Event lists are growing longer, and we wouldn't be talking about Berlin if it was only open-air parties coming up. One very special event, which will take over various venues across the city is the 9th edition of the Berlin Biennale. While the festival itself offers enough content for anyone's luxurious appetite, there are still many other shows we would not want to miss. Here is our best-of. 

WEDNESDAY 01.06

19.00 Andrew Thomas Parry – „Let 'em Kuchen essen“ @ Platform-Berlin

WHY: „Let 'em Kuchen essen“ is an installation by the Berlin-based artist Andrew Thomas Parry, with a guest performance by Adam Asnan in his absence, and an oratory by Ian Warnerfrom Slab-Mag. It is is a social critique on 'die Modernisierung' or the energy efficiency renovations currently happening in Berlin. Across the city, a cheap and fraudulent material, EIFS polystyrene, is being applied to the exterior of buildings, as a renovation measure subsidized by the Federal government, lauded as an environmental practice while being anything but environmental.

Platform-Berlin / U-Bahn station Kleistpark, 10827 Berlin / ongoing until 30.06 / more info

THURSDAY 02.06

14.00 Welt am Draht @ Julia Stoschek Collection

WHY: „Welt am Draht“ is the title of the first presentation in the new temporary Julia Stoschek Collection satellite space. The exhibition is devoted to media-based pieces that address the influences and changes in our social reality, identity, and environment since digitalization. In 38 main pieces by 20 international artists all drawn from the collection, starting with large video installations, sculptural works, performances, a monumental live simulation through to a purpose-made piece by artist collective K-HOLE, the exhibition highlights current art strategies and a completely new artistic formal idiom first enabled by the latest technologies.

Julia Stoschek Collection / Leipziger Str. 66, 10117 Berlin, U Stadtmitte / ongoing until 18.09 / more info

18.00 Jeewi Lee - „Blind Applause“ @ Sexauer Gallery

WHY: Is critique being dealt out here? Are we always already too late? A feast without a reason? An art without future? … „Blind Applause“ is a space-filling installation which conceptually and methodically resembles the works that have been produced by Jeewi Lee over the past years; unnoticed traces on floors that have been taken from rooms.

Sexauer Gallery / Streustr. 90, 13086 Berlin, Station Friesickestraße Straßenbahn 12 & M13 / open through 02.07 / more info

FRIDAY 03.06

19.00 9th Berlin Biennale – Opening @ KW Institute for Contemporary Art

WHY: The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by the New York-based collective DIS, seeks to materialize the paradoxes that increasingly make up the world in 2016: the virtual as the real, nations as brands, people as data, culture as capital, wellness as politics, happiness as GDP, and so on. With its unlikely selection of various exhibition venues, it aims to shape-shift across multiple sites, each one releasing a whiff of contemporary “paradessence” (paradox + essence). The first active venue is the website, a feed for content both in and not in the 9th Berlin Biennale.  The opening will traditionally take place at the KW Institue for Contemporary Art.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin, U Rosenthaler Platz / ongoing until 18.09 / more info

20.00 "My mom is a wolf, my dad..." @ Meinblau Projektraum

WHY: "My mom is a wolf, my dad..." is a talk about healing processes. What do our inner animals tell us? How can we enter into a dialogue with them? Camilla Graff Junior, aka former punk-rock musician Mona Motel, shares her experience based on autobiographical material, photos, video clips, a collection of plastic animals, and family stories.

Meinblau Projektraum / Christinenstr. 18-19, 10119 Berlin, U Senefelderplatz / more info

TUESDAY 07.06

19.00 In the Open @ Kleine Humboldt Galerie

WHY: On the occasion of its 200th exhibition, the Kleine Humboldt Galerie invites artists to engage with the art collection of Humboldt University Berlin. The collection comprehends more than one thousand objects from the past three centuries, including monuments, paintings, drawings, sculptures, textiles, graphics, and medals. The artists reflect on the collection’s political context, its temporality and presentation, as well as on issues of accessibility and exclusion. They aim to uncover systematics of historiography, institutional identification, and the politics of gender representation.

Kleine Humboldt Galerie / Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, S+U Friedrichstr. / ongoing until 08.07 / more info

FRIDAY 10.06

18.00 Wild Style: Exhibition of Figurative Art @ Peres Projects

WHY: Peres Projects presents „Wild Style: Exhibition of Figurative Art“, a group exhibition exploring depictions of the human figure by contemporary artists and unidentified African artists active from 200 BC to the present. The works on view highlight the invisible link that exists between the mind of the 21st century artist, and the minds of artists of prior generations. „Wild Style“ invites the viewer to experience the exhibition in a horizontal as opposed to a vertical manner, where contemporary works of art stand as equals with works from different cultures and periods.

Peres Projects / Karl Marx Allee 82, 10243 Berlin, U Weberwiese / ongoing until 05.08 / more info

19.00 Manfred Mohr - „Visuell, Musikalisch“ @ DAM Gallery

WHY: The exhibition “Visuell, Musikalisch” corresponds to Manfred Mohr’s early concept of the combination of music and art. His most recent series fulfilled his ideal as the visual turns musical and the musical becomes visual. The software objects were taken off the walls and present themselves as free-standing sculptures. The software as such creates its own unforeseeable rhythm – fast, slow, accelerating, still. An individual world of aesthetic experiences opens itself up towards the observer.

DAM Gallery / Neue Jakobstr. 6, 10179 Berlin, U Heinrich-Heine-Str. / ongoing until 30.07 / more info