Trailblazing is a word so overused that it seems to have lost its meaning. But let's take the term back to its roots. In its earliest form, a "trailblazer" was someone who marked off a path in the woods that others could follow. In other words, someone who could literally create a new path that their peers would trust and use. A trailblazer is someone respected in their field, who keeps pushing until they craft a new reality. At Forum Forecast Berlin, you'll find a room full of them.
The event is a transdisciplinary programme that offers mentorship to young creatives over one jam-packed weekend. At the end of the weekend, each of the six mentors chooses one of their mentee's projects to be showcased at the Forecast festival in March 2025.
The programme will include exhibiting and workshopping the mentees' pieces, as well as stimulating talks and performances. Attendees can expect dance shows centred around the "open-minded body," documentary pieces about finding a place beyond fear, art focused on creating shapes of the future, photography about capturing what's invisible to the naked eye, and musical and design compositions that imagine beyond reality.
The cohort of mentees is incredibly heterogeneous, but they all share that drive to capture and tell the stories of the future. Some mentees that stand out are Hao Zhou, a filmmaker who explores gender expectations in rural China; Mehdi Dahkan, a choreographer who interrogates social constructs in North Africa; and Mudassir Sheikh, an artist who captures Sufi mythology and cultural interconnectedness.
It's clear that the mentors will have their work cut out for them when picking the six winning projects. Either way, we're excited to see what these budding innovators have in store for the workshop and the energy the chosen artists bring to the Forecast Festival next year.
Alice Ripoll
Fiona Raby
Lieko Shiga
Theo Eshetu
Tomer Heymann
Ute Wassermann
FORUM 9, from August 2 to August 9, get your tickets here.