20th Pictoplasma

Berlin Festival May 1–5, 2024

The Pictoplasma Festival 2024 celebrates 20 years of character design and examines the futures imagined and existing.

20 years of love for characters and their creators and once again becoming an international centre for artists, illustrators, filmmakers, and designers creating the characters of tomorrow.

The anniversary edition shines a spotlight on its Character Archives, looking back to when the project started as an online archive in the year 2000 – which led to best-selling book compilations and the ongoing festival.

The central conference features 20 artists creating the characters of the hour and whose art is also presented in the established Character Walk exhibition tour. With various performances and parties, the celebration concludes in a public Open House on the final Sunday, hosting a central Character Art Market, a marathon of 65 animated shorts in four programmes, and creative art activities.

Four group exhibitions across Berlin present and premier works by the featured artists. At Verwalterhaus, the former caretaker building located at the St. Marien St. Nikolai cemetery in Mitte.  At neurotitan, the legendary project space that continues to exude the untamed creativity it fostered in the early 1990s, the spotlight is on illustration, storytelling and graphic arts. The exhibition tour makes another stop in Mitte for an installation at the bright and airy showroom Rainbow Unicorn, moving on to the central festival venue silent green and the adjunct transmediale studio in Wedding. Here, digital media installations feature a wish-ing well installed by the queer multi-disciplinary artist.  Finally, visitors are invited to an immersive dive through Pictoplasma’s Character Archives with 30,000 files collected over two decades, presented in a media installation.

details and schedule at pictoplasma.com

1-5.5 exhibitions in Mitte & silent green
3.5. - 22:30 Psychedelic Midnight at Colosseum
4.5. - 22:30 Post-Picto-Party at Zenner
5.5. Sunday Open House at silent green