Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) is a pluri-disciplinary institution in Berlin whose work centers around the practices of visual arts, performative arts, sonic/music, architecture, literature and oraliture, as well as scientific and cultural discursive formats. It is guided by the quest for strategies of how to live and better inhabit this world together. It is a house in which cultures of conviviality and hospitality are sown, nurtured to blossoming, and disseminated. It is a physical and affective space in which everyone has the possibility of breathing. To breathe and let breathe. A house in which respect for living and non-living beings is fundamental and shapes our understanding of cultures.

HKW highlights the notion of ‘Welt’ in its name. It proposes concepts of the world that embrace pluralities of cultures, epistemologies, sociopolitics, spiritualities, and ways of being in the world. This plurality of ‘worlds’ manifests itself in the deliberations on and acknowledgement of the malleability and processuality of the worlds we have historically shaped and continue to shape. The world is not a noun, but a verb: to unworld, to world, and to reworld.

Berlin is host to citizens from 170 nations from around the world, and these people and their communities are fundamental in shaping HKW, not as subjects or visitors only, but as fellow travellers and co-makers of the programme. The programme is anchored around migrant-situated knowledges and the realities of the plethora of beings and histories that constitute our worlds today. The task at hand is to make HKW a house of multiplicities and international encounters. These cultures are lived and experienced rather than othered, or merely displayed.