectives, the Biennale has been an opportunity for the house to invite translocally active artists* to Berlin for guest performances and collaborations and to present concerts, exhibitions, talk events, theater, performance, dance and films.
In this sense, the motto of this year’s edition is United Polyphonic – because the experiences are numerous, the struggles are numerous and the artistic and political strategies of Black self-assertion are diverse. For six months, from September 2023 to February 2024, Ballhaus Naunynstraße will show a whole range of Black perspectives and works – among others. by Family Connection, Bishop Black, Jörgen Gario, Quinsy Gario, Glenda Martinus, Rudsel Benjamin Martinus, Sandrine Micossé-Aikins, Mona Okulla Obua, Beatrace Angut Oola, Pasquale Virginie Rotter, Jeffrey Kwasi Klein, Emilene Wopana Mudimu, Marlize André, Peggy Piesche, José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo – always in search of new, unifying impulses.
In the meantime, Black Berlin Black has its own discourse and history: from the first issue, from the emphasis on centuries of shared history (Black Lux 2013), to the demand for coming to terms with German colonial history, also as a strategy against the continuity of injustice in the form of everyday racism, among other things (We are tomorrow 2015), to the question of necessary reparations (Republic Repair 2017), we arrived in 2019, with Postcolonial Poly Perspectives, at the reflection and development of strategies for decolonizing everyday life. For the fifth issue, we focused on practices of resistance in art, politics, and everyday life (Widerstand 2022). Now we are looking for what unites the different experiences, the unique stories, the individual expressions: United Polyphonic 2023. Because from this arises the power to perpetuate discourse and history.