IETM wants to ask the community along with the rest of the world one simple question: What is important now? The modest yet still relevant topic of the multiple location plenary meeting allows the participants to speak for themselves as well as to listen, to see themselves and open themselves to the world, to continue and to be subjected to changes.
A series of short presentations by speakers with diverse sets of expertise and background knowledge, both live as well as online, form the starting point for local as well as international discussions.
Among other things, small group discussions on the topic of the meeting will take place in breakout rooms.

With: Karen Cheung (head of dance, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong), Dr. Franco Bianchini (professor, researcher, UK/Italy), Ravi Jain (artistic director, Why Not Theatre, Canada), Gundega Laivina (curator, Latvia).

Following the digital multi-location plenary meeting of IETM, interested parties have the opportunity to inform themselves about Berlin’s structures within the independent performing arts. Representatives of LAFT Berlin and its two projects, the Performing Arts Festival and the Performing Arts Program, will provide insight into their work and the Berlin community over the course of brief presentations. In the second part of the event, the participants have the opportunity to get to know each other in breakout rooms and discuss.

On this evening, with the Industry Get-Together of the Independent Performing Arts Community, the decentralized IETM network meeting as well as the PRALIN Staff Exchange, we are opening three of the largest networking events within the independent performing arts on multiple stages simultaneously — the cinema of Centre Français de Berlin as well as via a live radio stream to listeners at home as well as those out and about. All of this is enough reason to celebrate glamorously and put on a wild (but of course in line with the regulations) media performance – at least, that’s what Gob Squad and Tina Pfurr think, and they have made an artistically inspiring framework for us for this hybrid gala. Together, they will create a live event at the end of which everyone will wish they had stayed at home but will still have managed a three-part opening!

With contributions by: Dr. Klaus Lederer (Senator for Culture and Europe, Berlin), Ása Richardsdóttir (IETM Secretary General), Florian Fangmann (Centre Français de Berlin), Simone Willeit (Uferstudios Berlin), Janina Benduski (Berlin Performing Arts Program), Chang Nai Wen (LAFT Berlin), Jiří Sulženko (Director of the Department of Culture and Tourism, Prague), Adriana Světlíková (Nova sit / PRALIN, Czech republic).

Your hosts for the evening are Tina Pfurr (Ballhaus Ost, LAFT Berlin) with Sebastian Bark, Sean Patten and Simon Will (Gob Squad).

A series of 3-minute videos in which IETM members can present their planned project to the network or new members can present their activities in order to receive feedback and/or find new potential partners.

Now, at the very latest, in light of the current crisis and the basic pension plan now adopted, which is insufficient for many members of the KSK (Künstlersozialkasse, the German public social insurance fund for artists), it is clear that we have to address the social safeguarding of the members of the independent performing arts community.  But who are the correct and useful contact partners for this topic? What could steps be along the way and what goal should they lead to? The topic of care and safeguarding is forcing its way into the center of artistic collaboration more than ever before. Regulations and agreements must be made anew and taken into consideration.Seldom before have we been so obligated to ensure safeguarding through solidary structures we are at the present moment.
Together with the Hamburg culture office Zwei Eulen, we invite experts to a working conversation and will examine how a comprehensive networking and bundling of the questions can bring us a step closer to the problems as well as their solution.

Initiated by and featuring: Kaja Jakstat (Zwei Eulen – Büro für Kulturkonzepte, Hamburg), Lena Krause (Allianz der freien Künste), Anka Belz (ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro, Berlin).

Sharing is caring! That certainly isn’t something we learned yesterday and is one reason why we support the programmer and cultural scholar Philip Steimel (machina eX) with his project Dingsda.org. It is a digital exchange platform for theater makers that allows production materials to be presented and exchanged in an organized manner using an app.
This introductory workshop will provide an initial introduction including trying out the platform and is open for questions, needs and requirements regarding its specific usage. The impulses gathered here will then be used in a hackathon in which the app will be adapted and improved to better meet the needs of the community.

Initiated by and featuring: Philip Steimel (Dingsda.org, machinaEx)

It is recommended that participants have a laptop with a current browser or, optionally, a smartphone, in order to be able to test all the features of Dingsda.org. In addition, they should have three objects that can be registered on the platform.

We will come together and achieve an overview of the present cultural policy situation and the current questions. A great deal has happened that has to be talked about and questioned. Where do artists and independent groups, their initiatives and advocacy groups as well as those active in cultural policy and their institutions stand now? What do active representatives of the community think of the special funding measures in the respective areas? What can and should a new, “flexible” cultural policy look like in each respective area?

Over the course of multiple short presentations, members and representatives of initiatives will provide an overview of the respective cultural policy perspective and thus the state of the independent performing arts community.

