Berlin Contributors

Jonathan Allen - Magician
(b.1966) is a London-based visual artist, writer, and performer. His work has been widely exhibited and performed at venues including Tate Britain, the De La Warr Pavilion, David Risley Gallery London, and most recently for the first Singapore Biennale in 2006. Jonathan Allen writes widely on theatrical magic history and related themes for visual art journals including Contemporary, and Cabinet magazine. He is currently guest-editing an issue for the latter in summer 2007.

Christian von Borries - Davos/Dubai
Christian von Borries is conductor, composer and producer. He focus’s is on what he calls ‘audio branding of classical music’.

Arianna Bove - Raw
Arianna Bove is an independent researcher in philosophy, involved in the making of www.generation-online.org, where her research, articles and translations can be found. She has translated many works from Italian and French, including texts by Althusser, Foucault, Negri, Bifo, Virno, and others.

Stefan Doernberg - Preventive War
Geboren 1924 in Berlin in einer deutsch-jüdischen Familie. 1935 Emigration mit den Eltern in die Sowjetunion. Abitur in Moskau 1941. Nach dem deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion Meldung als Freiwilliger in die Rote Armee, Entsendung an die Front Anfang Juli 1941. Es folgte 1942 eine Internierung als Deutscher im Nordural. Von 1943 bis 1945 Angehöriger der Roten Armee, Teilnahme an der Befreiung der Ukraine, Polens und der Einnahme Berlins. Nach dem Krieg  Journalist in Berlin und nach Abschluss eines Fernstudiums an der Moskauer Universität Hochschullehrer für Geschichte in Berlin (Ost), Direktor des Deutschen Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und anderer Forschungseinrichtungen in der DDR. 1983 bis 1987 Botschafter der DDR in Finnland. Ehrenamtlich ab 1971 tätig als Generalsekretär und dann Präsident des DDR-Komitee für europäische Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zur deutschen und internationalen Zeitgeschichte.

Heinrich Dubel - Helikopter
Heinrich Dubel is a writer of science-fact and -fiction for various german and international magazines. He has published books and articles on such diverse topics as urban develepmont and history, psychological warfare, the psychology of branding, youth subcultures. His most recent works deal with what modern technology does to the unconscious mind of man. Lives and works in Berlin.

Felix Ensslin - Anxiety
Felix Ensslin arbeitet als freier Kurator, Autor und Dramaturg. Zur Zeit schreibt er seine Doktorarbeit im Rahmen des Graduiertenkollegs "Lebensformen und Lebenswissen" an den Universistäten Potsdam und Frankfurt/O.. Jüngste Veröffentlichungen: “Eins, Zwei, Drei .....Fini!" Meinecke, Thomas, Menke, Bettina (Hg.) “Ratzinger Funktion", editon suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M, 2006.; (Hg.), "Spieltrieb. Was bringt die Klassik auf die Bühne?", Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin, 2006. Vom 11. Mai bis 9.August 2007 ist im ZKM Karlruhe die Austellung "Zwischen Zwei Toden" zu sehen, die er gemeinsam mit Ellen Blumenstein kuatiert.

Stefan Heidenreich - Profit
Stefan Heidenreich has written several books on data streams, digital culture and art including Flipflop (Hanser, Munich 2004) and Was verspricht die Kunst (Berlin 1998). His main focus of interest lies in digital data streams and visual culture. He is currently editor of the website iconicturn.de, teaches at the Helmholtz-Zentrum, Humboldt-University in Berlin, works as a photographer (Cr&sh) and freelance writer for the FAZ, NZZ, Tagesspiegel, taz newspapers. Stefan's forthcoming book, Mehr Geld (Merve, Berlin 2005) is on the digital economy and his PhD thesis entitled Bilder sortieren, which will also soon be published, deals with sorting images in renaissance mnemotechnics and digital search engines.

Emil Hrvatin - Entertainment
Regisseur, Theoretiker, Redaktion Maska, Ljubljana.
Emil Hrvatin is a Slovenian all-round talent, involved in drama as a theoretician, dramatist, director and creator of installations and performances, and is also a magazine-editor and festival-director. He studied sociology and theatre direction at the University of Ljubljana and theatre theory in Antwerp. He is the author and director of several theatre performances. His work has been represented trough performances and lectures in several European countries. His works include Camillo-Memo 1.0: the construction of Theatre and Drive in Camillo. Hrvatin’s works also includes visual, multimedia and performance art works.

