As the last completed, large housing complex of the GDR, Hohenschönhausen, with its six-storey, 11-storey and 19-storey buildings in prefabricated construction and its paths lined with poplar trees, offers living quarters and a home to more than 55,000 people, and the trend is rising. Long-time residents meet newcomers, children and youths encounter seniors, residents of the most various languages and countries of origin run across each other in everyday urban life. This coexistence of cultures, generations and lifestyles brings to light different questions regarding the way we live together and at the same time harbours new energies, dynamics and potentials for Hohenschönhausen.

The festival ZusammenZimmern examines this process more closely as a laboratory for societal change. ZusammenZimmern seeks to question practices of coexistence and uses artistic means and methods to test formats that create a good sense of togetherness and offer new perspectives for the development of the city district. “A Room for You” serves as a foundation and nucleus: the 18-square-metre wooden cube with a window and door has been inviting people to local, public and private uses since the beginning of July. Now, at the end, the room will function as the festival centre for three days and Neu-Hohenschönhausen will become a stage.

Residents, local initiatives and artists create connections between their often diverse lifeworlds and the surrounding area with very different uses and actions. A varied programme featuring commissioned productions created in and for Hohenschönhausen, concerts (Ebow, Pohlmann, Ostberlin Androgyn, and many others), dance performances (FRZNTE), an open air cinema, art installations (Guerilla Architects, Reuter & Gass), exhibitions, community offers for children, youths and adults (cooking, costumes, parkour) and many more events will accompany this exceptional festive state in the large housing complex.

ZusammenZimmern. Festival für Kultur und Raum in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.
31.08. - 02.09.23, Wartenberger Kirchplatz, Grevesmühlener Str. 16, 13059 Berlin
Further information at www.zusammen-zimmern.de