With: Dr. Klaus Lederer (Senator for Cuture and Europe, Berlin), Janina Benduski (LAFT Berlin), Dennis Rohde  (Member of the Bundestag, SPD / invited), Anne Schneider (Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste), Dr. Tobias J. Knoblich (Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft / invited), Holger Bergmann (Fonds Darstellende Künste), Michael Freundt (Dachverband Tanz), Karin Kirchhoff (Dramaturgische Gesellschaft), Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs (Interkultur Ruhr).

Moderated by: Wibke Behrens (Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft, board member, spokesperson Berlin, Institute for Cultural Governance, co-founder), Julian Kamphausen (Berlin Performing Arts Program).

For this event, questions can be posed to the members of the panel discussions and comments can be made using the secure chat provided by www.sli.do. If you are interested, please send a simple email request to chat [at] pap-berlin.de.

Artists, members of the independent arts community and collaborators from North Rhine-Westphalia have come to Berlin for the 2020 Industry Get-Together as as part of Raumfahrt – Expeditions Into the Independent Performing Arts Community. We are excited about their impressions, references and impulses. It is time to deepen our networking and get to know each other in greater details. The communities and community in dialogue.

With: Julia Nitschke & Ruth Schulz (Meine Wunschdomain – Agentur für angewandte Performancekunst), Theresa Hupp (performing artist, Cologne), Malin Harff (anthropologist, performance artist, Rheinbach), Anne Brammen (Ballhaus Ost / independent dranturge, Berlin), Sarah Johanna Steinfelder (independent director, Berlin), Alica Minar (choreographer, Berlin).

Click here for the audio live stream.

The cultural policy speakers representing the various political parties in Berlin will reflect upon the ten short speeches made during the cultural policy snapshot ARE YOU OKAY!?.
One year before the next elections for Berlin’s House of Representatives, there are basic questions that must be asked: what society will be formed through the present funding instruments in the field of culture? What direction should the funding follow? So much has changed so strongly. This is why we ask consistently: what visions and scenarios are now foreseeable?

With: Frank Jahnke (cultural policy speaker of the SPD parliamentary group), Dr. Robbin Juhnke (cultural policy speaker of the CDU parliamentary group), Regina Kittler (cultural policy speaker of the Die Linke parliamentary group), Florian Kluckert (cultural policy speaker of the FDP parliamentary group), Daniel Wesener (cultural policy speaker of the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen parliamentary group / invited).

Moderated by: Wibke Behrens (Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft, board member, spokesperson Berlin, Institute for Cultural Governance, co-founder), Fatima Çalışkan (Berlin Performing Arts Program)

In cooperation with: Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste, Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft, Dachverband Tanz, Fonds Darstellende Künste.

For this event, questions can be posed to the members of the panel discussions and comments can be made using the secure chat provided by www.sli.do. If you are interested, please send a simple email request to chat [at] pap-berlin.de.

Together, you can set off on marked routes with a walking time between 15 and 30 minutes and let your thoughts wander, get to know each other, reflect upon what has happened and meet on the banks of the river along the way. An indispensable exchange to go!

Anyone looking to specifically use the walk for a Berlin Performing Arts Program individual advisement session should register for this using the registration form. Special requests regarding accessibility needs can also be indicated on the form. You will then receive a suggestion with a time, individual advisement session and a route.

In September 2020, choreographer, performer and author Nora Amin conceptualised and curated "The other Body?" (With Offensive Tanz für junges Publikum and Tanzkomplizen), a conference for dance artists and educators on the issue of dance and racism. Now we are very pleased that she is open to discuss her analysis of the strategies of racism within the history of dance pedagogy and the aesthetic traditions of staged dance with us.

If you would like to participate in this event, please send us a short email to: branchentreff2020 [at] pap-berlin.de

To close out the multiple location IETM meeting, valuable information about the new political as well as
legal work of IETM will be provided, along with an update about the most recent activities of the network.

What is necessary for independent groups to be to able make Dingsda.org useful for specific work and rehearsal processes? How can the app be connected to storage areas, stocks of materials and archives? What specific challenges are posed by touring and rehearsals? These could be Excel or Google spreadsheet converters, help with filling out customs forms or booking tools. Together, the makers of Dingsda.org, theater makers and interested parties will hack and discuss expansions of and corrections to the platform. After all, as we all know, there usually is no time for this kind of work in our system, driven as it is by innovation. We want to take this time and dedicate it to Dingsda.org.