Peter Jahn - Untermensch im Osten
Peter Jahn, geb. 22.05.1941 in Küstrin, seit 1945 Berliner, Osteuropahistoriker, mit Schwerpunkt auf deutsch-russischen Beziehungen und deutscher Rezeption „Russlands“, seit 1992 Aufbau, 1995 bis 2006 Leiter des Deutsch-Russischen Museums Berlin-Karlshorst, z.Zt. Vorbereitung einer Ausstellung über deutsche Russlandbilder seit 1800.

Quio & Darius James - War (Nuclear)
DARIUS JAMES: After living and working in New York City for twenty-two years, Darius James moved to Berlin in 1998. He is the author of four books, a lecturer and spoken-word performer who has appeared on radio, television and film. With the German-based company, tvt film+vfx, and filmmaker, Oliver Hardt, he is currently developing a documentary exploring the influence of Voodoo on American popular culture and the birth of a new pantheon of Vodun spirits titled “The United States of Hoodoo”. In the course of completing this project, he will undergo a dramatic spiritual initiation, and emerge as a member of that religion’s priesthood. In order to understand his collaboration with Quio and Jon Evans in context, one should know Voodoo was the religious, political and military response to the oppressive conditions of slavery in the so-called ‘New World’. In these uncertain times, the Black American composer, Sun Ra, has been reborn as a loa (or ancestral spirit) in the new American Voodoo pantheon.

QUIO (INA ROTTER): Quio, a Berlin based MC, singer, performer wants to be misunderstood and taken unseriously. In 1999 Quio met AGF when they both performed in a club. Various collaborations followed. In 2003 they started QUIO. 2004 they released the first 12" on AGF Producktion and here is the full length album of the Quio. AGF and Quio have put together their different musical heritage, to come up with some uniquely new combinations, e.g. they mixed Drum&Bass MC lyrics with piano and strings into a melancholy anthem, and hiphop lyrics with experimental beats and a blues guitar.

Jon Evans is a Shaman from the Austrailian outback gone walkabout.

Sylvere Lotringer - Disappeared
Sylvère Lotringer is professor of French Literature and Philosophy at Columbia University in New York and the editor of Semiotext(e). He is generally credited for introducing French Theory in America. He has written several books in collaboration with Jean Baudrillard (The Conspiracy of Art, New York, 2005, Oublier Artaud, Paris 2005) and Paul Virilio (Pure War, New York, 1982 ; Crepuscular Dawn, 2002 ; The Accident of Art, New York, 2005). His most recent books are Hatred of Capitalism, New York, 2002 ; Fous d’Artaud, Paris, 2003 and A Satiete, Paris, 2006). He has written art essays on Nancy Spero, London, 1996 and David Wojnarowicz, New York, 2006 and catalogue essays for The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum in New York, The Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Kuntshalle, Wien, etc.

Brian Massumi - Perception Attack
Brian Massumi is an academic, writer and social critic. He teaches in the Communication Department of the Université de Montréal. Massumi focuses on the philosophies of communication, electronic art, computer-aided design, architecture and the virtual. He is the author of Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002), A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press, 1992) and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Kenneth Dean; Autonomedia, 1993) and editor of A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (Routledge, 2002) and The Politics of Everyday Fear (University of Minnesota Press, 1993)

Khalo Matabane - Stance
Khalo Matabane has directed a number of films about South African issues, including the shorts Poetic Conversations (96) and Love in a Time of Sickness (01) and the documentaries Two Decades Still (96), The Waiters (97), Young Lions (99) and Story of a Beautiful Country (04). Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (05) is his first feature film.

Avi Mograbi - Pleasure
Born in Israel in 1956. He studied philosophy at Tel Aviv University and art at the Ramat Hasharon art school. He has worked as an assistant director, scriptwriter, production manager and director for features films and commercials. Some documentaries produced previously include: ‘The Reconstruction’ (1994), ‘Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon’ (1997), ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi’ (1999), ‘A Moment Before the Eruption’ (2002).

Andrea Moll - Flintenweib
geboren 1964. Osteuropahistorikerin und Kuratorin in Berlin. Sie beschäftigt sich mit Themen der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen, Krieg und Kriegspropaganda, Erinnerungspolitik sowie „War and Gender“. Zur Zeit arbeitet sie an einem deutsch-russischen Ausstellungsprojekt zu gegenseitigen Fremd- und Feindbildern, das in Berlin und Moskau präsentiert wird.

