UNDER THE GROW LIGHT mindfulness and meditation course on staying with the trouble! - with Lucy Powell
What can I say about the German elections? We have been through an overwhelming amount of intertwining, cascading, dystopian, worst-case political scenarios in the past few years; that somehow brought us to this point. A point that was and should have remained beyond any wild expectations. The unthinkable became thinkable. And yes, that is what happens when you fail to be moved by the slaughtering of a People; not enough to overcome the German compulsion to be on the wrong side of history, at least. But it is not time for genocide-pointing (soon in the Hague though). And it is definitely not the time for another artist's group letter; WHAT is wrong with you? It is time to numb our emotions with alcohol or whatever else works and stare at the ceiling for a while. While you do so, please know. Hope springs eternal, and like dog poop in the long German winter change will resurface once the layers of prejudice and bigotry in our hearts have melted away. And yes, I said our heart.
pictured: Thero Mamani Valles, Shaya 2024 part of what stands between us. Photography as a Medium for Chronicling opening Thursday February 27th at the Akademie der Künste.
The EMOP Berlin festival begins its 2025 program with the leitmotif of this year’s edition, what stands between us. Dangerous political currents are showing us that democracies are under threat of breaking apart and that their foundations, even in Europe, are more fragile than we long believed them to be and that they require ongoing fortification. We’d like to answer this with our own voice—and with visual imagery!
In this vein, EMOP Berlin takes a closer look at these tendencies and brings together exhibitions in which the photographic projects shown offer space for observations, experiences, expectations, hopes, and fears concerning various conflicts. With its selection of works, EMOP Berlin offers dialogue to counter the ongoing mechanisms of polarization.
On February 27, 2025, we invite the public to the opening of the main festival exhibition what stands between us. Photography as a Medium for Chronicling at our festival centre in the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg, with projects by approximately 20 contemporary artists. This is also where the EMOP Opening Days launch takes place, with numerous artist talks, panel discussions, a film evening, and an awards ceremony – and of course the big EMOP opening party.
Wed Feb 26th 18:30-20h UNDER THE GROW LIGHT mindfulness and meditation course on staying with the trouble! - with Lucy Powell
The radical, relational and transformative methodologies of meditation and mindfulness provide profound support in staying with the trouble and responding rather than reacting in times of wild uncertainty. And as embodied practices, they are all the more powerful when embedded in the collective and woven into the web of life.
Under the Grow Light is an invitation to cultivate an experimental community of practice, an eco-social sculpture of animal and plant life that will evolve over the course of six weeks. Sowing seeds together indoors in the icy months of winter – both literally and figuratively – we will tend to the seedlings, breathing and sitting with them under the grow light, and explore what might be learned from rooted beings that cannot run away.
The course is sequential, with each week building on from the next, but if you are not able to come for the full six weeks, you are still welcome to join! No need to bring anything except an open mind.
Wed, 5 Feb- Wed, 12 Mar 2025
Places are limited so please register via email here.
Recommended donation per session 5-10 EUR.
This is a Hildegard project kindly hosted by WIRWIR project space, Stuttgarter Str. 56, 12059 Berlin
Thu, 27 Feb 18-20h Opening of oolongradio Radio Practice - Object at SOX
Radio Practice - Object is a participatory project created together with passersby around SOX. Participants can freely use various materials provided in the exhibition space to shape forms, which will be displayed in the window. New participants may dismantle or modify previous object to transform them into new forms. This cycle continues throughout the exhibition period.
* The sounds generated during the making are livestreamed at random times each day on oolongradio.com
oolongradio is a web radio station and art project run by Sunkyu Lee and Hyungjoong Kim. It operates as a DIY radio station, broadcasting experimental music, field recordings, live concerts, and artist interviews. As an art project, it explores the process of creation and the ways in which people engage with sound, space, and each other. Radio is viewed not just as a medium for sound transmission but as a space for ongoing creation.
Thu, 27 Feb, 19h Opening Do You Have Something to Fight for? 100 years Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung at Künstlerhaus Bethanien
The title of the exhibition "Do you have something to fight for?" refers to the artistic intervention of the same name by Polina Stohnushko (born 1994 in Kiev), which she places in the public space as a contribution to the exhibition. It can be read as a question, but also as an invitation to get involved in society and play a creative role.
The exhibition comprises a mixture of photography, painting, video art and installations. Some of the works come from the foundation's extensive collection, which are presented in dialog with contemporary positions by (former) art scholarship holders of the foundation and in collaboration with Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
Exhibiting artists:
Qusay Awad, Stephanie Bergwinkl, Christine Biehler, Yevgenia Belorusets, Cihan Çakmak, André Di Franco, Judith Drews, Soso Dumbadze, Henning Eichinger, Johanna Failer, Hiltrud Gauf, Raisan Hameed, Richard Hamilton, Bernhard Heisig, Dieter Huber, Franziska Junge, Carsten Kalaschnikow, Magdalena Kallenberger, Käthe Kollwitz, Ksenia Kuleshova, Ferdinand Léger, Max Pechstein, Shur Collective, Peter Sorge, Polina Stohnushko, Georg-Hans Trapp and Astra Zoldnere
With works from the foundation's collection by Richard Hamilton, Bernhard Heisig, Käthe Kollwitz, Ferdinand Léger, Max Pechstein, Peter Sorge and others.
The exhibition is part of the European Month of Photography (EMOP) 2025. @emopberlin
Kottbusser Strasse 10
10999 Berlin
pictured: Cihan Çakmak, not me not you, 2024 @cihancakmak_
Fri, 28 Feb 18-21h Markus Rock: The Flood at BBA Gallery
Markus Rock’s solo exhibition The Flood at BBA Gallery is a striking exploration of water as both a life-giving and destructive force. Captured in the summer of 2021, shortly before and during the catastrophic flooding in Germany’s Ahr Valley, the series balances themes of existential threat with an unwavering celebration of joie de vivre.
