Despite a move online, Berlin's Pop-Kultur feels as vital and inclusive as ever

Pop-Kultur, now in its sixth year, is a celebration of art, performance and diversity. An international festival that’s previously taken place in venues around Berlin, for 2020 they have moved to the digital realm with a series of sessions, talks, commissioned works, and readings. The festival is presented across three days in the form of three showreels which highlight clips from the performances and films. The full-length videos will remain permanently streaming on the festival’s website.

Each showreel is an hour long and premiered via YouTube with a running commentary in the chatroom from the festival giving context and further information. It sounds clinical, but there's actually something rather warm to the interaction. As the first in-conversation plays with guests speaking in German the festival announces, “Don’t understand a word? We’ve got English subtitles as well!”

Day one showcases Noga Erez, Hamburg experimental musician Preach, The Notwist, CATNAPP, and a talk about the crisis that art and music are facing in the age of COVID-19 between the duo MADANII & LLUCID, to name a small selection. Each show kicks off at 20:20 CEST; see what they did there? “Pop-Kultar is a music festival that has been taking place in Berlin since 2015,” rolls the opening titles. “However, as a result of the pandemic, the 2020 edition is happening online. This video is the first of three shows featuring 36 audio-visual works by artists from all over the world. Some of the clips are excerpts of longer works.”

The differences between the digital and commissioned works at Pop-Kultar aren't obvious, but Yugen Blakrok’s piece fallsl into the former category. The South African rapper, probably best known for her appearance on the Black Panther soundtrack, performs with confidence and elegant verses set against an incredible backdrop. Shot in an epic, dilapidated mansion backed with stunning scenery, her performance and its surroundings are both as striking as each other. ‘Digital work’ makes the piece sound like there'll be something overtly innovative or experimental to it, but this just looks like a big-budget 90s RnB clip, and it's fantastic.

Conversely, The Notwist play a ‘Session’, an elegantly shot staged performance in what appears to be an empty Berlin venue. Beautifully lit and edited together with well mixed sound, the German indie-rock veterans play tracks from their forthcoming record. The intimate camerawork gives an insight into the inventive and expansive instrumentation going on between the sextet, definitely a highlight for any ultra-fan or pedal nerd.

The Noga Erez digital piece is similarly exciting for anyone with more than a passive interest. Her video for new single “You So Done”, a wild alt-banger, is given context with an introduction that positions her as a detective thrown into a simulated crime scene. It's strange to have the set up without the payoff in the showreel, but definitely pushes me to watch the full clip which is still streaming on the festival’s website.

Performances on day two come from the likes of Jessy Lanza, The Düsseldorf Düsterboys, 24/7 Diva Heaven and a talk on DIY principles in African music festivals. Berlin-based rock group 24/7 Diva Heaven open with an absolute blinder of a session on the Pop-Kultur stage channelling 90s riot grrrl. They are melodic, visceral and really manage to bring the audience-free show to life. Ethiopian-Israeli rapper Eden Derso plays with 90s American hip-hop fashion in her clip for “Tamid”. Rapping in Hebrew over crisp and trippy loops courtesy of her production partner DJ Mesh, her delivery is fluid, confident and although Hebrew isn’t a language you’d traditionally associate with hip-hop, it really works.

French solo artist and self-produced songwriter Theodora creates a digital work for her track “I Tried”, a music video that sees her performing to camera with an interchange of instruments and acting as her own backing singers. It's one of the more refined, pared-down digital works but the performance and staging are intimate and the track, a slow, chugging paean, draws out the starkness of it all.

The lineup on day three includes King Khan, Super Besse, Berlin queer punk band Eat Lipstick, and an ambivalent love letter to Berlin by actor Ace Mahbaz recited in German sign language.

Mueran Humanos call their music ‘Spanish-language, post-punk, new-wave, nightmare-pop industrial rock’. Their digital work for Pop-Kultar is like a technical glitch in the evening’s broadcast, in a good way. A nihilistic assault of distortion and decimation, it feels like the mainframe might be imploding. Strangely their full work isn’t available to watch on the festival website, so perhaps they did indeed break the internet.

Created as part of the Goethe Talent Residency, another digital work brings together Botswana-born singer Mpho Sebina and Swiss DJ S.Fidelity to collaborate across genres and a broadband connection. The result is “Moya”, a laid back and luscious slice of RnB that sounds so organic it's hard to believe it was all done remotely. This is mirrored in the delivery - a film of a 3D objects that project images of the pair alongside rich flowers and greenery.

The final session of the festival comes from Eat Lipstick, a Berlin-based drag-punk band that fit somewhere between KISS and the Ramones. Having been previously produced by Peaches, their session performance has that air of delightful chaos that anything could happen, even without an audience to heighten the stakes. They are joyous, fun, and so dramatic that despite the finesse of the three-day digital festival, I end the show missing live music.

One theme which really stands out at Pop-Kultur is the desire to be inclusive in the programming and with the delivery of the festival. As well as a series of talks, films and performances which acknowledge issues currently happening in global society, the festival’s participation in the YouTube chatroom, the subtitles and prominent use of sign language, the mix of genders, races and LGBTQ+ artists make the festival feel even more vital.

After more months than I care to count watching live streams, this is certainly one of the better experiences. The showreels are so carefully put together, everything is so slick, so well curated and thought through, it feels more like watching a documentary than a live festival substitute. With high production values, beautiful graphics and elegantly shot films and performances, there is nothing laboured here, no iPhone-in-a-bedroom sound quality. Pop-Kultur acts like a time capsule to this strange year, but one that you might actually want to revisit in the future.