Over four evenings in January 2026, the Neue Nationalgalerie becomes an open stage for acoustic experiments, performative moments, and collective time travel in the here and now. The poet, activist, and musician Camae Ayewa, also known as Moor Mother, together with Ensemble Mosaik, invite audiences to more than just listen. As part of Time Travel Hear Today, participants develop their own soundscapes, navigating between composed structures, improvised sounds, and interactive elements. The glass hall of Mies van der Rohe’s building transforms into a resonance space and playground where sound and time are intertwined and shifted. Hip-hop influences, traces of free jazz, electronic textures, and philosophical impulses blend into a free composition – just as director and set designer Tilman Hecker envisioned for the “Time Travel Hear Today” concept. Each of the four evenings highlights different elements: during the day, preparatory workshops take place, while in the evenings, chance encounters become part of the open program.
Spontaneous ideas and performances ensure that no evening is the same. Running in parallel is Christian Marclay’s video installation “The Clock”. The film montage collages iconic clips of clocks, alarms, and timepieces into a 24-hour loop in real time. “The Clock” can be seen as an experimental meditation on transience, offering a potential complementary layer to what Moor Mother expresses acoustically. “Time Travel Hear Today” aims to be more than a performance: it is a forum for perception, for thinking in loops, and for experiencing time as a flowing, shapeable dimension. Moor Mother speaks to the curious, to lovers of sound, and to anyone who understands art as a space of possibilities — where every minute has a life of its own. To listen, in this context, means to travel, to resonate, and to think along.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Daniel Dittus, Ebru Yildiz, Ensemble Mosaik, Distruktur
Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str.50, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map
Time Travel Hear Today – Moor Mother & Guests, A Project by Tilman Hecker, 07.–10.01.2026. Get tickets here.
@moormother
@ensemble_mosaik
