LINE UP

Friday, 12.06
7 – 10 PM
Listening Session
with theories

Saturday, 13.06
2 – 4 PM
How to perform a scream (I keep a roar in my mouth)
with Nadja Kracunovic
Workshop

5 – 6 PM
Lecture Performance
with Paula Schopf

7 – 8 PM
Performance
by Sofya Shaikut, accompanied by Katsia Kaya

Sunday, 14.06
2 – 3 PM
My deeds don’t fit my name
by Yasmeen Al-Qaisi
Radio-Performance

5 – 6 PM
SHOW ME THE BODY
by Agata Siniarska a.k.a. TATARI, with Ilya Subkoff
Performance Concert

Under the title For staying is nowhere, the first act of the program invites a form of invocation and explores ways of bringing what is hidden to the surface. Voice, sound, and bodily forms of expression intertwine to create a polyphonic tapestry. The program moves between the experimental sound works of DJ theories and a lecture-performance by Paula Schopf. It invites participants to engage in physical exploration through Nadja Kracunovics’s workshop How to Perform a Scream, brings together Butoh improvisation and soprano singing in the encounter between Sofya Sheikut and Katsia Kaya, and concludes with a radio performance by Yasmeen Al-Qaisi and a performative reverberation by Agata Siniarska.

Friday, June 12, 7–10 PM: Listening Session with theories
theories is an audiovisual artist and music collector from Bogotá, based in Berlin. For over a decade, she has explored the sonic spectrum with a focus on unexpected compositions, odd electronics, broken rhythms and subtle depth. Blending atmospheric soundscapes with spontaneity, she creates immersive listening experiences between movement and stillness. Her sets invite audiences into layered sonic narratives shaped by imagination, harmony and rhythm.

Saturday, June 13, 2–4:30 PM: Workshop How to Perform a Scream (I Keep a Roar in My Mouth) with Nadja Kracunovic
How to Perform a Scream? is a workshop series exploring voice as a tool of resistance, memory, and collective disobedience. Through vocal exercises, text, spoken word, polyphony, and experimental choir practices, participants engage the voice as a site of personal and political histories. Led by Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Nadja Kracunovic, the workshop draws on performance, crip theory, and critical pedagogy to challenge dominant narratives through sound and expression.

Saturday, June 13, 5–6 PM: Lecture performance with Paula Schopf
Paula Schopf is a Chilean-born, Berlin-based DJ, producer, sound artist, and researcher. Emerging from Berlin’s electronic music scene in the late 1990s as Chica Paula, she became part of the Chilean Connection alongside artists such as Ricardo Villalobos and Dinky. Today, her practice spans sound art, research, and education. Working with field recordings and synthetic sound, her installations and performances allow an engagement with aesthetic, social and political questions through listening.

Saturday, June 13, 7–8 PM: Performance by Sofya Shaikut, accompanied by soprano Katsia Kaya
Sofya’s pieces are often invitations to become something else: an image, a rhythm, an unknown being. Her work is a shapeshifting practice grounded in butoh and inspired by the paradox of human un-humanness. She approaches choreography as a means of entering into relationship with the more-than-human, cultivating forms that possess the individual, transforming them into else. Her improvisations unfold as a continuous practice of becoming and unbecoming—welcoming unknown presences into the body and opening a path to the sacred through a body that forgets itself in the song of the dance.

Sunday, June 14, 2 – 3 PM: Radio Performance with Yasmeen Al-Qaisi
Yasmeen Al-Qaisi is a writer for voice and paper appearing sometimes in other forms such as a walking scientist, the schnelle musikalische hilfe service, or as the only agent for the self-entitled-self-entitlement-office. Yasmeen is as well listening with her hands and makes waves on free, independent, temporary, mobile radios and public radios writing with sound.

Sunday, June 14., 5 – 6 PM: Performance concert SHOW ME THE BODY by Agata Siniarska a.k.a. TATARI
SHOW ME THE BODY Agata Siniarska a.k.a TATARI body is not only what appears to be enclosed within the confines of the skin. The body is a conglomerate of different states, dynamics, textures and images. The body in its possibilities creates a multi-level landscape of movement and sound, it is a symphony of vibrational frequencies. SHOW ME THE BODY is a concert-performance in which the performer’s body travels through different intensities, rippling in all directions through movement and voice. Concept and performance: Agata Siniarska a.k.a TATARI in artistic collaboration with rat milk.