Vanessa Joan Müller - Plündern
Vanessa Joan Müller, Direktorin des Kunstvereins für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, und wissenschaftliche Leitung des Projektes "European Kunsthalle" in Köln, das Modelle einer potenziellen Institution zeitgenössischer Kunst auslotet. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zur zeitgenössischen Kunst und Kunsttheorie.

Michalis Pichler - Homefront
Michalis Pichler uses public space and everyday life both as a source and as an outlet. Employed techniques include camouflage/imitation, and infiltration, as well as sculptural, and archaeological and ethnographic procedures. His work has appeared in numerous places, amongst them the Postfuhramt Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and the Goethe-Institut/InterNationes New York where he was a DAAD Arts Fellow in 2002/03.

Rimini Protokoll - Resist-Refuse-Rebel
Rimini Protokoll is the label for projects by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. www.rimini-protokoll.de
Rimini Protokoll (Haug/Wetzel) are presenting the two Vietnam Veterans and Anti-War activists Darnell Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock with their definition of RESIST...REFUSE...REBELL

DARNELL “STEPHEN” SUMMERS was born on July 9, 1947 in Detroit Michigan, USA. He volunteered for the US Army and served from 1966 to 1970. While home on leave before going to Vietnam in 1968 he became involved in the struggle to found the "Malcolm X Cultural Center (MXCC) in Inkster Michigan, a suburb of Detroit and was one of the spokespersons for the "MXCC".
His political affiliations included membership in the Black Workers Congress, Viet Nam Veterans Against The War / Viet Nam Veterans Against The War (Anti-Imperialist), chartermember of the Malcolm X Cultural Center(Inkster Michigan). As a Black man inside the Army he was confronted by not only by racism but also the fact that he was in a military organization that was murdering people across the globe. Since then Summers has been active in the struggles against racism and U.S. instigated aggression. He was instrumental in organizing the "STOP THE WAR BRIGADE" in Germany during the Gulf war to build support for anti-war GIs.
Darnell has professional experience as a Musician, Film Director, Actor, Media Editor, Composer, Cameraman, Producer and Sound Technician. He presently lives in Germany and has 4 children.

DAVE BLALOCK (born 1950 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania) volunteered for the US Army and served from 1968 to 1971. After being AWOL for nine days in basic training he was court-martialed and spent one month out of a possible six-month prison term doing “Hard Labor” time in the Fort Jackson stockade. He then spent one year in Vietnam (1969-1970) where he became politicized by his experiences there.
After returning, he spent his last 15 months in the army by joining the large anti war movement that had existed within the US military and actively worked inside one of the many underground GI organizations. In 1989 Blalock, along with three other people burned American flags on the steps of the US Capital building in protest against the new Flag Protection Act of 1989. They were arrested for this and their case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled the law un-constitutional. From Vietnam, to the 1980’s counter-insurgency wars in Central America, to the ‘91 Gulf War, to the ’99 Kosovar war, to 2001 bombing of Afghanistan, to the present war on Iraq he has been active in the fight to expose and oppose all US war moves around the world. He puts special emphasis on building support for the GI anti war resisters inside the armed forces.
Blalock and Summers are also playing themselves in the Rimini-Protokoll theatrical production of Schiller’s “WALLENSTEIN” where they among a cast of ten people out of real life take this opportunity to tell their story in the midst of Intrigue, War & Death.

Meir Wigoder & Irit Rogoff - Alert
Meir Wigoder teaches the History of Photography at the Communications School, Sapir College and at the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University. He is currently writing on the representation of trauma, memory and shock in the press coverage of recent political events in Israel.
Irit Rogoff is Professor of Art History/Visual Culture, Historical and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, London University. Her research interests include: Visual Culture; contemporary art and critical theory; post-colonialism and gender.

