Goethe Institute is 50

The festivities started in Berlin by opening the exhibit, Murnau — Manila — Minsk: The Goethe Institute is Fifty. A series of gala concerts will follow.

The Murnau-Manila-Minsk exhibit consists of creative projects being carried out by the Goethe Institute the world over. One called Foresight, belongs to the German artist Ute Weiss-Leder and her Ukrainian counterpart Oksana Chepelyk, created and presented in Kyiv (1999), sponsored by Kyiv’s Goethe Institute.

The institute was founded in 1951 to surmount the barrier of silence between Germany and other countries after World War II. It all started on a modest scope, organizing language schools for foreigners in small Upper Bavarian towns. Currently, it is a worldwide network consisting of 128 institutes in 76 countries, meant to promulgate the German language abroad and uphold international cultural cooperation.

In Kyiv, the Goethe Institute was set up in 1993. The Goethe Institute Cultural Center in Kyiv as elsewhere sees its task in facilitating cultural exchanges with Germany and promoting the language. Under this program, the institute cooperates with local partners all over Ukraine — drama companies, museums, artists’ unions, festivals, universities, other educational establishments, ministries, and libraries. In addition, the Goethe Institute maintains German reading halls in Ukraine, as well as German language study centers and reference libraries.

The Foresight exhibit reflects the epochal changes that have occurred in Ukraine and Germany over the past decade (like the fall of the Berlin Wall and proclamation of Ukrainian independence) and their consequences bringing about a new sense of life. The Weiss-Leder-Chepelyk project explores this sense by means of photography, video, and broadcasting. It is centered not on high-sounding proclamations but on the individual views of both woman artists on the long road stretching over the past decade and perceived differently in Berlin and Kyiv.