8 July 2022

13th Berliner Hörspielfestival (Berlin Audio Play Festival)
2 – 4 September 2022

Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg

The 13th Berliner Hörspielfestival is taking place from 2 to 4 September 2022 and will be hosted once again by the Akademie der Künste at Hanseatenweg. This year, the festival of the independent audio play scene is part of the Berliner Kultursommerfestival.

The focus is on the competitions for the coveted “brennende Mikros” (“burning mics”), which are endowed with high-quality audio equipment. From the 177 submissions, 31 pieces have been selected. The spectrum ranges from first works to independently produced compositions by professional audio playwrights. The submissions have come mainly from German-speaking countries, but also from Italy, Norway, Argentina and the Netherlands.

The independent audio play unites all genres that are traditionally separate in classical radio: narrative and genre pieces, documentary formats and compositions of sound art and music. All these forms and combinations of them – even silence – are permitted in the independent audio play. So as not to establish genre boundaries, the pieces for the competitions are only classified according to their length: up to 60 seconds for “Der Mikroflitzer” (“The MicroSpeedster”), up to 5 minutes for “Das glühende Knopfmikro” (“The glowing button mic”), up to 20 minutes for “Das kurze brennende Mikro” (“The short burning mic”) and up to 60 minutes for “Das lange brennende Mikro” (“The long burning mic”). In addition, the Berliner Hörspielfestival will again award the funding prize “Das zündende Mikro” (“The igniting mic”) for a debut work, which includes the production of a new piece in the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste.

Alongside the competitions, there will also be live events, a network meeting, a studio discussion, a panel discussion, audio installations and an interactive audio play production bus. Furthermore, the Audiowalk Award by Guidemate and Soundmarker (laboratory for site-specific audio works) will be presented for the first time at the Berliner Hörspielfestival. The Akademie’s Studio for Electroacoustic Music is holding a workshop on converting stereo into 3D audio plays, for which applications were open until 15 July 2022.

The programme is supplemented with services for blind and visually impaired audio play enthusiasts such as a podcast workshop, the outcome of which will be presented at the festival.

The festival will be broadcast live by Deutschlandfunk Kultur via its digital radio channel (DAB+) “Dokumente und Debatten” and will also be streamed live on Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook.
From 2 August 2022, new trailers of the nominated competition pieces will be released daily on Berliner Hörspielfestival’s YouTube and Facebook channels.

The Berliner Hörspielfestival is taking place in cooperation with the Film and Media Arts Section and the KUNSTWELTEN education programme of the Akademie der Künste and as part of the Berliner Kultursommerfestival 2022.

Media partner: Deutschlandfunk Kultur and taz, die tageszeitung

Further information: www.berliner-hoerspielfestival.de 

Event details
13th Berliner Hörspielfestival
2 – 4 September 2022
Fri 2 pm – midnight, Sat 12 noon – midnight and Sun 12 noon – midnight.
On Friday, 2.9., admission is free as part of the Berliner Kultursommerfestival 2022
Day tickets for Saturday and Sunday: €12 / 8
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin

Press contact
On behalf of the Akademie der Künste
Anke Beims, Tel: 0178 5481682, Anke.Beims@berliner-hoerspielfestival.de