The Berlinische Galerie’s birthday summer is drawing to a close. Before it ends, Berlin Art Week adds one last highlight. Three artists, two formats, and a festive end to a season that, while not consistently sunny, was celebratory nonetheless. In his first feature film Slack, Cyrill Lachauer climbs freight trains across the U.S., traveling along the societal margins with photographer Mike Brodie. The search is not only for lost fathers but also to explore how images can have an impact in a world shaped by TikTok aesthetics and drug crises. At the center is the memory of Brodie’s late partner, Mia Justice Smith, nicknamed Slack, whose ashes become a symbol for a generation trying to find itself between post-punk, drifting, and an uncompromising desire for freedom while exposing the American Dream as a farce. Slack (2025, 60 min.) is neither a conventional documentary nor pure fiction, but a cinematic drift — poetic and contradictory. Its German premiere is on Saturday (13.09.) at Babylon*.

Other drifts take form in the sculptures of Abie Franklin and Daniel Hölzl. After Hölzl’s work Soft Cycles adorned the museum’s canopy for the Berlinische Galerie’s 50th anniversary, the two now present Bycatch as part of the Hallen Art Festival. Inflatable tetrapods (precisely engineered coastal defense structures from the 1950s) proliferate like organic flotsam. The title references bycatch in fishing: everything unintentionally caught in the net. Bycatch embodies the paradox of our present: that every protective measure creates new risks. A summer drifting in all directions one last time — Slack, Bycatch, Soft Cycles.

Text: Inga Krumme / Credit: Abie Franklin & Daniel Hölzl; Cyrill Lachauer

Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstr.124–128, 10969 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Artist Talk with Cyrill Lachauer and Mike Brodie at the IBB Video Room (in English)
14.09.2025 Free admission, but RSVP here.

Babylon Berlin, Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map
Slack premiere 13.09.2025. Free admission, remaining tickets are at the door.

Bycatch as part of the Hallen 06 Art Festival (06.–14.09.2025), organized by Wilhelm Studios.

@berlinischegalerie 
@cyrilllachauer
@abiefranklin 
@hoelzldaniel
@hallen_kunstfestival

In the group exhibition at Bode, voices from southern Africa rethink movement — politically, poetically, personally. September in Berlin always feels like a state of emergency: the city is full, the streets are crowded, minds are overloaded, school has started up again, and everything is in motion. The title of the exhibition (opening tomorrow, 05.09.2025) at Bode could hardly be more fitting: Still Moving. Curated by choreographer and interdisciplinary artist Jessica Nupen, the exhibition brings together voices from southern Africa who understand movement beyond a purely physical phenomenon, and as something political, poetic, and personal. The works span mediums such as painting, sculpture, and installation, opening a dialogue between memory and ritual. Renowned artists such as William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa, and Misheck Masamvu are presented alongside younger artists, including Boemo Diale, Nthabiseng Kekana, Frances Goodman, and Rosie Mudge.

The curatorial approach reveals the many ways movement can be conceived and visualized. Kentridge, internationally known for his playful animations and dynamic drawings, engages with the erasures and contradictions in history. Nhlengethwa translates jazz into a language of survival. Masamvu paints the fragile terrain of Zimbabwe with raw, rhythmic energy. Diale and Kekana explore the body as an archive, Goodman frames it as a battlefield, while Mudge transforms it into a shimmering surface full of contradictions. Together, their works create a panorama that renders movement tangible as a choreography of identities, memories, and spaces. Or, as Nupen puts it: “The exhibition challenges us to rethink our ideas about movement”. And perhaps feel them anew — movement as transformation, as a cautious or powerful gesture, as something ever present, even in silence.

Text: Hilka Dirks / Credit: Boemo Diale; Misheck Masamvu; Sam Nhlengethwa; Bode

Bode, Karl-Marx-Allee 82, 10243 Berlin–Friedrichshain; map

Still Moving until 19.10.2025. The opening takes place on 05.09.2025, featuring a live music performance by Bastian Duncker (saxophone), Sebastian Böhlen (guitar), and Sidney Werner (bass).

@bode.gallery