Saskia Sassen - Anti-War
Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. During the 1980s and 1990s, Sassen emerged as one of the most prolific authors on urban sociology. She studied the impact globalisation processes, and the movements of labour and capital which they involve, have on urban life. She also studied the influence of communication technology on governance. Sassen observed how nation states begin to lose power to control these developments, and she studied increasing general transnationalism, including transnational human migration. She identified and described the phenomenon of the global city. Her 1991 book bearing this title quickly made her one of the most frequently quoted authors on globalisation worldwide. A revised and updated edition of her book was published in 2001. She currently (2006) is pursuing her research and writing on immigration and globalization, with her "denationalization" and "transnationalism" projects. wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskia_Sassen

Armin Smailovic - Portrait/Mugshot


Simon Starling - Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Starling was born in Epsom in 1967, was educated in Sevenoaks, and did a photography degree at Trent Polytechnic before going on to study fine art at Glasgow. "I knew early on that I didn't want to study in London. I wanted to find something else, and Glasgow was the place. The early 1990s was a great moment for the city, there was a lot of buzz about the place." He currently divides his time between Glasgow and Berlin. Was London never attractive, career development-wise? "I'm not a big city person. I like to think things through at my own speed." Why Berlin? "I moved there for love." And stayed because it's an artistic hub? "Kind of." His partner is a writer and curator, and his son Vincent is 11 months old. http://arts.guardian.co.uk

Marcus Steinweg - Heraklit
Marcus Steinweg (born 1971 in Berlin) lives in Berlin. He writes on philosophical and literary themes. His most recent publications are: Krieg der différence and Autofahren mit Lacan (both Koblenz, Germany 2001), Der Ozeanomat. Ereignis und Immanenz (Cologne, Germany 2002) and Bataille Maschine (Merve Verlag, Berlin 2003). For several years he has been collaborating regularly with the artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

Stephan Trüby - Homeland Security Advisory System
(b. 1970) is an architect, theoretician and curator who studied architecture at the AA School, London, where he also taught. Since 2001 he is Assistant Professor for Architectural Theory and Design at Stuttgart University’s IGMA. As a member of Igmade, he co-edited (with Gerd de Bruyn) "architektur_theorie.doc: texte seit 1960" and initiated, co-edited and directed "5 Codes: Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of Terror" (ed. by Igmade, Birkhäuser 2006). He is founder of the architecture-, design- and consultancy firm Exit Ltd.and is currently writing a history and theory of the corridor.

Soenke Zehle - Coloniality
A holder of various degrees in comparative literature, philosophy, political science, and translation, Soenke Zehle teaches transcultural literary and media studies in the Transcultural Anglophone Studies Program (TAS) at Saarland University as well as the Academy of Fine Arts (HBK) in Saarbruecken. Publications include essays on media studies and political ecology. He has been involved in launching numerous info-political grassroots and research initiatives.

kuda.org - Safe Distance
New Media Center_kuda.org is an independent organization which brings together artists, theoreticians, media activists, researchers and the wider public in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. In this respect, kuda.org is dedicated to the research of new cultural relations, contemporary artistic practice, and social issues. www.kuda.org

Program Berlin

Dictionary of War ends with a last session in Berlin on February 23 and 24, 2007. Another 25 concepts will be presented in Sophiensaele Sophiensaele, Sophienstrasse 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte.

Sophiensaele offers an online Ticket reservation

Please note that the timetable is remains subject to change, but this website will be updated as soon as changes occur:

Working hours:

FRIDAY, February 23th, 2007, from 17:00 to 22:00

17:00 Alert / Meir Wigoder (IL) & Irit Rogoff (UK)
17:30 Anti-War / Saskia Sassen
18:00 Anxiety / Felix Ensslin
18:30 Autoxylopyrocycloboros / Simon Starling
19:00 Coloniality / Soenke Zehle
19:30 Davos/Dubai / Christian von Borries
20:00 Disappeared / Sylvere Lotringer
20:30 Entertainment / Emil Hrvatin
21:00 Experience / Arianna Bove
21:30 Flintenweiber / Andrea Moll

SATURDAY, February 24th, 2007, from 14:00 to 23:00

14:00 Helikopter (Heinrich Dubel)
14.30 Heraklit (Marcus Steinweg)
15:00 Home front (Michalis Pichler)
15:30 Homeland Security Advisory System (Stephan Trüby)
16:00 Magic (Jonathan Allen)
16:30 Perception Attack (Brian Massumi)
17:00 Pleasure (Avi Mograbi)
17:30 Plündern (Vanessa Joan Müller)
18:00 Porträt (Armin Smailovic)
18:30 Präventivkrieg (Stefan Doernberg)
19:00 Profit (Stefan Heidenreich)
19:30 Resist...Refuse...Rebel
(Rimini Protokoll (Haug/Wetzel) featuring: Darnell Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock)
20:00 Safe Distance (kuda.org)
20:30 Stance (Khalo Matabane)
21:00 Untermensch im Osten (Peter Jahn)
21:30 War, Nuclear (Quio & Darius James)

On Sunday, February 25th, 2007 the project closes with a fieldtrip and a postscriptum.