LINE-UP

Friday, 07.08
7 – 8 p.m.
BEARBONED
with Nina Guo
Experimental radioplay
in English

Saturday, 08.08
4 – 4:45 p.m.
Artist Talk
with Qusay Awad moderated by Rand Abou Fakher

5 – 6 p.m.
Fuça
with Marina Cyrino
Soundperformance

6:30 – 8 p.m.
DJ Set
mit DJ Sex

8:30 – 9:30 p.m.
I Was Better Until I Changed
with Bilgesu Akyürek und Buğra Büyükşimşek
Performance

Sunday 09.08
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Somatic Excercises
with Alvin Collantes and Thesea Rigou

With the second act, titled “Does the cosmic space, we dissolve into, taste of us?”, the artistic program running from August 7–9, 2026, focuses the theme of transformation. The opening act is Nina Guo’s radio performance BEARBONED on Friday evening. On Saturday, an artist talk with Qusay Awad will address the status of his artistic research project on the multifaceted history of the Bärenzwinger. This will be followed by a sound performance by Marina Cyrino, invited by Qusay Awad. The evening program features a set by DJ Sex, as well as the performance I was better Until I changed by Bilgesu Akyürek and Buğra Büyükşimşek, which explores healing as a process of simultaneous letting go and becoming. The event concludes on Sunday with somatic exercises led by Alvin Collantes and Thesea Rigou, which allow participants to physically experience the Bärenzwinger and the current annual exhibition “Furore” through guided movements.

Friday, August 7th, 7 – 8 PM: BEARBONED with Nina Guo
Nina Guos performance practice includes interpreting notated music and improvising. Radio and humor play large roles in her work. She often creates and voices a host of inventive characters. 

Satuday, August 8th, 4 – 4:45 PM: Artist Talk with Qusay Awad moderated by Rand Abou Fakher
Architect and multimedia artist Qusay Awad is currently developing an artistic research project in response to this year’s annual theme, Heimsuchungen / Hauntings. The research envolves archival material, site-specific spatial observations and field recordings, the project investigates the Bärenzwinger as a place where multiple historical layers overlap. It asks how architecture stores memory and how traces of former uses continue to resonate within the site. Join us for an artist talk between Qusay Awad and moderator Rand Abou Fakher as they delve deeper into Awad’s artistic practice and his research process.

Saturday, August 8th, 5 – 6 PM: Fuça with Marina Cyrina
Marina Cyrino is a Brazilian flutist, sound artist and researcher based in Berlin. Her flute playing is shaped by techniques developed through the use of a hyper-amplification system, combined with a wide variety of DIY preparations, objects, toys and balloons attached to the instrument. Sometimes fabrication, sometimes deconstruction, sometimes fabulation, these techniques emerge from a search for a radical reimagining of how a flute could sound, reclaiming an intimate sonic imagination, an embodied materiality that challenges the masculine constraints of a heteropatriarchal tradition in both flute playing and flute construction.

Saturday, August 8th, 6:30 – 8 PM: DJ Set with DJ Sex

Saturday August 8th, 8:30 – 9:30 PM: I Was Better Until I Changed with Bilgesu Akyürek und Buğra Büyükşimşek
I was better until I changed explores healing as a fragile state rather than a linear journey. Through shifting identities, masks, ritual, and intimacy, the performance questions whether healing offers relief or demands the loss of who we once were. As performers mourn former selves and move between resistance and adaptation, the boundary between repair and erasure dissolves. The work leaves the audience with an open question: what kind of loss do we accept when we choose to heal?

Sunday August 9th, 5 – 7 PM: Somatic Excercises with Alvin Collantes and Thesea Rigou
Moderated by Alvin Collantes and Thesea Rigou, this workshop invites participants to explore the exhibition “Furore” by Nina Paszkowski, through movement and physical response. Over two hours, Alvin and Thesea will guide participants through individual and group exercises inspired by the exhibition, the architecture and history of Bärenzwinger. The workshop is open to all abilities – no prior experience is required. Wear comfortable, movement-friendly clothing and shoes.

The workshop concept was originally commissioned by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and developed by Thesea Rigou and Alvin Collantes, in cooperation with Alexia Manzano.

LINE-UP

Friday, 16.10

6 – 8 p.m
Amazons in the Bärenzwinger:
Artistic Walk through Köllnischen Park
with Chiara Faggionato und Lina Mazenett
Walk and Workshop

8 p.m
Live Session
with C.D. Noé
Concert


Saturday, 17.10

5 – 7 p.m
Listening Session
with DJ SONOKI

7:30-8:30 p.m.
Teddy Bear
with Tess Voelker
Dance Performance

Sunday, 18.10

3 – 6 p.m.
The Secret Life of Ekphrasis
with Erin Honeycutt, Cru Encarnação und Saverio Cantoni
Workshop und Reading

The third act of the annual programme, Nowhere will world be, but within, brings the search of this year’s theme, Hauntings/Heimsuchungen, to a close. What began with the question of how the hidden can be brought to the surface and transformed now culminates in a process of reorientation and re-situating: a walk by Chiara Faggionata and Lina Mazenett, a concert by C.D. Noé, a DJ set by SONOKI, and a performance by Tess Voelker explore pathways between inside and outside. An ekphrasis workshop with Erin Honeycutt Cru Encarnação und Saverio Cantoni concludes the programme.

Friday, October 16th, 6 – 8 p.m: Amazons in the Bärenzwinger:
Artistic Walk through Köllnischen Park with Chiara Faggionato und Lina Mazenett
The Furies, the Amazons and the Greek heroes are among the many protagonists of ancient classical mythology, whose many versions offer a complex and varied perspective on the relationship with the more-than-human world. Through conversations, somatic exercises and an immersive audio experience, we will explore the various roles that animals play in these legendary tales. The event will be in English.

Friday, October 16th, from 8 p.m.: Live Session with C.D. Noé
In his concert at the Bärenzwinger, C.D. Noé combines fragments from his current album with previously unreleased musical sketches. The performance takes up the theme of the exhibition and responds to the works on display in musical form.

Satuday, October 17th, 5 – 7 p.m: Listening Session with DJ SONOKI
SONOKI is a DJ from Chiba, Japan, based in Berlin. Moving between house and techno, he digs into a leftfield sound that weaves together minimal, dubby, and psychedelic textures. His sets unfold slowly through tension and space, with a quiet energy in the groove that draws listeners inward and blurs the sense of time.

Saturday, October 17th, 7:30 – 8:30: Teddy Bear with Tess Voelker
Teddy Bear links captive animals to gentrification, body politics, and the commercialization of female artists, exposing a culture that loves wild femininity only when caged. On stage, that cage turns gilded: Tess resists the objectifying gaze yet must objectify herself to master her craft. Reclaiming what the world calls crazy, she transforms judgment into power and frees her emotional body. Presented in Act III, Nowhere will world be, but within, of the artistic live program at Bärenzwinger the piece marks a tender return to her own wilderness.

Sunday, October 18th, 3 – 6 p.m.: The Secret Life of Ekphrasis with Erin Honeycutt, Cru Encarnação und Saverio Cantoni
Held in the Bärenzwinger, this workshop takes ekphrasis, written description of images, not as a genre but as a methodology — a practice of translation between senses, mediums, and forms of attention. Taking its cue from Stevie Wonder’s ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, a soundtrack composed from written descriptions of a documentary never fully seen, we ask: what travels when one sense hands its information to another, and what is necessarily lost, transformed, or invented in the crossing?
The workshop unfolds within Nina Paszkowski’s exhibition Furore, which returns to the Bärenzwinger’s history of spectacle and asks what public attention does when it turns from fascination to unease to anger. Paszkowski names this anger through the Furies, the mythological avengers who, through mercy, become the benevolent Eumenides, a transformation that surfaces materially as ceramic proliferations erupt from the enclosure’s walls.
Participants write and mark-make in response to this unfolding — the room’s held silence, the unheard duration of the bears’ lives, cut through now with the Furies’ unresolved question of vengeance or mercy. These fragments are gathered into a single scroll, a shared score, performed together in the evening as a kind of orchestra, through a live radio transmission via THF, voices sounding out what the walls could not otherwise say.

4. June 2026
6 PM: Opening
7 PM: Welcome
7:30 PM: DJ-Set

cun_t is a DJ duo, moving between rolling basslines, crunchy 808 rhythms, and hypnotic grooves. Shaped by years of friendship and an ongoing exchange of music, their sets draw on collective joy and sister*hood.

This time, Elena represents cun_t with a carefully selected blend of raw old-school tunes, melodic acid lines, and playful percussion.

You can listen to the set they curated especially for the opening here: Stream cun_t | Furore Opening @Bärenzwinger by cun_t

Friday, 31 July 2026

7 PM: Guided tour and Talk
with Nina Paszkowski

8 PM: Ritual performance “DESCENT”
by Riley Davidson, with sound design by Juan Cernadas

“Furore” – Exhibition tour and conversation with Nina Paszkowski
Join artist Nina Paszkowski and the curators for a dialogue-based tour through the current exhibition “Furore”.

“Furore” is conceived as an evolving exhibition. Over the course of its duration, new works will be added, others removed, and the arrangement of the works within the space will change. On the occasion of the exhibition’s first transformation, this tour offers the opportunity to explore the next chapter of “Furore” together with the artist and curators. The conversation will focus on the conceptual foundations of the exhibition, the making of the works, and the ongoing development of their spatial arrangement.

In “Furore”, Nina Paszkowski engages with the figure of the Furies – mythological beings of vengeance who emerge from histories of violence, injustice, and unresolved conflicts. The exhibition considers rage not only as an emotion, but as a force that carries memories, demands recognition, and can initiate processes of transformation.

“DESCENT” – Ritual Performance by Riley Davidson with Juan Cernadas
“DESCENT” is a performance in which body, sound, and silence evoke memories beyond the realm of logic. A dancer sheds inherited myths, while a sound designer creates a live atmosphere through breath, noise, and sound.

Drawing on the myth of Inanna’s descent into the underworld – one of the oldest recorded texts in history from the Sumerian culture (c. 2100 BCE) – the performance explores descent as a necessary passage and a moment of transformation. At a time when we are collectively confronted with the collapse of established power structures, “DESCENT” asks which ideas and narratives we must leave behind in order to enable other forms of thinking and acting.

The performance becomes a space for wordless rage and grief, for engaging with inherited wounds and the entanglements of past generations. Because transformation begins with descent.

“DESCENT” marks the next chapter of the current exhibition “Furore” by Nina Paszkowski, following the integration of new works into the exhibition. The performance extends the exhibition’s engagement with themes of rage, transformation, and social power relations.

The Bärenzwinger – a historic site built for the display of the supposedly wild – becomes a point of departure for examining violence, spectacle, and the boundaries between self and other. At the same time, the performance reflects on contemporary forms of spectacle, asking how platforms such as social media shape our perception of violence and influence the relationship between witnessing and personal involvement.

Nina Paszkowski lives and works in Cologne. In her artistic practice, she engages with themes such as desire, power, and the interdependence of living beings. She works with ceramics and paper, developing spatial installations that examine the tension between individuality and interconnectedness.

Her installations often consist of large-scale paper cut-outs, for which she partly produces the paper herself, as well as ceramic sculptures. Both bodies of work address notions of fragility and permeability, treating these not as fixed conditions but as shifting states within spatial and relational structures.

Ran Zhang makes stories and objects out of organic micrographs, eye floaters, motives of motor and visual proteins. She likes to discover the unplanned space between biological knowledge and personal experience, and find shapes for the personalisation of science all around her. She likes to walk around Neukölln, documenting romantic scenes among the things left behind.

Lolo & Sosaku work with objects, sounds, images, movements and situations of friction between them all to create threshold experiences. Materiality, mechanics and mysticism help them to unveil the hidden energies and forces that exist in our shared life with technology and obsolete devices. During the many hours spent in the studio, they often deal with the entropy of things. They have a soft spot for noise, metal, light, and water.

Anaïs Senli is an artist and independent curator. Starting from the idea of otherness as a battlefield, she likes to think about the porous relationships that connect and differentiate us, about what makes us human, alien or even hybrids. 

Lorena Juan is a researcher and curator based in Berlin and Freiburg. She reads about geological phases of planet earth before sleeping and enjoys studying the weedy entanglements of language.

Sonia Fernández Pan writes, curates, makes podcasts, and moves in migrant rhythms. Weediness is a common feature of almost everything she likes. Berlin is where she spends most of her time, sheltering with friends and strangers in times of censorship, official lies and complicit silence. 

Sylvia Sadzinski curates, researches, writes, teaches and lectures. Although her last name means the planter in Polish, she doesn’t enjoy gardening — but she loves creating spaces and moments of coming together.