Politics of Being Heard – EN Bärenzwinger Berlin

The artistic positions of Katrin Bittl, Seo Hye Lee, Anika Krbetschek, and Zorka Lednárová engage with barriers, participation, and forms of care through different media. Katrin Bittl works with video performances involving self-staging and situations of assistance to question bodily norms, accessibility, and social hierarchies. Seo Hye Lee combines textile and moving image works with personal experiences of hearing loss, addressing questions of accessibility, language, and shared understanding. In her multisensory installation and outdoor work, Anika Krbetschek develops a complex engagement with care, psychiatric violence, and the history of the Bärenzwinger, intertwining sound, video, scent, and materiality.

Zorka Lednárová translates personal experiences of everyday barriers into spatial and physical restrictions for the audience through sculpture and documentary photography, prompting shifts in perspective and direct confrontation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a public program combining inclusive mediation formats and artistic contributions. Planned elements include an audio and tactile tour, text versions in plain language, and a performative program. Further program details will be announced during the course of the exhibition.

Audio and tactile tour with Sebastian Schulze & Katrina Blach

Saturday, 6/9/2025,
2 PM

Meeting point: 15 minutes before the start of the event at the entrance to the Bärenzwinger.

Registration required

Free entry

In German Language

Link to audio flyer (German)

The Bärenzwinger Berlin warmly invites you to the inclusive event “Bilder im Kopf. Dialogical Art Mediation for Listening and Touching” with Katrina Blach (sighted) and Sebastian Schulze (blind) on Saturday, 6 September 2025, at 2 PM. Please meet 15 minutes before the start at the entrance to the Bärenzwinger.
As part of the exhibition “Politics of Being Heard”, the Bärenzwinger invites people with and without visual impairments to exchange views on works from the exhibition.

The exhibition “Politics of Being Heard” asks what it means to be heard—in everyday life, in institutions, and in artistic contexts. At its centre is how we deal with barriers that impede or prevent access: physical, structural, and social. The Bärenzwinger—a listed historic site with limited accessibility—becomes part of this enquiry. The exhibition understands itself as an open process: it makes structural exclusions visible and asks how spaces must be designed so that more people feel heard—not as an exception, but as a matter-of-course within cultural publics. The artistic contributions show that exclusions are deeply anchored in social structures—and open up new perspectives on visibility, responsibility, and care. Through multimedia installations, videos, photographs, textile works, and sculptures, they make the complexity of accessibility tangible—and pose the question under which conditions participation in art and society becomes possible.

Registration
Participation is limited to 20 people.
Please register by 4 September 2025 by phone at 030 901837461 or by email at info@baerenzwinger.berlin.

Need assistance with your journey?
We are happy to pick you up from the nearest public transport stop. Please let us know by 5 September 2025 via email at info@baerenzwinger.berlin.

Katrina Blach works with photography, video, and participatory formats. A central focus of her practice is inclusive and dialogical art mediation, which she understands as a shared process of discovery, questioning, and reflection. Rather than transmitting knowledge, she seeks to create spaces where diverse perspectives can meet. Blach develops projects in art and cultural education that foster empowerment and enable participation.

Sebastian Schulze is blind and has been engaged in inclusive art mediation for many years. As a member of the Inclusion Advisory Board at the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig (MdbK), he contributed to making exhibitions accessible for blind and visually impaired audiences—through tactile reproductions, audio descriptions, and Braille information. He emphasizes the importance of including blind perspectives from the outset. Schulze understands art mediation as a dialogical process that engages multiple senses and encourages exchange.

“Open Monument Day” at the Bärenzwinger – guided tours with Alice Lorenzon

Saturday & Sunday, 13/9/ & 14/9/2025,
12-1 PM

Registration required

Free entry

In German Language

On 13 and 14 September 2025, the Bärenzwinger Berlin invites you to monument-historical guided tours with Alice Lorenzon through the historic grounds of the Köllnischer Park, taking place each day from 12 to 1 PM as part of the European Heritage Days. The Bärenzwinger, inaugurated in 1939 with Berlin’s city bears, was home to several generations of these symbolic animals for almost 80 years. Until the death of Schnute, the last bear, in 2015, the bears shaped the city’s image. Today, the Bärenzwinger is preserved as a cultural monument and serves as a space for exhibitions and events. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn more about the site’s eventful history and its current use as a venue for contemporary art.

Registration
required by 12 September at info@baerenzwinger.berlin

Alice Lorenzon is an art mediator with a particular interest in the connection between art and storytelling. After studying languages, she turned to art and has been working in municipal galleries and museums for eight years. For the past four years, she has been teaching art at the Kreativitätsgrundschule. She currently works at the Klosterruine and the Bärenzwinger, where she has been regularly offering guided tours as part of the European Heritage Days since 2022. In her mediation practice, she is interested in the themes and impressions visitors take away from the history of a site and how these can open up new perspectives on art and society.

Neighborhood meeting “Soup, tea, and listening”

Sunday, 5/10/2025,
5-7 PM

No registration required

Free entry

The Bärenzwinger warmly invites neighbors and all those interested to join us on Sunday evening for a cozy gathering with soup and tea. This time, the focus is on listening together: we want to create space to share experiences, thoughts, and stories.

The current exhibition “Politics of Being Heard” explores what it means to be heard – in everyday life, in institutions, and in artistic spaces. At the same time, it highlights that listening is a form of care, requiring time, attention, and openness.

Together with the gallery’s curatorial team, we would like to open a conversation: Where do we feel heard, and where not? What structures are needed to truly listen to one another? How can we create spaces in our daily lives in which all voices have room?

Over soup and tea, we invite you to exchange ideas, to listen, and to experience neighborhood as a space where new perspectives and community can emerge.

Daily program KGB Action Days with guided tour & concert

Saturday, 18/10/2025,
1-5 PM
1 PM: Curator’s tour
4 PM: Concert

No registration required

Free entry

Angela Ordu & FREE SPIRITZ

The multicultural Berlin-based women’s ensemble FREE SPIRITZ was founded by Nigerian-German singer Angela Ordu. With an infectious joy for performing, the group transforms diverse musical styles, original compositions, and well-known songs into groovy, danceable music. Their repertoire spans soul, funk, pop, and jazz to African rhythms – always infused with energy, vitality, and a strong sense of togetherness.

In the 1990s, Angela Ordu collaborated with numerous renowned musicians and reached the U.S. charts with her song “Rhythm of Love.” In 2001, her career was interrupted by the autoimmune disease lupus and a stroke. Today, she is back on stage – music has become for her an expression of resilience and strength. She is part of the platform PINC-Music, which supports inclusive music projects, and is also actively involved in raising awareness about lupus.

Line-up:

Angela Ordu – Voc, Shakers (NGA/DE)
Josylyn Segal – Perc, Sax, Voc (USA)
Ria Rother – Bass, Drums (DE)
Andreza Jesus – Voc, Pandero (BRA)
Sol Okarina – Guit, Voc (COL)

Reading by Sabrina Lorenz: “Because sunflowers bloom even in winter”

Saturday, 25/10/2025
3 PM

Free admission

Registration
by October 24 at info@baerenzwinger.berlin

Language: Spoken German

“Feelings exist to be felt.”

What may sound lofty is, in truth, a call for honesty, gentleness, and self-reflection.

With her book “Because Sunflowers Also Bloom in Winter,” Sabrina Lorenz takes her readers on a poetic journey through the four seasons – and at the same time, toward themselves.
As an activist and slam poet, the author, Sabrina Lorenz, seeks to capture the complexity of living with a chronic, progressive, and life-shortening illness.
This includes all the emotions and thoughts that can arise from personal challenges and confrontations, but also within the context of a patriarchal and ableist system.
It is about justice and encouragement to raise one’s voice in a sea of prejudice – a sea in which marginalized groups often seem to have no place.
It is about wounds, discrimination, growth, and new beginnings.
It is a book full of hope, understanding, radical honesty, and courage – with empathetic texts that touch the heart, linger in the mind, and give readers the sense of being seen and heard.

About the author:
With her blog @fragments_of_living, Sabrina Lorenz raises awareness and sparks impulses for disability empowerment.
She brings inclusion onto the stage and into the center of society. Whether as a keynote speaker, as co-organizer together with initiator Kevin Hoffmann of Germany’s largest nationwide community event for people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses – the Kämpferherzen meeting – or together with Paralympian Moritz Brückner in their joint podcast “Inklusiv UNS.”

Her book “Because Sunflowers Also Bloom in Winter” (2023) creates space for dialogue, understanding, and courage – a must-read for those affected as well as their loved ones. Recognized as part of Zeit Campus’s “30 under 30” (2024) and as the first disabled person nationwide to advocate for inclusive climate protection in the course of the “Future Lawsuit” (September 2024) before the Federal Constitutional Court, Sabrina Lorenz sets an example for a diverse and democratic future.

Katrin Bittl

Katrin Bittl (*1994 in Munich) is a visual artist, freelance author, and peer advisor for artists based in Munich. Until 2023, she studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. A central focus of her artistic practice is the deconstruction of bodily and behavioral norms. She explores the perception of women with disabilities through self-portraits and video performances, aiming for a direct yet unobtrusive confrontation with diverse bodies.

By situating her own body within the plant world, she raises questions about care work, the notion of caregiving, and societal ideals of performance. Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Galerie Bezirk Oberbayern, Munich (2023); DG Kunstraum, Munich (2024); HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2022); Vivo, Vancouver (2023); and Platform, Munich (2022).

Her artistic practice has been supported by the Visual Arts Scholarship of the City of Munich (2024), the Academy Association Prize (2023), and a #takeHeart residency as part of NEUSTART KULTUR (Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2022).

Seo Hye Lee

Seo Hye Lee is a deaf South Korean artist based in the UK. She studied Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, London, completing her MA in 2017. Drawing from her lived experience of hearing loss and as a cochlear implant user, she works across drawing, moving image, and multi-sensory installation to explore the intricate terrains of sound and silence. Across her practice, Seo Hye Lee champions accessibility and collaboration, drawing inspiration from both collective and personal encounters with sound.

Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions, including the V&A Museum, London; Kunsthalle Bremen; Tate Exchange, London; MIMA – Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; Science Gallery London; Royal College of Art, London; Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga; Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto; CCA Glasgow and Nottingham Contemporary.

She has also participated in festivals such as the Selected 12 UK Tour (including CCA Glasgow, Fabrica Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, John Hansard Gallery) and Presents 2023 in Canada and Germany.Her research and projects have been supported by the Vital Capacities Residency and Arts Council England’s DYCP programme.

Anika Krbetschek

Anika Krbetschek (*1997, Berlin) is a spring-born artist, curator, and author based in Berlin. In her post-disciplinary research, she relates what occurs at the edges of psyche, trauma, and memory to systems, collective memories, and neurophysiology. Where politics and history are inscribed in bodies and voices, and psychological knowledge itself has a history, she develops a practice that listens, experiences, and distills. Her projects, which center participation and lived expertise, create artistic formats in which resistant memories and inner realities can become part of an inclusory discourse.

Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Petersburg Art Space Gallery, Berlin (2024); Living Room Studio, Yerevan (2025); Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2024); Goethe-Institut, Yerevan (2024); and KunstHaus Potsdam (2023).

She has also participated in festivals such as Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg (2023); 48h Neukölln Arts Festival, Berlin (multiple editions since 2020); and Grenzen sind relativ Festival, Hamburg (2023). Her artistic practice has been supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (2025), the Culture Moves Europe mobility grant (2025), and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (2023).

Zorka Lednárová

Zorka Lednárová (*1976 in Bratislava, Slovakia) is an artist and curator based between Bratislava and Berlin. She studied sculpture, fine art, and calligraphy at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, and the Berlin University of the Arts. In large-scale installations, photography, and public space projects, she explores physical and social barriers and their impact on participation, visibility, and belonging.

Her work draws on biographical experiences and often employs subtle yet disruptive interventions to enable shifts in perspective, question power structures, and rethink participation. Her work has been presented in national and international solo and group exhibitions, including Kunsthaus Dresden (2025), OKK/Raum 29, Berlin (2025, 2021), Kunsthalle Bratislava (2024, 2023, 2019), Plato – Ostrava City Gallery (2023), and Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2025). She has also participated in festivals such as Biela Noc Bratislava (2023) and Ostrava Camera Eye (2023).

She has received funding from the City of Bratislava (2023), the German-Czech Future Fund (2023), the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe (2020), and Pro Helvetia (2020). As co-founder and long-time director of the project space OKK/Raum 29, she developed platforms for international exchange and collaborative formats.