Seven dancers, harnessed into ropes and body rigs, stride upright along a museum wall, as if gravity were only a matter of negotiation. When Trisha Brown premiered “Walking on the Wall” at the Whitney Museum in 1971, she flipped the laws of dance ninety degrees with a remarkably simple gesture. What classical ballet celebrates as the virtuoso conquest of the vertical, she relocated to the horizontal. She showed that walking, the most banal of all movement patterns, needs neither pointe work nor leaps to defy gravity.

The choreographer, whose body of work (over a hundred pieces in all) established her as one of the most inventive figures in postmodern dance, always treated movement as research: where does everyday life end, and where does performance begin? “Walking on the Wall” remains, to this day, one of the key works in answering that question. Now, nine years after Brown’s death, and in close collaboration with the Trisha Brown Dance Company, the piece finds a new starting point on the glass façade of the Neue Nationalgalerie, staged to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence.

To kick off Berlin Art Week, the museum presents the fifth edition of its festival Perform! from 09.-13.09.2026, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Lisa Botti and Gregor Quack. Walking on the Wall is performed daily at 17h on the terrace, with additional showings on Sunday at 14h and 18h30. Alongside it, Berlin-based artist Kianí Del Valle presents a site-specific work with her KDV Performance Group, “Instrucciones para existir,” conceived as an homage to Trisha Brown and a response to Mies van der Rohe’s iconic building.

On the festival’s closing Sunday (13.09.), Miriam Kongstad, Deva Schubert and Josh Johnson join the lineup, rounding out the program with pieces of their own. Admission to the performances is free, and registration is generally not required. When space runs short, it’s simply first come, first served. And even with solid ground underfoot on the terrace, watching it all unfold feels, for a moment at least, completely untethered.

Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Ivan Erofeev, Credits: Instrucciones Para Existir (Instructions for Existing), KDV Performance Group, 2026, Direction, Concept & Choreography : Kianí Del Valle, Original Sound Score: Devonté Hynes; Miriam Kongstad, Hard Play, 2026, Photo: Andrej Lamut

Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str.50, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map

Perform! 09.–13.09.2026
Walking on the Wall daily 17h (Sunday additionally 14h & 18h30)

@neuenationalgalerie

Anyone who hears “auction” and immediately pictures Sotheby’s, exclusive circles, and five-figure record sums hasn’t yet set foot in the Auktionshaus am Grunewald. From 18.-20.09.2026, the house once again transforms into a place where art history doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and bidding is genuinely fun. Anyone can join in; a few hundred euros is enough to get started. The auction kicks off on Friday (18.09., from 18h) with around 230 lots, before hundreds more pieces go under the hammer on Saturday and Sunday, each starting at midday.

David Hockney’s exhibition poster “Still Life with Book” opens with an estimate of between 100 and 200 euros. For something more unconventional, bid on a textile piece by Rosemarie Trockel: the silk scarf “Untitled”, in its original packaging, currently sits at 220 euros and works equally well around the neck or as a wall piece. Several pins by Yoko Ono are also coming up, which pair nicely with Trockel’s scarf on a jacket or can be arranged as miniature sculptures (estimate: 200–300 euros). There’s no shortage of finds under 500 euros either. A black-and-white print by Félix González-Torres has a starting price of 200 euros, or a signed print by Andreas Gursky currently at 360 euros. Or perhaps a wooden wall object by Imi Knoebel in the same price range?

The truly priceless rush comes during the bidding itself. The moment you raise your hand, that brief flicker of doubt over whether someone might snatch the work out from under you, and finally, the thrill of walking away with a genuine piece of art. That’s precisely why an auction might just be one of Berlin’s most underrated weekend activities. More thrilling than the cinema, cheaper than you’d think. Best to view the works in person beforehand and jot down the lot numbers in advance. The public preview kicks off tomorrow (11.09.), and the team around Lena Winter and Sebastian Greber will let you in on a few insider favorites.

Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Alexander Anufriev

Auktionshaus am Grunewald, Lise-Meitner-Str.7-9, 10589 Berlin-Charlottenburg; map

All preview and auction dates can be found here.

@aagrunewald

What is music doing in an art museum? That’s one of the questions co-curator Sachiko Namba uses to open the exhibition Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time, the first major European retrospective of the Japanese artist and composer. It opens tonight (10.09.) in the Rieckhallen at Hamburger Bahnhof.

Somewhere between environmentalism and activism, film, performance, electronic music and pop, it’s hard to pin down exactly what defined Sakamoto. He first gained international recognition in the late ’70s as co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra in Tokyo. The group fused electronic music, synthesizer technology and digital production methods long before “ambient” and “techno” became household terms. From the mid-2000s onward, he began installing music in space. Music, Sakamoto once said, is an art form that exists only in time. Working with sound as a spatial and visual medium increasingly moved to the center of his practice. He developed three-dimensional sound spaces, working closely with artists and filmmakers along the way.

His installations grapple with perception, time, nature, technology and impermanence. Collaboration was a fundamental principle underlying his art. Chief among his collaborators is likely alva noto, or Carsten Nicolai, with whom he co-produced the score for “The Revenant” (2015) and several albums, and with whom he shared a close friendship. Nicolai has now designed a room for the exhibition, three and a half years after Sakamoto’s death, presenting two film projects underscored by tracks from Sakamoto’s final album “12”. Five large, black-papered installation rooms were created for the show in total, all marked by the master’s unmistakable textures, scratches and sounds.

You could spend days in this exhibition and lose all sense of time altogether, or perhaps, more accurately, live through every state of time there is and lose yourself within it. How does music alter our perception of time? How does it create spaces where different temporal planes can coexist? Where do environment and art converge within it? And what responsibility do we carry? These are the big questions Sakamoto grapples with, and ones we’re confronted with the moment we step into the exhibition. But amid all these questions, keep it simple, Sachiko Namba concludes in her introduction. Her advice: “Just enjoy the show.”

Text: Inga Krumme / Credits: Ryuichi Sakamoto “seeing sound, hearing time”, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, 11.09.2026 – 20.06.2027, shown works: async-immersion, 2023, TIME, TIME, 2024, Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani & IS YOUR TIME, 2017/24, Ryuichi Sakamoto with Shiro Takatani © The Estate of Ryuichi Sakamoto / KAB Inc.

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Invalidenstr.50, 10557  Berlin–Mitte; map

Ryuichi Sakamoto “seeing sound, hearing time” 11.09.2026 – 20.06.2027

@hamburger_bahnhof