British artist John Smith has been making experimental films for over three decades. With their calculated formal language and ironic playfulness, they are among the most important works of the contemporary film avant-garde. They are enigmatic, perceptive and, above all, funny. John Smith challenges us not to take anything we hear or see at face value, putting the criteria of fact and fiction to the test. His creative use of sound and image and the lightness and irony with which Smith creates space for viewers to rethink their own perceptions are at the forefront.

He is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, but hardly anyone knows his name. He is considered by art history to be a pioneer of Informel painting, yet the complexity of his artistic existence defies categorization. He left Germany in 1932 as a 19-year-old to be on the pulse of the art of the time in Paris. He became part of the Parisian bohemian scene and yet always remained a great loner. For throughout his life he struggles to find an existence beyond the bourgeoisie, and in the process gets caught up not least in the turmoil of the National Socialist war with the culture of Europe.

Rebecca Horn is one of the most important contemporary artists. Internationally renowned for her expansive installations, her multifaceted oeuvre encompasses drawing, collage, performance, and film, as well as objects and moving sculptures that develop a mysterious life of their own. Parallel to the Tanz Bremen festival, the Weserburg is going back to the beginnings of her artistic work and devoting a concentrated exhibition to her films and performances.

In a small former store in Bremerhaven, Jürgen Wesseler has continuously exhibited works by international contemporary artists since 1967. In 2012, the Weserburg is dedicating a special exhibition to the history of the Kabinett für Aktuelle Kunst and thus to Jürgen Wesseler's committed curatorial and collecting activities. In a retrospective of the last 20 years of the cabinet's history, important positions of the artists exhibited in Bremerhaven since 1992 and other outstanding works from private collections will be summarized and brought into exciting dialogues with one another.

The New York Times called him "the most famous unknown artist in New York". Indeed, Ray Johnson (1927-1995) has long remained an insider tip. Yet the significance and influence of his work cannot be overstated. For him, art was a communicative process that could unfold away from established institutions. Following this idea, he built up a far-reaching network of correspondence in the 1960s under the name "New York Correspondance School" and is thus considered the founder of the international Mail Art movement.

The spoken and written word has long since found its way into the visual arts: As a motto, marginal note and quotation, as a collaged text fragment, as part of a performance, a video or a sound installation. The Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft of the BDI has been awarding prizes for architecture, music, literature and the visual arts since 1953. The 2011/12 competition for the visual arts was held on the theme of "Language". A jury decided on 3 current award winners, whose works will be presented to the public in Essen, Riga and now also in Bremen.

With the Master Student program, the Bremen University of the Arts offers outstanding graduates in the "Fine Arts" program the opportunity to explore their personal positions in two additional semesters after their diploma. For young artists at the HfK, the joint master student exhibition is both the crowning conclusion of their studies and a departure for new shores. The Master Student Exhibition 2012 provides exciting insights into the reflection of existential artistic and social questions by young artists.

Exhibition in the Center for Artists' Publications

John Cage left numerous works and traces during his many visits to Bremen and Oldenburg. The composer Hans Otte, head of the music department at Radio Bremen, and Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann, music critic and educator in Oldenburg, had known Cage since the 1950s and repeatedly invited him to events and concerts or commissioned his compositions.

Exhibition in the Center for Artists' Publications

Concha Jerez and José Iges from Madrid have been working together since 1989 and have established themselves as pioneers of electronic and intermedia art. Their works oscillate between sound art and radio art.

Exhibition in the Center for Artists' Publications

"Kunstradio - Radio Art" is more than a weekly program on Österreich 1, the culture channel of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, which first went "on the air" on December 3, 1987. From the very beginning, the focus of Kunstradio's work has been on collaboration with international artists.

Cabinet exhibition at the Center for Artists' Publications

The writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff shows works in an interplay of word and object, essay and paper theater.