Symposium – Dystopia Berlin 2026

Symposium – Flutgraben Project Space

How do sound- and listening-based practices shape, sustain, and protect our environments, worlds, and communities, while also playing a role in their exploitation and destruction? How can collaborations between the natural sciences, the arts, and local practitioners generate new forms of knowledge that transform how we perceive, feel, and act?

The symposium brings together talks, lecture performances, conversations, workshops, listening sessions, and film screenings that make contradictions, power structures, and global interdependencies audible. By connecting scientific, artistic, and embodied forms of knowledge, it invites audiences to engage with underrepresented voices and challenges conventional modes of knowledge production and exchange.

From 2 to 17 October, events take place every Friday and Saturday, featuring artists, researchers, and scholars from different regions of the world. During the Biennale’s regular opening hours, the Flutgraben e.V. project space—conceived as a space for listening, reflection, and archival research through artistic and artistic-research works—will be open for exchange and individual exploration.

2.10.2026

Listening to the Earth, Listening-with the Planet

● 3 –6 pm

Opening Symposium

Speakers: Cathy Lane, Tess Gridley with Claire Homewood and MAK1ONE, Mark Peter Wright
Moderated by Janine Eisenächer

Symposium Exhibition
Featuring works by Lílian Campesato & Valéria Bonafé, Verena Lercher, Kamila Metwaly & Jasmina Metwaly (with Lorenzo Sandoval tbc), and *Frontiers of Solitude*

3.10.2026

Dialogues between Grounds: Collaborations between Art and Science

● 3 –6 pm

Speakers: Carlos Borghi, Desiree Derider (*Mujeres del Desierto*), Txulunh Gakran & João Voia, Sergei Lebedev & David Stalling, Ben Nurgenc, Daniel Kozák and Rhiannon Gloor (Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague)
Moderated by Mario Asef