Permeable boundaries — what is inside becomes visible.

We — the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics — feel thoroughly addressed by this year’s festival theme. It touches on questions that arise frequently in our daily work: who is “inside,” and who is “outside”? What parts of myself may be seen by others, and what remains unseen? The negotiation of these boundaries is a delicate balancing act — a constant tension between exposure and withdrawal, between belonging and exclusion. At times, these dynamics are also heavily charged within society. We seek not rigidity between these spheres, but rather to enhance flexibility and shifting, permeable boundaries.
As an institution dedicated to mental health, we see in the festival theme a particular opportunity to explore these transitions through artistic means and to reimagine them. Together with our patients, we aim to open spaces in which experiences from the presumed “inside” may become visible, and in which the “outside” is invited to approach, to listen, and to enter into a relation.
We are committed and convinced that, together with our patients, we can make a meaningful contribution to the festival theme “OUT/SIDE/IN,” and we hope to help dismantle barriers. Openness, participation, and inclusion are central to our work.
As in previous years, we understand ourselves as a node within the network of community-based psychiatric care in the district of Neukölln. Our integration into the neighborhood and the conscious opening of our spaces outward are essential to us — within the dynamic interplay of safe space and public sphere, of inside and outside, of clinic and urban society.