Transkontinentale

The Transkontinentale is a new platform that presents international dance, theatre, performance art and poetry at the Humboldt Forum. 140 years after the opening of the Berlin Conference, this first festival edition focuses on productions from the African continent that deal with colonialism and ongoing coloniality in an entertaining and critical way. The audience is invited to meet the artists through  introductions, Q&As and a poetry session.

The Transkontinentale 2024  marks the start of an autumn season dealing with artistic, scientific and community voices from former territories colonized by Germany. The festival encourages people to remember the Berlin Conference and its aftermath, and to re-encounter the collections in the partially reconstructed Berlin Palace. Held from November 15, 1884, to February 26, 1885, in the Chancellor’s Palace on Wilhelmstrasse, the meeting was organized by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and included representatives from twelve European powers, the Ottoman Empire, and the USA. The conference aimed to regulate freedom of trade on the Congo and Niger Rivers. Instead, the final document, the “Congo Act,” formed the basis for the division of Africa in the subsequent so called “Scramble for Africa”. Although the Berlin Conference is now regularly taught in schools across the African Continent, it has largely faded from public memory in Europe. Today, two memorial plaques initiated by civil society activists commemorate the conference in front of Wilhelmstraße 92.