Annual program 2024
BERLIN, STURM AND SLANG, ARCHIVEThroughout history, language has been systematically used as a weapon to assert control and delegitimize belonging: without enough regard to its empowering and liberating potential. By exploring language affects specific to artists, poets, writers and activists, Sturm and Slang intends to illuminate the various processes of adaptation, evolution, and hybridization–from slang to queer linguistics–amidst great geopolitical changes and cultural upheavals. The spring-fall 2024 program at Pickle Bar takes a closer look at the transformation and disruption of languages as a means of forging new ways of being and identity in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the Baltics and Central Asia and their significant diaspora communities. A series of performances, lectures, round tables and workshop investigates the spaces for inclusivity and linguistic affinities from acoustic, visual and semantic perspectives to celebrate and redeem the necessarily fluid nature of language as an agency of self-determination and empowerment.