Initiated by and featuring: Philip Steimel, Benedikt Kaffai (Dingsda.org)

The format HOW TO… Art & Sharing provides an introduction to the hackathon (October 2, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm). A preliminary state of things regarding the hackathon is part of the discussion Are You With Us – Digitalism and Participation (October 3, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm).

Nicole Hummel (artistic director) and Anna-Rebecca Thomas (theater pedagogy) from Theater Thikwa, Berlin will discuss the question of the equal participation of “vulnerable” bodies in contemporary discourses and how they are shifting.

As two important voices from the intersectional-feminist field, Nuray Demir (independent artist and curator) and Lea-Sophie Schiel (theater scholar and performer Hysterisches Globusgefühl) come together in a conversation about what cannot be forgotten during the current upheaval or may not be abandoned.

As a co-host of the program 2020 RAUMFAHRT – Expeditions into the Performing Arts Community, Ulrike Seybold (NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, North Rhine-Westphalia’s State Office for the Independent Performing Arts) will meet Adriana Světlíková (Prague) who coordinates the Prague end of the exchange project PRALIN as program director in the independent performing arts network Nová Sít‘. Together, they will discuss current challenges facing exchange programs in the arts.

We really have to speak quite urgently about how we work in harmony with nature and how we can and want to continue doing so. The artistic-scientific practice of Gosie Vervloessem from Brussels meets an apocalyptic impulse of Max Gadow (virtuellestheater).

Since 2013, Julia Bonn and Anna-Lena Wenzel have made their way through feminist topics and discourses from the realms of art, the everyday and politics. In their Salon für Alltägliches, or Salon for the Everyday, which is offered once per month on reboot.fm.

To close out each day of the conference, they fish reflections, loopholes and critical thoughts out of the schedule of programming and stream them directly into the homes and heads in the Industry Get-Together radio salon. Without limits and with proper distancing guaranteed!

Initiated by and featuring: Julia Bonn, Anna-Lena Wenzel (Salon für Alltägliches) and guests of the Industry Get-Together 2020.

At this point, once again a big thank you to barner16 from Hamburg for the great radio jingles!

On the second day of the hackathon, the makers of Dingsda.org will test out the possibilities of the sharing app together with culture makers.

Initiated by and featuring: Philip Steimel, Benedikt Kaffai (Dingsda.org)

A preliminary state of things regarding the hackathon is part of the discussion Are You With Us – Digitalism and Participation (October 3, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm).

The unbalanced relationship between art and economy can no longer be dismissed and urgently requires an empowering appropriation and reinvention by artists. How can economy and art find a balanced relationship with each other and at the same time bring about new alliances and solidarities? What rules of the game have to be changed?
This HOW TO… is dedicated to The Sphere, a three-years translocal project with the goal of developing a radical, innovative P2P community platform for self-organization for web 3.0. It deals with newly distributed property configurations and self-management infrastructures as well as with the prospects of a revision of the current financing strategies. The Sphere intends to provide various members of the ecosystem of the performing arts, artists, culture makers, audience members, cultural organizations as well as a wide spectrum of sympathizers and other interested groups, the opportunity to initiate sustainable creative cooperations.

Initiated by and featuring: Yael Sherill (curator, cultural manager, B_Tour), Erik Bordeleau (cultural theorist, fugitive planner, Center for Art, Business & Culture at Stockholm School of Economics), Ela Kagel (digital strategist, head of Supermarkt Berlin, co-founder of the Coalition of the Independent Arts), Olle Saloranta Strandberg (director. circus artist, A Radar Styled Novel Circus Company, Stockholm)

Wherever people come together, there is something immediate in the air and power structures dress themselves in many guises. What one may call group dynamics and someone else may plainly refer to as a potential for conflict has always had a significant influence on the artistic process - not only in theater, but especially there. The nature of how we speak with each other, remain silent, work as well as argue determines our art and subjects political discourses together with social psychological ideals to urgently needed testing. This is reason enough for the psychologist Hannah Lesser and the theater maker Anna-Kirstine Linke to delve deeper into the frequently unmentioned phenomenon of group communication and share their previous insights with interested parties or to invent brand new practices.

Initiated by and featuring: Hannah Lesser (psychologist), Anne-Kirstine Linke (theater maker)

Public space is no longer what it once was. After all, great potential rests in every transformation and opens up new spaces that must be filled with new visions, playful models and utopias. The working methods in interim spaces, the social fabric and its public perceptions have shifted in times where wearing masks is required, physical distancing and distance regulations and must be questioned anew. This urgency opens up possibilities — from new forms of presentation, communication and protest to alternative structures of acting as a community.
As experts in this area, Philine Rinnert and Merel Smitt will meet for the first time. Together they provide an invitation to an open work meeting. Here, these shifts will be named and the first approaches for collaboratively dealing with them should be found in order to up new common grounds and playing fields within our society. The (art) bubble has been popped — what direction are we going to blow our collective energy in?

