Project Outline

Open Dialogues:New Life Berlin

New Life Berlin Festival 2008.

New Life Berlin, http://www.wooloo.org/festival/, was a contemporary art festival dedicated to new modes of moving and existing and is structured along three themes:

Transnational Communities. What do ‘community’ and ‘identity’ mean today? Presenting projects from both artistic and sociological starting points, New Life Berlin will use group participation to explore real-life cultural mobility.
Artistic Social Responsibility. What is the relationship between cultural practitioners and corporate entities in the new millennium? How does contemporary cultural production relate to the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility”?
Participation and Intervention. How do participatory arts practices affect the socio-cultural environments in which they take place? How and why can local audiences become involved in artists’ projects, and what does their involvement mean in terms of civic engagement and social empowerment?

For New Life Berlin, Open Dialogues built a tailor-made programme of live events, textual interventions and writing that responded critically to the socially engaged and collaborative work shown. They developed a community of writers who explored online and offline communities during the New Life Berlin Festival, developed organic responses to the Festival and investigates the implications and role of critical writing. Local and international writers were asked to participate in OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN, which acts as a professional development programme for new and existing writers. Each participating writer was supported in writing, publishing and editing their work as well as briefed current trends in critical writing. We also gained a unique insight into the participatory, live and socially engaged work at New Life Berlin.

Writers committed to one full day’s writing workshop (31 May), two 2 hour peer-critique sessions, at least one OPEN DIALOGUES: NEW LIFE BERLIN event (7^th June) and to writing at least three texts throughout the festival, yet we spent many more hours working and interacting socially as a strong community than either the writers or the organisers had anticipated. For texts see http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog