Another week, another festival - this time Berlin celebrates the finest international design with a special focus on Poland. Don't get too distracted by shiny designer objects because there's a lot more going on this week. Our recommended events will get you beauty drinks, art meals, an activist spirit and possibly some unexpected sensations. 

WEDNESDAY 05.06

18.00 The Loser (Version 2) @ REH Kunst

WHY: 2 Acts is a performance-based exhibition in two acts that are related in terms of form and content. The second act directed by Hungarian artist Hajnal Németh is an opera-like vocal enactment of confessions, in which a politician and a banker are engaged in a Faustian dialogue with their own conscience, discussing their fascination of power, their initial enthusiasm, their beliefs and the loss of it, and the question of responsibility. The whole room at REH Kunst becomes an abstract-minimalistic stage which frames the talk between the power persons and their consciences. This piece moves on the safe border between music and visual arts, where a lot of great stuff happens.

REH Kunst / Kopenhagener Strasse 17, 10437 Berlin, S+U Schönhauser Allee / show open through 15.06 / free entry / more info 

19.00 DMY Design Festival opening @ Flughafen Berlin Tempelhof/ Hangar 2

WHY: This week the former airport in Tempelhof is hosting a design festival with around 500 companies, institutions and individuals on display inside one of the airport’s hangars. New products and ideas from some of the world’s leading designers and architects will be presented there, with a special focus on Poland and its most distinctive contemporary design. Various satellite events taking place around the city will enhance the weekly schedule. One of them is The Long Night of Design Studios on 06.06, an interesting opportunity for voyeuristic visits to many of the private design studios in Berlin.

Flughafen Berlin Tempelhof, Hangar 2 / Columbiadamm 10, Berlin / open through 09.06 / 10€, reduced 8€ / more info

THURSDAY 06.06

18.00 Trink Dich Schön @ Insitu

WHY: In the framework of the exhibition Rules of Attraction, which questions the objectivity of the judgment on aesthetics and reflects on definitions and constructions of beauty, Insitu opens up a bar with beauty drinks and presents music by the most beautiful musicians. This is all they have to say about the event, and we believe it's more than enough. It's a tempting invitation to give your vanity a break and treat yourself with botox free shot of beauty.

Insitu / Kurfürstenstraße 21-22, 10785 Berlin, U1 Kurfürstenstraße/U2 Bülowstraße / show open through 22.06 / free entry / more info

18.00 Maria Lassnig - films @ Gallery Capitain Petzel

WHY: Capitain Petzel Gallery celebrates the late success of the artist Maria Lassnig with a selection of mostly new artworks. The name should ring a bell, since the 94-year-old artist just received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennial. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday the gallery hosts special screenings of her films, which is a rare opportunity to get to know more about the artist that is making a noticable mark in the art history.

Gallery Capitain Petzel / Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin, U5 Schillingstrasse / show open through 18.06 / free entry / more info

19.00 Out of Control @ Orangelab 

WHY: Out of Control is an exhibition dedicated to the city as a place for community action in the public sphere. It illuminates the interplay of spatial order and collective actions and opens up a different interpretation of historical events via relationship between space, time and movement in the foreground. Major protest events of the 20th century are  reconstructed in time and space and represented in diagrams, maps and structural models. Basis of the reconstruction are eyewitness reports, police reports, video offerings of agencies, but also amateur pictures, videos and personal Internet blog entries. With everything that is going on around us at the moment, this exhibition is right on point.

Orangelab / Ernst-Reuter-Platz 2, 10587 Berlin, U2 Ernst-Reuter-Platz / show open through 29.06 / free entry / more info

Jerszy Seymour - cooking performance @ Galerie Crone 

WHY: The Universe Wants To Play is the current exhibition in Crone that closes this week. It's a show you really should see, preferably while there's a cooking performance by the artist Jerszy Seymour. The exhibition is basically a walk through the artists mind, which is presented as a landscape collage placed on 20000 kg of sand, consisting of found and modified objects, mostly referring to the universe, the subconscious and the hallucinatory. We expect the cooking to go in the same direction.

Galerie Crone / Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26, 10969 Berlin, U6 Kochstrasse / show open through 08.06 / free entry / more info

SATURDAY 08.06.

14.00 / 19.00 QWERTY Baking @ Galerie Kuchling

WHY: The Danish artist group QWERTY presents its new performance concept in the gallery Kuchling. Official opening is at 19.00, but at 14.00 the gallery transforms into a bakery of edible art in the form of cakes, bread and cookies. Each artist developed their own Berlin Bread Art recipe, so that everybody can get a piece of "QWERTY", eat it immediately or 'to go'. Expect steaming ovens, flour, dough, warm pastries, fragrant coffee mixes and a provocative question: what makes a work a work of art? Besides the products of culinary creativity, each of the 8 artists will present painting, graphics, sculpture or art object.

Galerie Kuchling / Prenzlauer Allee 188, U2 Eberswalder Strasse, 10405 Berlin / show open through  / free entry / more info