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Deutschlandjahr USA 2018/19: “Wunderbar together” – Germans and Americans join forces in search of answers to global questions
Under the motto “Wunderbar together”, from 7 March the Deutschlandjahr 2018/19 is showcasing its projects at the internationally renowned convention for the digital, music and creative industries – South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
Michelle Müntefereing, Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, who is attending the convention, issued the following statement:
The most creative minds in the branch get together here with representatives from the world of politics, business, the media and society to discuss pressing issues of the present day and the future: How is the new digital technology changing our world? What does that mean for politics and, above all, how is it changing cooperation with our partners in the arts and civil society? For addressing the opportunities as well as the risks of this change is also relevant to our international cultural relations and education policy. I therefore hope that this convention will produce many exciting ideas and am delighted that we are here at the SXSW with the Deutschlandjahr USA and our partners.
A series of Sequencer Tour events are among the highlights of the Deutschlandjahr USA at this year’s SXSW. The Berlin digital conference re:publica as well as the Reeperbahn Festival and Next Media Accelerator from Hamburg are organising a digital road show. After the “L.A. Summit”, the SXSW is the second stop off and, among others, the blogger Cory Doctorow is expected to appear. Other well known “Wunderbar together” partners such as the Berlin Institute for Sound and Music with its immersive sound project Hexadome, as well as the Goethe-Institut’s project “Virtual Bauhaus” and the mobile “Wies’n in a Box” will be at the SXSW, which runs until 14 March.
Global challenges of a very different kind will be tackled almost simultaneously by the participants in the “Midway Meeting”, as part of a broad based network project entitled “Mississippi. An Anthropocene River”. From 8 to 12 March 2019, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science with project partners based in the United States as well as international academics and artists will meet in St. Louis to present the project to the public and to discuss further developments. Until November 2019 interdisciplinary research groups will examine the historical importance of the Mississippi and the consequences of human action. On a journey along the Mississippi in autumn 2019, new methods for research and education are to be developed and presented at the Anthropocene River Campus in New Orleans in November.
Minister of State Müntefering stated that this anthropocene project was a flagship project of the Deutschlandjahr in the United States.
Using the anthropocene landscape of the Mississippi area as an example, it shows that we can only tackle the major global challenges facing us, such as sustainability, climate and structural change multilaterally and with the help of interdisciplinary, innovative approaches. This project takes us to the very place where this change is directly tangible – in one of nature’s most important protected areas and habitats.