Rosa Anschütz ・ Pop-Kultur Festival 2026

August 24–30, 2026 | silent green Kulturquartier, Festsaal Kreuzberg, Kulturbrauerei, Pierre Boulez Saal, and more 

Live concerts, experimental music formats, talks, and more. You can look forward to international and local artists, world premieres, and music in all its facets—from large stages to intimate club shows.

The title of Rosa Anschütz’s latest, fourth album initially leads you down the wrong path, because “Sabbatical,” released on the Los Angeles-based label Heartworm Press, does not, as one might expect, refer to the artist taking time off, but is rather to be understood as a phase of reflective looking back at her own beginnings. The clever underlying idea: to pinpoint all the issues weighing on her and process them into new songs, so that she can move forward freely afterward. Rosa Anschütz’s music is situated in the sonic Bermuda Triangle of darkwave, post-punk, and synth-pop, with her work oscillating between installation, performance, and the album as a total work of art. With “Votive,” “Goldener Strom,” and “Interior,” she has created a trilogy of works in which sound was always conceived and realized in a material sense: sound figures, stage sets, embroidered landscapes. And now “Sabbatical” serves as a deliberate, prolonged exhalation and inhalation—marking a return to early, rawer lyrics that reveal more rather than conceal. Rosa Anschütz’s artistic journey is marked by a refreshing internationalism—not as a career path, but as an escape from narrow expectations and rather difficult experiences with German labels and tour agencies, which were less interested in genuine collaboration than in co-opting the musician. She landed her record deal in the U.S. somewhat by chance through her monthly radio show on Hong Kong Community Radio, in which she weaves together poetry and music—thus piquing the interest of Heartworm Press, which primarily publishes books and poetry but quickly decided to release her music as well. Incidentally, her performance at this year’s Pop-Kultur Festival is by no means her debut: she had already played at the Maschinenhaus in 2023 (back then with a much more techno-oriented sound); in 2024, she performed as part of a collaboration with the bands Black Boboi and Eddna.