The atrium of the Gropius Bau is a magical place. As milky light descends from the skylights, you feel a sense of occasion and even awe as you stand among columns, tiles, ornaments, gold and (sometimes exoticizing) frescoes. Built as a trade museum and now used by the Berliner Festspiele, the hall was opened to the public as a “Gathering Place” by artist Emeka Ogboh in 2021. This year, people are once again being invited to collect, listen and linger in the institution. This Saturday (01.10.2022), as part of the group exhibition YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal, radio hosts Vera Dvale, Ross Alexanderand Bitsy Knox are hosting a listening session at the Resonance Room. The three artists do the fortnightly radio show Intimate Connections on Wedding community station Cashmere.

For one afternoon they will present aural collages that include field recordings from Gropius Bau and other interwoven sounds that will fill the impressive space. They accompany the current exhibition, which deals with the politicization of health, Indigenous knowledge systems and rights of non-human animals. Both exhibition and sounds decolonize the institution in whose walls they echo.

Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Mathias Völzke / Graphic: Kopierwerkstatt Cashmere Radio

Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstr.7, 10963 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map

Intimate Connections: Musical Explorations of Rest and the Inner Self, Sat 01.10.22, 14–18h
Admission is free.

@gropiusbau
@cashmere_radio

The KW’s artworks usually spend Saturday night by themselves, but this doesn’t mean the gallery itself has to close. Quite the opposite: for the first time, the doors of the exhibition building in Auguststrasse will be open for a full 24 hours, from 11h Saturday to 11h Sunday. The occasion for this is a site-specific installation by Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane as part of Pause, a series curated by Sofie Krogh Christensen. The series is held between the gallery’s main exhibitions, and this edition, entitled Sync, includes a collaboration with British musician Daniel Blumberg. The work deals with emotional, psychological and political contexts of material. It is about rituals, duration and eternity, body and place – literally, since visitors are invited to participate in the work by creating immersive sound construction with their heartbeats. The pulses of 24 visitors will be amplified in the space during the live sound performance.

Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Frank Sperling & Aidan Zamiri / Credit: Tatjana Pieters; Lydia Ourahmane & Daniel Blumberg; Aidan Zamiri

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr.69, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map

Pause: ­Lydia Ourahmane “sync” – 01–02.10.2022 (24 hours)

@kwinstitutofcontemporaryart