Performing Neighbourhood
5/3/2026, 3 – 6 PM

The motifs of the exhibition “vessel” and the “voyager” open up a dual perspective: architecture, the body and language emerge as vessels of memory and movement. The neighbourhood is not viewed as a stage set, but as a multi-layered repository of modernity’s promises, ruptures and lived present-day realities. The performances explore how history, migration and social relationships are inscribed in buildings, paths and bodies, and how neighbourhood, as a fragile yet resilient form of community, is continually re-established.

“Performing Neighbourhood” thus ties in with central themes of Vessel & Voyager: loss and memory, body and healing, protection and community. A dialogue emerges between the exhibition and the urban space, in which the motif of the vessel becomes legible not only as an object but as a social and poetic structure – as something that supports, connects and enables movement.

Xavier Robles de Medina initiates a public reading circle that experiments with reading as a communal practice. Yuko Kaseki’s choreographic work engages with the architecture of the Hansaviertel through performance, drawing on butoh and improvisation. hn. lyonga combines writing and storytelling in his practice as living forms of neighbourhood life, addressing questions of migration, diaspora and colonial continuities. For the performance programme, he is reviving the collective performance “There is a Table in this House”. Charlie Casanova weaves classical piano playing with visual and narrative elements into a performance in the salon of the Akademie der Künste.

GROTTO is an independent art space in Berlin’s Hansaviertel, which understands neighbourhood not merely as a geographical reality, but as a curatorial practice.