Initiated by and featuring: Philine Rinnert (director, stage designer, DIE VIELEN e.V.), Merel Smitt (independent artist, Rotterdam)

Today as well, you can catch up on random meetings over the course of 15- to 30-minute walks along the banks of the Panke or pursue more in-depth conversations.
Anyone looking to specifically use the walk for a Berlin Performing Arts Program individual advisement session should register for this using the registration form. Special requests regarding accessibility needs can also be indicated on the form. You will then receive a suggestion with a time, individual advisement session and a route.

Our guests, artists, members of the independent performing arts community and collaborators from Prague, have come to Berlin for the 2020 Industry Get-Together as part of the PRALIN Staff Exchange. We are excited about their impressions, references and impulses. It is time to deepen our networking and get to know each other in greater details. The communities and community in dialogue.

With: Petra Dotlačilová (Tanečníaktuality, Prague), Alžběta Konečná (independent producer, Prague), Ewa Zembok (Divadlo X10, Prague), Yael Sherill & Lianne Mol (B_Tour, Berlin), Neïtah Janzing (independent stage designer, Berlin), Almut Wedekind (Schaubude, Berlin).

How can we communicate what cannot be communicated? Who is allowed to take part and who do we lose along the way? These are questions that the communication experts Lina Zehelein (Head of Participation und Communication, Staatstheater Darmstadt) and Ayşe Güleç (pedagogue, author, research activist at the interfaces of anti-racism, migration, art, art communication) will discuss with each other.

We will be hearing about this turning point in the art world for quite some time to come. The hygiene regulations and physical distancing are inscribing themselves into learned praxis and shifting aesthetics. This is reason enough for Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum (BA Dance, Context, Choreography HZT Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Annemarie Matzke (Institute for Media, Theater and Popular Culture, University of Hildesheim) to enter into a discussion with each other on the topic.

Is all of this just a bubble? We’ve been asking ourselves that since the last Industry Get-Together on the topic of solidarities, now more than ever, and are inviting Melmun Bajarchuu (critical companion, activist in the Initiative for Solidarity in Theater (ISaT)) and Ewelina Benbenek (author, literature and cultural scientist) to help us find out what is happening right now in this regard at an institutional level – or is not happening.

The transgenerative work that Sibylle Peters (Fundustheater Hamburg) and Luc Paquier (artistic director Centre Français de Berlin) are used to in their daily work is currently facing new challenges and impossibilities. This is something that we have to talk about!

Nearly a fifth of the population only uses the internet in a very reduced manner or not at all. This knowledge, in light of a significant increase in digital structures by a wide variety of cultural institutions within the scope of measures to slow the spread of the global pandemic makes it clear how excluding and limited society and culture have always been or are again within the area of participation.
Together with experts working at the juncture between digital and analog, we will question goals for funding institutions, the role of members of the independent performing arts community as well as perspectives and challenges for cultural policy. There is a connective potential in digital work in the independent arts that be found and given a name, both in terms of cultural policy and collaboratively!

With: Philip Steimel (Dingsda.org), Annette Kleffel (Technologiestiftung), Alexandra Wolf (re:publica).

Moderation: Susanne Schuster (OutOfTheBox).

For this event, questions can be posed to the members of the panel discussions and comments can be made using the secure chat provided by www.sli.do. If you are interested, please send a simple email request to chat [at] pap-berlin.de.

And, in the end, it all turns out different, especially from what you thought: institutions are facing huge challenges in light of closed borders, hygiene regulations and travel restrictions.We want to discuss this and have invited leading voices from the field to share their thoughts and then discuss with friends on-site.

Opening Speeches: Elena Polivtseva (Head of Policy and Research, IETM), Necati Öziri (dramaturge Theatertreffen, director Internationales Forum, Berlin), Ewan McLaren (Bazaar Festival Prague), Thomas F. Eder (Performing Arts Festival Berlin).

With: Nela H. Kornetová (T.I.T.S. performance collective, Prague), Monika Gintersdorfer (Gintersdorfer/Klaaßen, La Fleur), Stefan Behrmann (managing direction Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste).

Moderation: The Industry Get-Together Team 2020

To close out the third day of the Industry Get-Together, the radio broadcasters Julia Bonn and Anna-Lena Wenzel will identify central ideas and action strategies from the schedule of programming and stream them into the scene from their radio salon. Without limits and with proper distancing guaranteed!

Initiated by and featuring: Julia Bonn and Anna-Lena Wenzel (Salon für Alltägliches) and guests of the Industry Get-Together 2020.