RELIGION ART SINCE

Aesthetics of the religious encounter. To the sources.
An interreligious speaking, listening, singing, seeing,
touching, tasting, smelling, feeling, thinking, sensing.
Vedas Torah Tripitaka Bible Koran Science & Art

Kunstplanbau (KPB) has established a meeting place - a floating area - for religion, art and science. KPB interprets this floating area as a complementary model for the future that contributes to the blossoming of interreligious, intercultural and interdisciplinary dialog. Since 2012, the event series "Aesthetics of Religious Encounters" has focused on the phenomenon and mystery of human perception with regard to religion. Each year, the focus is on a sensory organ or faculty that connects people with the world. On the one hand, this involves the description, visualization and exploration of individual religious, aesthetic and artistic experiences, but on the other hand, it is about connecting these experiences in an interreligious dialogue. The project is thus not only committed to its subject matter, but also places the current social and political necessity of multi-religious coexistence at the center of consideration.

The annual themes of the series were: 2025 The buzzing of the parts. 2024 WOMEN. Upstream Women. 2023 Keeping & Letting Go. 2022 SPIRITUALITY Playing God. 2021 SPIRITUALITY Healing Art. 2020 SPIRITUALITY Feeling. 2019 SPIRIT Thinking. 2018 HEART Feeling. 2017 SMELL Smelling. 2016 MEEL Taste . 2015 BODY Touching. 2014 BILD Seeing. 2013 SOUND Hearing. 2012 WORD Speaking.

2026
There is also a house in heaven, said
four-year-old Alma-Lou to me some time ago.

Performing what is needed.

A house in heaven / many dwellings / a castle in the air built of neighbourly love / the human body a temple / Namaste. The religious traditions of humanity have many images of how the divine dwells in humans and the human in the divine. It is not only words that paint such images; an icon, a ritual, a sculpture, a performance, a piece of music, and sometimes even a scientific idea add another dimension to this. The series of events brings religion, art and science, with their respective inner diversity and their long-standing connections, into conversation, into experience, into action. It invites us to listen when people talk about houses in heaven and temples on earth as they follow different religious and spiritual paths; it invites us to observe and trace where the expression of this can be experienced with the senses. But the dwelling of the divine is not limited to human beings alone. Animals, plants and the diverse creatures of this earth are also bearers of meaning, breath and connection. Forests become cathedrals, rivers become liturgical paths, animals become fellow creatures who teach us what connectedness, moderation and presence mean. In many religious and spiritual traditions, creation itself is regarded as a living text, as a body, as a co-inhabitant of the sacred. Where the human takes up residence in the divine, the more-than-human also takes up space – vulnerable, dignified, irreplaceable. Animals, plants, soils, waters and atmospheres are not backdrops to human existence, but co-inhabitants of a shared home. Forests, seas and cities form an ecological fabric in which every living being leaves its mark and bears responsibility. Religious traditions and contemporary science alike point to this interdependence: life is relationship.
The question of the dwelling place of the divine thus becomes a question of sustainable action, of justice between generations and species, of a culture of sufficiency. The aim is to use new forms of resonance to bring the culture of respectful and peaceful interaction between people of different religious and cultural backgrounds into contact with people who have previously shied away from crossing paths with those who think differently, live differently or respect differently. Where the human body is understood as a temple, the earth is also a sacred space that requires care, mindfulness and protection.

2025
THE HUM OF THE PARTS.
Interreligious and transcultural dialogs as a nomadic cultural project

The title is a play on words. It takes up Aristotle‘s well-known insight that the whole is more than the sum of its parts - and interweaves it with the hum, the sound of peoples of small creatures, which we will soon no longer hear if we do not find our way back to a wise form of human living by moving forward. The series of events brings religion, art and science, with their respective inner diversity and their ever-present connections, into conversation, experience and action. The voices of those who are often powerfully overheard are particularly emphasized: Women, the global South, the people who have never stopped living sustainably. In the same way, animals and plants, the planet Earth and its atmosphere, the water and all the different earths on the surface of the planet are parts of the complex ecosystem that can only survive as a whole and enable us to survive. Religious teachings and practices have, from time immemorial, encouraged respect for the interconnectedness of the whole; forms of art have illustrated it and given it symbolic thought; science, in the best of its searches, has repeatedly reoriented itself from the details to the whole. The aim is to pass on the insights of pioneers of networked thinking to the younger generation of 18 to 30-year-olds and to allow the younger generation to find their own position. The aim is to use new forms of resonance to bring the culture of respectful and peaceful interaction between people of different religious and cultural back-grounds into contact with people who have so far shied away from crossing paths with those who live differently. To this end, the encounters in Berlin‘s urban space will be meaningfully combined with virtual formats in social media, particularly via images and videos.

Series

April–October at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt University Berlin, St. Matthäus Church at the Kulturforum and in urban spaces.
Renowned religious scholars, artists and scientists took part. They came from Afghanistan, Austria, Brazil, Caribbean, Chile, Cuba, Germany, England, France, Finland, Greece, India, Italy, Iran, Israel, Libanon, Japan, Kenya, Macedonia, Nigeria, Palestine, Pakistan, Russia, Scotland, South-Korea, Switzerland, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Ukraine.

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