Arsenal Cinema is showing a retrospective by Avi Mograbi. The filmmaker will present his latest film »Avenge But One of my Two Eyes« February 22nd in Arsenal, Potsdamer Strasse2. For more information and the program please visit the website.

A to Z: The Precarious Alphabet of War

War, in the broadest sense, is a battle about the power to define and definitions, that are not carried out at the center of words but at their very margins. But what can words do, as soon as the state of war has become a rule and a normality worldwide?

The fourth and so far final edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will take place on 23 and 24th of February 2007 in Berlin, Sophiensaele. Loosely based on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating concepts. 75 concepts on the issue of war, have had already been invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at the first three public, two-day events in Frankfurt, Munich, and Graz.

The Berlin edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR features contributions by:

London based artist and magician Jonathan Allen; conductor Christian von Borries from Berlin; Berlin based sci-fi-author Heinrich Dubel; the historian Stefan Doernberg, who participated 1945 as a translator of the Red Army within the negotiations about unconditional surrender with the german Wehrmacht; the author and curator Felix Ensslin; curator Charles Esche from Eindhoven; writer Stefan Heidenreich; the choreographer and stage director Emil Hrvatin from Ljubljana; the former curator of the museum Karlshorst, Peter Jahn; the artist-group kuda.org from Novi Sad; the historian and curator Andrea Moll from Berlin; Cologne based curator Vanessa Joan Müller; the musicians Quio & Darius James; US-American philosopher Sylvère Lotringer; the theorist Brian Massumi from Montreal; South-African film-director Khalo Matabane; Avi Mograbi, filmmaker from Israel; the Frankfurt based designers Martin Neumeier & Nathalie Landenberger; artist Michalis Pichler; the theatermakers collective Rimini Protocoll; sociologist Saskia Sassen from Chicago; the Munich based photographer Armin Smailovic; artist Simon Starling from Glasgow; Berlin based author Marcus Steinweg; architect Stephan Trüby from Stuttgart; Israeli photographer Meir Wigoder und theorist Irit Rogoff from London; Soenke Zehle, scientist from Saarbrücken.

The aim of the project is to create key concepts that either play a significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been neglected, or have yet to be created. DICTIONARY OF WAR tries to make the creation or revaluation of concepts transparent into more or less open processes in which we can and need to intervene; at the same time, the goal is to develop models that redefine the creation of concepts on the basis not of interdisciplinary but rather undisciplined, not co-operative but rather collaborative processes.

DICTIONARY OF WAR started in June last year in Staedelschule Frankfurt and was characterized from the very beginning by a wide range of polyvocal and multi-layered approaches. The Munich edition several weeks later has been overshadowed by the war in the Middle East, but turned out as enormously substantial by lots of very focussed contributions. In Graz, in the framework of the festival "steirischer herbst", a further differentiation and multiplication of the concepts and their formats has become overwhelming.

The entire video recordings (live mixed from four cameras and additional sources) of the first three editions of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are available for free download from the website: http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v

The next 25 concepts that are going to be presented at the Berlin edition will be ready for download near on real time -- published under a creative commons share-alike license. Together with the already available concepts this will lay the ground for a unique, topic-based multimedia archive that encompasses more than 50 hours of video material. Even by now the video files of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are shared by thousands of users worldwide who download the material for educational or research purposes and remix it in various new contexts. Finally, this autumn a book will be published by Merve-Verlag (Berlin) which is supposed to work as a fifth, virtual edition.

The Berlin edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR starts on Friday, February 23, at 5 pm in Sophiensaele Sophiensaele, Sophienstrasse 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte. It will be continued on Saturday, February 24, at 2 pm. On Sunday, February 25th, 2007 the session concludes with a Postscriptum at the historic site of the unconditional surrender of German Fascism in 1945, today's "German-Russian Museum" in Karlshorst. At 8pm in the evening "Pirate Cinema" screens Chris Markers film "Scenes from the Third World War 1967-1977".

The concepts are introduced in alphabetical order by their concept persons in half-hour long presentations or performances. The entrance fee is 10 Euro (5 euro reduced) per day and includes a CD-edition of the video-recordings of the first three sessions.

