AMAN AMAN

AMAN AMAN is a transnational cultural project exploring interconnected histories of migration, exile, labor, solidarity, and friendship between Greece, Turkey, and Germany through exhibitions, performances, concerts, film screenings, and conversations. Launching on June 3, 2026, the project travels across Athens, Thessaloniki, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Istanbul, and Izmir, evolving through multiple iterations until January 2027.

Resisting a linear historical narration, the project embraces a polycentric, long-durational, and relational approach: stories, sounds, and images move across locations and formats, reappearing in altered forms and contexts. AMAN AMAN draws on a range of sonic and archival practices: from the haunting tunes of amanades and türküs to the solidarities forged between Greek and Turkish workers in Germany; from the post-Ottoman laments of the Café Amans in New York to contemporary voices from the Aegean coast and Anatolia.

Moving between past and present, it brings into proximity dispersed geographies and temporalities. Across its iterations, AMAN AMAN creates spaces for listening and gathering, where stories and songs become vessels—revoiced and set into motion again. In doing so, the project opens up cultural imaginaries that challenge ethnocentric narratives, focusing instead on the multiple ways histories are transmitted and lived across the Eastern Mediterranean and its diasporas.

AMAN AMAN is a project by Goethe-Institut Athen, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, and TAVROS. Further announcements will follow on a series of events in cooperation with Münchner Kammerspiele, Goethe-Institut Izmir, Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, İç İçe—Festival für neue anatolische Musik, Kulturakademie Tarabya, Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, and DFF—Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum Frankfurt.

AMAN AMAN Athens (Kick–Off Event): June 3, 2026, at Goethe-Institut Athen

For one summer evening, the Goethe Institute in Athens becomes the setting for a garden party dedicated to friendship. Curated by Habibi Kiosk of the Münchner Kammerspiele, the program includes listening sessions, performances, concerts, discussions, DJ sets, and more. Bringing together artists, musicians, storytellers, and performers, the gathering unfolds as a vibrant constellation of encounters, sounds, and shared histories across Greek–Turkish–German realms. All habib(t)is of the city are invited to celebrate friendship through a diverse artistic kaleidoscope shaped by exchange, memory, and cross-cultural connection.

Contributors: Tuncay Acar, Soner Aksan, Iosif Angelidis, Ufuk Bakırdöğen, Sophie Eisenried, Costas Gianacacos, Anna Irmgard Jäger, Frangiskos Kakoulakis, Salih Karagöz, Chrisa Lazariotou, Gina Penzkofer, Georgios Pisiotis, Sebastian Reier, Bora Yildiz, a.o.
Curated by: Habibi Kiosk

AMAN AMAN Berlin: June 12–14, 2026, at SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA

AMAN AMAN comes to life in Berlin with a three-day festival at SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA. Through concerts, listening sessions, film screenings, talks, and culinary interventions, the intertwined echoes of the Eastern Mediterranean and the multilayered histories embedded within them become audible, visible, and experientially accessible.

The region’s cultural heritage, shaped by migration, displacement, and exile, unfolds within Berlin’s trans-cultural present. The festival seeks fluid narratives beyond chronological frameworks to open up new, polycentric perspectives from within the diaspora. These perspectives are re-situated through sound, language, and film—beyond fixed categories and singular attributions.

Contributors: Nevra Akdemir, AKEBİ, Aspa Anogiati, Larissa Araz, Mustafa Avcı, Elona Beqiraj, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Meray Diner, Erkin Erdoğan, Korhan Erel, Shehab Fatoum, Xristina Fotiou (Mastika Sounds), Yara Haskiel, Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu, Adir Jan, Giorgos Karypidis, Ergün Kayabaş, Malve Lippmann, Tan Morgül, PAYE feat. Korhan Erel and Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu, Perperúna Ensemble, Prince Emrah, Queerberg Collective, Kübra Sarı, Seyyare – Anatolian Women’s Choir, Dalia Soliman, Miriam Stock, Can Sungu, Murat Uğurlu, Viron Erol Vert with the class of KHB (Beo Da Silva, Dré Philippines, Léna Serdjebi, Zéna Chite), Dimitra Zina, a.o.

AMAN AMAN Athens: October 8, 2026–January 30, 2027, at TAVROS

AMAN AMAN’s program will come to a close with a three-month exhibition at TAVROS, situated in an area of Athens marked by the histories of communities who migrated from Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia. The exhibition will create a temporary home for stories of displacement and unlikely friendships, bringing together forms of solidarity and vulnerability through an intimate engagement with narratives of movement, as well as the contradictions of longing for a past grounded in the present. An accompanying public program of sonic presentations, performances, talks, screenings, and laments will counter the overriding narratives of migratory linearity. It instead puts forward a transnational, multidirectional approach in which personal testimonies take center stage, linking peoples and places, stories and songs.

Contributors: Larissa Araz, Vartan Avakian, Mustafa Avcı, Anna Bromley & Meltem Ahıska, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Cevdet Erek, Martha Mavroidi, Angela Melitopoulos & Kerstin Schroedinger, Marina Papazyan, Didem Pekün, Dimitris Prokos, Valinia Svoronou, Zafos Xagoraris, a.o.
Curated by: Maria-Thalia Carras, Eirini Fountedaki

Stay tuned for upcoming events.