The cultural day in brief: news, premieres, exhibitions and all the latest contributions from our sections – newest first.
Njabulo Phungula will receive the Busoni Composition Prize, Raphaëlle Aoun the advancement award. The award sends a public signal – but its impact will only be determined afterwards: through performances, commissions and reliable opportunities to work.
Arguing about chairs, graphics and furniture does not necessarily mean missing the point. A case for precision of form.
Steier takes over the Ruhrtriennale before her first edition begins. Her ambition: bold imagery, open doors and a festival that reaches the region.
From movement to language: Judith Kuckart brings stage experience and prose together. On 10 November, she will receive the Wiesbaden Literature Prize.
Designs turn churches into cultural centres. Whether they become lasting venues depends on more than architectural ingenuity alone.
The federal government funds Deutsche Welle; parliament sets its budget. What pressure to cut costs means for culture, language services and independence.
Feminist art in Wien, bodies and machines in Basel, figures and models in Düsseldorf: three perspectives on visibility and power.
Ersan Mondtag is responsible for both the direction and set design of ‘Hamlet’. The premiere at the Berliner Ensemble asks how space can open up new readings of a classic.
In “Minotaurus”, a company’s crisis becomes a question of power, fear and responsibility in Russia in 2022.
Mapplethorpe sought beauty in the body, challenging public boundaries in the process. Today, the question is also who controls these images.
Four new specialist perspectives broaden the documenta 16 team. How these will translate into specific responsibilities has yet to be explained in detail.
Five titles, one award: what the rules of the Swiss Book Prize reveal about literary belonging.
Calder’s sculptures change with air, time and viewpoint. What do they gain when we give them space?
Between metropolis, theatre and night: Salzburg shows how artists of the interwar period observed the world around them.
Figures and facts do not speak for themselves. Those who can read their design can also recognise what a graphic highlights — and what it leaves out.
Refusal to carry out a routine assignment becomes a court case: Armin Petras brings Heinrich Böll’s satire to Theater Bonn. What does a small act of disobedience mean today?
A dispute over double basses at centre stage scuppered the concerts with Iván Fischer. Seating is a question of both sound and power.
A documentary assembles Einar Schleef’s own voice and images into a portrait. In doing so, it makes the question of remembrance itself its subject.
Between diversity, competition and reading promotion: what the federal government can do for books — and where its remit ends.
A fictional Swiss bank on trial: in Appenzell, Gabriela Löffel asks how art can investigate financial power and its narratives.
From French into German, from the written sentence to the voice: Fiston Mwanza Mujila's literature thrives in transition.
The new artistic and managing director of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra promises openness and participation. How much of this will become visible in its programming and everyday practice remains to be seen.
New models require not just money, but staff time and political backing too. What a federal programme can achieve — and what it cannot.
Returning soldiers, people left adrift and operetta melodies meet in ‘Hotel Savoy’. Franui brings Joseph Roth’s novel to the Burgtheater on 7 November.
Eileen Gray conceived furniture and architecture together. An exhibition in Kaiserslautern brings this approach to life through models and spatial installations.
The Folkwang did not begin with modernism alone: Osthaus’s Islamic art collection shaped his early vision of a museum spanning periods and regions.
Twenty years of Doris Uhlich: a Vienna retrospective traces how bodies, biographies and movement shape her choreography.
Between archive audio and synthetic voices lie questions of consent, labelling and documentary truth.
Repetition need not mean retreating into the familiar. It can give the new the very chance it needs to become more than an announcement.
As Wim Wenders’ portrait of Zumthor opens in cinemas: how moving images convey space, material and use – and where they reach their limits.
A director, a dramaturg, an actor: the Kammerspiele’s incoming leadership team is bringing a Basel model to Munich — with questions still open.
For his 90th birthday: why Wolf Biermann’s songs cannot be reduced to their political history.
At Hamburger Bahnhof, Sophie Calle links memories of Berlin with the museum’s history — and creates a work for its 30th anniversary.
A Greek god and a community engaged in ritual: La Scala brings two very different Stravinsky ballets together in one evening.
Three artistic approaches at Vienna Art Week present fear as a bodily, political and social experience – and seek ways of dealing with it.
Anica Tomić brings Rosa Luxemburg’s story to the stage at the Deutsches Theater, following its treatment in film and a graphic novel.
Politics, artificial intelligence, vulnerability: three shortlisted titles show just how wide-ranging the questions addressed by socially relevant non-fiction can be.
An encounter, a sudden loss, forty nights in dreams: Fatih Akin’s new film ‘Geister’ (Ghosts) opens in German cinemas on 5 November.
A cultural funding law could put procedures on a firmer footing. But the crucial question – how much money is available – will still be decided through the budget.
With “Different Grounds”, three choreographic voices meet a classically trained company. The result is more than an evening of three world premieres: an attempt to make an institution legible in a new way.