More informations at: http://dictionaryofwar.org

or

info[at]dictionaryofwar.org

DICTIONARY OF WAR is a project by Multitude e.V. and Unfriendly Takeover, in collaboration with Sophiensaele. DICTIONARY OF WAR is supported by the Federal Culture Foundation, Germany.

Preview/Review

On February 4th, 2007 at 8pm Pirate cinema organizes a screening night of video recordings of concepts from the three past editions of the Dictionary of War.

The screening takes place in Pirate Cinema Berlin, Tucholskystr 6, 2nd floor, S-Bahn Oranienburger Str, U Oranienburger Tor.

Free entry, cheap drinks, copies to go.

Program:
20:00 Amphetamine (Hans-Christian Dany)
20:30 Aufräumen (Diedrich Diederichsen)
21:00 Kriegsmaschine (Nicolas Siepen)
21:30 Polizeikrieg (Katja Diefenbach)
22:00 Pop (Georg Seesslen)
22:30 Territorium (Peter Fend)
23:00 Trip (Anselm Franke)
23:30 Vereinte Nationen (Ariane Müller)
00:00 Weltkrieg (Klaus Viehmann)
00:30 Wetter (Dietmar Dath)

Fieldtrip and Postscriptum

The fourth session of Dictionary of War is concluding with a Postcriptum at the historic site of the unconditional surrender of German Fascism in 1945, today's "German-Russian Museum" in Karlshorst. The fieldtrip will start at noon, busses will leave Sunday, February 25th, around 12am at Alexanderplatz in front of Park-Inn Hotel.

On May 8, 1945, World War II was brought to an end with the surrender of the German Wehrmacht at Berlin-Karlshorst. The bloodiest conflict of modern history to date claimed a death toll of at least 50 million people. The attempt for world domination by the German National Socialists under the leadership of Adolf Hitler ended with vast destructions in Germany and abroad. Particularly brutal battles were fought between the German and Soviet troops as a result of the National Socialist ideology, aiming at the enslavement and eventual extinction of the Slavic people.

In 1967, the Soviet troops stationed in the GDR founded the Museum der bedingungslosen Kapitulation des faschistischen Deutschland im Großen Vaterländischen Krieg 1941 - 1945 ("Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the 'Great Patriotic War' of 1941 - 1945"). The museum was located in the same building where the signing of the capitulation took place in 1945. Initially, the museum was open only to members of the Soviet Army; however, soon afterwards, it opened to the general public.

The German unification on October 3, 1990, and the withdrawal of the Soviet troops raised new questions as to the future of the museum as well as the artifacts it contained. The Soviets offered to maintain the collection at Karlshorst and to allow for the continuation of the museum.

On behalf of the Federal Government of Germany and the "Senate" of Berlin, the German Historical Museum, in conjunction with their Soviet partners, was given the task of drawing up a new concept for the continuation of the museum. A committee of German and Soviet (now Russian) experts, consisting of political and military historians, archivists, and museum experts was appointed for this purpose. The committee began drawing up plans on April 14, 1991, and by October 1992 they created a broad concept of the continuation and re-evaluation of the museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

The museum opened its doors to the public on May 10, 1995.

Images from Berlin Edition

Berlin Setup of the Dictionary of War

Presentation of Irit Rogoff and Meir Wigoder

Audience

Presentation of Brian Massumi

Performance of Jonathan Allen

Preformance of Rimini Protokoll, DARNELL “STEPHEN” SUMMERS and DAVE BLALOCK

Performance of Quio & Darius James

Darius James at the Dictionary of War ending

Material from the Berlin Edition

Flyer for the Berlin Edition
Flyer for pirate cinema screening

Credits of Berlin Edition

The Berlin edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR have been produced in a collaboration of "Multitude e.V." and "unfriendly takeover". It has been funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and produced in close collaboration with Sophiensaele.

Curators: Annett Busch, Sebastian Lütgert, Tom Lamberty, Florian Malzacher, Anke & Heike Schleper, Florian Schneider, Bernhard Schreiner

Organization: Franziska Frielinghaus, Susanne Lang, Philipp Otto

Moderation: Sebastian Lütgert

Stage Building: Sophiensaele Technical Team

Organization of the Fieldtrip: Knut-Sören Steinkopf

Technical Setup: Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lütgert, Florian Schneider

Video Production: Annett Busch, Jan Gerber, Iris de Hoog, Gerbrand Oudenaarden, Florian Schneider

Catering: Jenny Kaiser and Co.