BERLIN.- In 2019, HKW will be 30 years old. The programs during this anniversary year position the institution as a space for studying the contemporary. Rather than looking back, creative practices for dealing with the urgent issues of present-day societies are more important than ever.

HKW is a seismograph for changes in contemporary cultures, oriented by multiple perspectives. It is important to contrast today’s so-called “right-wing usurpation” with alternative concepts, for instance in the context of the exhibition project bauhaus imaginista with its discourse events that locate the Bauhaus in various political contexts.

The topics of the HKW's projects extend from the power of binary code over life forms in the technosphere and questions of how our knowledge is archived all the way to languages of ethnology. What happens between human and machine, between culture and nature, between life and death—what is The New Alphabet? The project of the same title takes a look at one of the most important accelerators of this development, the binary alphabet, the digital code, and with it the functioning of alphabets. Ultimately, this development goes so far as to interpret life itself as an alphabet in the form of DNA, hence the acronym Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet). In light of these changes, The New Alphabet raises the question of what new languages or semiotic systems are needed to cope with this situation. Communities whose members are all actively involved in world-making processes must again take the place of digital “connectivity.” For this purpose, HKW strives, time and again, to connect the local perspective with the regional, global, and even the planetary. In addition to activities from Milan to the Mississippi, HKW always stays rooted in Berlin. For its own birthday, HKW is therefore offering a gift to urban society: the project What is the city but the people? celebrates Berlin's various cultural constellations for which HKW considers itself a partner, stage or, in this case, runway. The position of HKW in Berlin’s urban community and, above all, the dialog between its most diverse protagonists, indicates the pathway that HKW will take over the next few years.