Echoes, Ghosts, Songs & Soils
25 Apr 2026, 3 – 10:30 pm

The performance programme “Echoes, Ghosts, Songs & Soils” takes place as part of the JUNGE AKADEMIE's exhibition “Vessel & Voyager” and transforms the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg into a breathing, singing, vibrating resonance vessel. In four chapters, spaces are created for encounters, lingering and exchange between performers, visitors, artists and their works.

Concerts, readings, performances, participatory installations and audiovisual works embed the leitmotifs of the exhibition – vessel and voyager – in an immersive, performative event. “Echoes, Ghosts, Songs & Soils” is carried by a chorus of protesting voices, the unfolding of soundscapes and songs, the pulsation of bodies and territories, and the articulation of intimate spheres through language.

With the fellows:
Logan February, Huihui Cheng, Isabel Cruz, Jug Đorđević, Claudia Durastanti, Éléonore de Duve, Regina Menke, Hrishikesh Pawar, Sinan Samanli, Sophie Seita, Diána Vonnák, Franziska Wenning

And the artists:
ensemble mosaik, Lea Barletti & Annette Kopetzki, Rachel Elizabeth Skipor, Anja Gast, Rémy Bocquillon & Maximilian Jean-Luc Ahl, Sasha Amaya, Saeed Asadsangabi & Eve Singleton et al.

Curated by Clara Herrmann and Zita Leutgeb (curatorial fellow)

The event kicks off with a sound-based, participatory performance by theatre director Jug Đorđević. The work is inspired by the protest movements against the Serbian government in response to the Novi Sad railway station accident.

In her choreographic work, dancer Isabel Cruz enters into a dialogue with her late father. Inspired by the feel of the Akademie building, physical resonance spaces and contemplative moments for mourning unfold.

Choreographer and dancer Hrishikesh Pawar returns to the role of dancer and presents two autobiographical works choreographed by Akademie member Arila Siegert.

Composer Huihui Cheng creates a performative listening space at the intersection of sound, theatrical gesture and visual projection with two pieces.

In his concerto for string quartet, composer Sinan Samanli unfolds sound as a fluid landscape, referring to images of waterfalls and cascades.

Through a web of perceptions that connects the many layers of a life, writer Éléonore de Duve brings the world of her protagonist Sophia to life: her tragedy and, behind it – backwards in time – the possibility of a new beginning.

The ecofeminist performance by director and choreographer Franziska Wenning and the audiovisual reading by writer Claudia Durastanti merge inscribed stories of bodies and territories. In the twilight between day and night, dance and literature open up a space in which connectedness with the ground, gravity, magical thinking and transcendence can be experienced anew.

Artist and researcher Sophie Seita activates the graphic scores of her installation “the swamp under the forum” in the exhibition hall through a performance. The “swamp” becomes a metaphor for permeability and what the forum tries to suppress, the installation a playground for language and sensation before and after collapse.

Poet Regina Menke reads texts from the poetry cycle Schild und Spiel und Idylle, gekehrte und um- (Shield and Play and Idyll, Turned and Turned). The texts revolve around springtails, gaps in teeth, the difficulty of distinguishing between the pronouns “I” and “you”, and the question of whether the landscape should be more tangible.

The poems from Nude Imperative by Logan February move between the poles of love and devotion, discipline and inner conflict, and immanence and transcendence.

The writer Diána Vonnák reads, accompanied by the music of Kin Teal, from the series Alien, Ghost – audio meditations on the dilemmas of witnessing and complicity, on grief, guilt and anger. It confronts the mountains of linguistic debris, reports, memos and analyses we produce to channel the raw reality of war onto desks in courts or ministries, to news headlines, and academic journals.

3 pm

Isabel Cruz: Dear Papa, 2024

3:45 pm

Hrishikesh Pawar: Latency: Two Solos on Memory, Practice and Return, 2025

4:15 pm

Éléonore de Duve: Sophia

4:45 pm

Jug Đorđević: Where is the body?, 2025

5:30 pm

Huihui Cheng: Fantasy of Being a Pianist (wt), 2026

5:45 pm

Sinan Samanli: At the Cascade / Am Wasserfall / Şelalede, 2025–26

6:10 pm

Huihui Cheng: (In)Visible String, 2022

6:30 pm

Éléonore de Duve: Sophia

7 pm

Jug Đorđević: Where is the body?, 2025

7:30 pm

Claudia Durastanti: The Moon is not a Metaphor

8:20 pm

Sophie Seita: the swamp under the forum

9:10 pm

Franziska Wenning: SOIL IS LAVA – Gebete auf nacktem Boden

10 pm

Regina Menke: Schild und Spiel, 2025, Idylle, gekehrte und um-, 2025

10:20 pm

Logan February: Relation in Movement, 2024

10:40 pm

Diána Vonnák: Excerpt from: Alien, Ghost, 2025–26

Pick-up Service

Assistants can pick up blind and visually impaired visitors from the Bellevue S-Bahn station or the Hansaplatz U-Bahn station during the programme and accompany them to the Akademie building on Hanseatenweg.

Please register for this service by 23 April by emailing kunstwelten@adk.de with the subject line “Anmeldung für Assistenzangebot”.

Audiodescription

Live audio description in German via headphones will be provided by Swantje Henke, with consultation by Dirk Sorge (Berlinklusion), for the following performances:

3 pm: Isabel Cruz
5:30 pm: Huihui Cheng
7:30 pm: Claudia Durastanti

Guided Tour

4:15 pm: Guided Tour for blind, visually impaired and sighted visitors

In between, there will be a guided tour of the “Vessel & Voyager” exhibition led by Linnéa Meiners (curator) and Ugne Metzner (ABSV). The tour is designed specifically for blind and visually impaired visitors. All guests are welcome to attend.