While the timing and title suggest an ecological commentary, Rock’s focus lies in the defiant enjoyment of life. Water, ever-changing in its form and meaning, becomes both a subject and a medium—at times appearing hard and solid, trapping bodies as if cast in acrylic, then fluid and soft, dissolving contours into abstraction. Elsewhere, it fractures and fragments into restless, flickering structures.
Presented as part of the Monat der Fotografie OFF-Berlin, The Flood invites viewers to confront the precarious balance of life, to embrace both its light and its shadows, and ultimately, to revel in its unyielding vibrancy.
1 Mar-6 Apr 2025
Artist talk Sat 01. March 12:00 BBA Gallery
Köpenicker Str. 96
10179 Berlin
Fri, 28 Feb 18:00-21:00 BBA MPB Award - Perspectives in Diversity at BBA Gallery
Featured as part of the Monat der Fotografie-Off Berlin 2025 festival, the BBA MPB Award: Perspectives in Diversity exhibition celebrates artistic excellence through the lens of diversity, bringing together three distinct voices—Willi Dorner (Austria), Nora Obergeschwandner (Austria), and Norberto Pezzotta (Italy). Their works explore the intersections of identity, urban transformation, human intimacy, and evolving perceptions of beauty, offering a dynamic dialogue on contemporary society.
Fri, 28 Feb 2025 19:00 Opening of Fragments: Heike Gallmeier, Annette Gödde at SCOTTY
1 Mar-30 Mar 2025
In HEIKE GALLMEIER'S work, the levels of construction, reconstruction and deconstruction combine with each other in a manner that is just as fluid as the media of sculpture, painting and photography.
ANNETTE GÖDDE works with photography, video and installation. Collected materials, objects and settings are photographed in the studio, collaged on the computer and transferred into real space. The result of the work is thus always a result of digital processing.
Mar 1, 2025, 4-9pm, with the performance soundless voices, bitten tongues, haptic hands (Script version #2, 2025) with performer Lina Campanella and sound intervention by Emilie Ding and Alizée Lenox
Display is back in Berlin for the opening of the exhibition To want the world in a glass hat. featuring the works by Bethan Hughes and Dominique Hurth and in collaboration with the space Neun Kelche.
Bethan Hughes and Dominique Hurth each draw on long-standing, research-driven practices, critically examining social norms, marginalized voices, and the materiality of objects. In this joint exhibition, the artists connect through the title To want the world in a glass hat. —drawn from the poem New Year on Dartmoor, by Sylvia Plath— and reimagine the project space as a resonance chamber. In a literal sense, they engage with the project space and its architecture: the large glass fronts carry a site-specific sound installation. In a metaphorical sense, they address structural questions about normativity, who is heard and in which space, what is visible, and what remains hidden.
The collaborative project To want the world in a glass hat. brings together the two art spaces/initiatives, Display (Marie DuPasquier) and Neun Kelche (Kira Dell and Laura Seidel) with artists Bethan Hughes and Dominique Hurth. The core of the project is the network of solidarity with power-critical and collaborative perspectives that connect us in our curatorial work.
Neun Kelche
Pasedagplatz 3-4, Zugang über „An der Industriebahn"
13088 Berlin
Christoph M. Gais uses two levels: That of a ground constructing the surface, may it be clearly defined, for example as a brick wall, may it appear as a diffuse barrier of fruit or leaves. He also places an open, curved vine or other geometric shapes on top of it. In the most recent paintings, the round shapes develop into heads with absurd faces. They push themselves in front of the repeatedly overpainted surface of the canvas and make the viewer smile with their gazes.
until 1 Mar 2025
Coming up:
Artist Talk: Friday, March 7, 6 pm
Finissage: Saturday, March 15, 6 pm
with Gunnar Borbe, Marta Djourina, Catherine Rose Evans, Thomas Fißler, Saeed Foroghi, Karø Goldt, Nathalie Grenzhaeuser, Andrea Juliette Grote, Katrin Jaquet, Moritz Liebig, Piotr Pietrus, Karen Weinert, Franca Wohlt
For this exhibition, we have assembled a diverse selection of artists who engage with photography in unique ways. The exhibition is based on the principle of Cadavre Exquis: We begin with a randomly selected image, and through its thematic description or by highlighting a specific section, the next participant contributes a new piece. In this way, the exhibition grows work by work. While the added contributions will predominantly be photographs, they may also include works from other disciplines or interpretations of the photographic medium.
TRACES: Michael Dell, Ali Eckert, Hyacinthe Ouattara at Ronewa Art Projects
until 12 Apr 2025
Ali Eckert | Hyacinthe Ouattara | Michael Dell
Traces brings together an array of mediums and techniques by artists Ali Eckert (Germany/USA), Hyacinthe Ouattara (Burkina Faso/France), and Michael Dell (New Zealand). All three artists have an artistic practice driven by process, each having developed a characteristic method of layering their materials to explore and probe what is visible, what is unseen, and what is contained in the remnants.
Monty Richthofen’s latest body of work pushes the boundary between language and abstraction. Drawings and paintings incorporating text fragments—sometimes bold, sometimes illegible and obscure, blurred, sprayed over, or blacked out—reflect a tension between revelation and concealment.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the gallery will publish an essay by Laura Helena Wurth in both
German and English, available prior to the opening in February 2025.
Monty Richthofen (b. Munich, 1995) is a Berlin-based artist whose work challenges conventional poetry by visualizing text through painting, public writings, and tattooing.
