Exhibitions | Performances | Workshops | Symposium
The DYSTOPIA Sound Art Biennale is a format initiated, curated and organised by artists, which views sound art as a critical practice and focuses on its social, political and environmental relevance. Global Dystopia – under this title, the fourth Dystopia Sound Art Biennial, taking place from 26 September to 17 October 2026, brings together more than 40 international artists with sound installations, performances, talks, and workshops at five venues across Berlin, in public space, and on Instagram.
Image gallery
Dystopia Banner
still von seinem Video
TintinPatrone
This year’s edition gathers sound art perspectives from different regions of the world: Global Dystopia invites audiences to experience dystopias as spaces of encounter between memory and the future, between loss and resistance, and between ecological crises, political conflicts, and speculative visions of the future.
Field recording archives enter into dialogue with research into oral traditions; sounding fungi encounter contemporary sound system practices; the fatigue of a city drifting along the Spree meets Berlin’s hidden underground.
Global Dystopia understands listening as a political, ecological, and social practice. The works on display attend to the entanglements of global power relations – past, present, and future – and open up perspectives on more-than-human relationships, the environment as an acoustic space of experience, and the material conditions of listening.
What forms of knowledge become accessible through sound? How can suppressed histories, marginalized perspectives, or ecological processes be made audible? What role can listening play in confronting climate change, extractivism, colonial continuities, or collective trauma?
- Artistic Director Mario Asef
- Curatorial Team Janine Eisenächer, Laura Mello, Brandon LaBelle, Georg Klein, Julia Gerlach
The biennial opens on 26 September at HAUNT/frontviews.
Exhibitions:
- HAUNT: 26 September to 11 October | Wed–Sun, 14:00–19:00
- Flutgraben e.V.: 2 to 17 October | Wed–Sun, 14:00–19:00
- Berlin Museum of Medical History (bmm): 29 September to 11 October | Tue/Thu/Fri, 10:00–17:00 and Wed/Sat, 10:00–19:00
- Instagram Re-Posted: from 1 September
Performances:
- HAUNT: 26 September | 18:00, 19:00, 20:00
- Berlin Museum of Medical History: 10 October | 19:00
- Flutgraben e.V.: 2 and 17 October | 20:00
- Deep See @ Cafe Babette: 8 October | 20:00
Symposium:
Flutgraben e.V.: 2–3 October, 9–10 October and 16–17 October | 15:00–18:00
Workshops / Guided Tours:
- HAUNT: 1 October | 8 October
- Flutgraben e.V.: 3 October
- Public Space: 4 October
Student Exhibition (in cooperation with UdK Berlin – Sound Studies and Sonic Arts)
- Floating Berlin: 25 September to 4 October | Thu–Sun, 16:00–20:00
Registration: rsvp@dystopia.berlin
Admission to exhibitions: Donation (except at the Museum of Medical History: €10)
