Hamburger Bahnhof On Tour

From February to July 2026, the museum, in cooperation with Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V. (Friends of Good Music Berlin), will present six concerts and performances by artists Annika Kahrs and Saâdane Afif at various venues in Berlin – including the Museum of Musical Instruments (SIM), the Berlin Museum of Medical History, the Evangelical Church of the Holy Spirit, the Red Salon of the Volksbühne, KM28, and the canteen at Berghain.

From February to April 2026, the series will complement the exhibition "Annika Kahrs. OFF SCORE" with a program offering an overview of Kahrs' performances from the past 16 years. Her work questions musical structures, production conditions, performance practice, and listening habits, challenging traditional formats and virtuosity.

The exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, running until May 3, 2026, presents the most comprehensive selection to date of Saâdane Afif's work at the intersection of art and music.

The series opens on February 19, 2026, with a screening of Kahr's film "Completely Invalid, Just an Attempt" (2024) at the Museum of Musical Instruments, where it will be shown free of charge until March 1, 2026.

From May to July 2026, three further performance evenings will take place as part of the exhibition "Saâdane Afif. Five Preludes," closely related to the works presented in the museum.

Afif's works, which draw on diverse references to 20th-century art history, are conceived as open processes of viewing and interpretation. To this end, he invites female artists and writers to create poetic commentaries—so-called "lyrics"—on his works. These are part of the exhibition, which runs until September 13, 2026, and form the basis for performances in which musicians and performers from diverse backgrounds interpret a selection of the "Lyrics."

PROGRAM

Annika Kahrs: OFF SCORE LIVE

Thursday, February 19, 2026

6 p.m.
SIM Museum of Musical Instruments: Opening of the video installation "Completely Invalid, Just an Attempt," 2024

The film "Completely Invalid, Just an Attempt" takes Anton Bruckner's (1824–1896) Symphony No. 0 as its starting point—a work that the Austrian composer himself described as "invalid." Annika Kahrs uses this so-called "zero" as a material and conceptual foundation to explore processes of discarding, revising, and reinventing.

Five musicians perform Bruckner's "zero" symphony in a concert hall. During the performance, the original score is transformed, having been erased, overwritten, or supplemented by hand by young people from various locations within the world of music reception and production. In this way, classical interpretation and contemporary compositional forms intertwine to create a new piece of music.

• The film runs until March 1, 2026; admission is free.
  

8 p.m.
Strings, 2010 String Quartet
Alone Together, 2016

4 performers, Kaleidoskop Soloists Ensemble. In "Strings" and "Alone Together," Kahrs explores the structure of a classical quartet and pushes its boundaries. In "Strings," a string quartet is deliberately thrown off-beat by having the musicians exchange instruments and positions after each movement.

In “Alone Together,” a vocal quartet deconstructs a three-minute jazz classic into a 30-minute performance through temporal expansion and spatial separation—a study of synchronicity, autonomy, and collective failure, from which something new emerges.


Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 7 p.m.
Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité, Lecture Hall Ruins

Score of Symptoms, 2026 (World Premiere) 7 performers, Kaleidoskop Soloists Ensemble. In her new performance “Score of Symptoms,” created for the Kaleidoskop Soloists Ensemble, Kahrs explores illness and healing as existential states.

The performance venue, the impressive lecture hall ruins at the Berlin Museum of Medical History, becomes a symbol of wounding and transformation. Kahrs understands healing not as a return to the previous state, but as an individual, transformative process that is expressed performatively here through sound, gesture, and physicality.


Wednesday, April 15, 2026, 8 p.m.
Ev. Heilige-Geist-Kirche
"the lord loves changes, it’s one of his greatest delusions," 2018

Whistling choir and organ, Alexander Moosbrugger – organ. In the performance "the lord loves changes, it’s one of his greatest delusions" at the Evangelical Church of the Holy Spirit, Kahrs combines organ playing with a whistling choir that deconstructs the musical material to the point of exhaustion. Based on the work "Gay Guerrilla" (1979) by the American composer Julius Eastman, which is built upon the hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (before 1529) by Martin Luther, a multifaceted commentary on change, resistance, and the symbolic power of musical quotations unfolds. The performance, originally conceived as a video work, is taking place live in a church for the first time – a place itself charged with sacred and political history.

Saȃdane Afif: FIVE PRELUDES LIVE

Thursday, May 28, 2026, 8 p.m.
Roter Salon of the Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

The Fountain Archives & Anthologie de l’humour noir
For many years, Saȃdane Afif researched the reception history of Marcel Duchamp's readymade "Fountain" and explored it in the work complex "The Fountain Archives." Ten of the lyrics written for this project were set to music by the Berlin-based composer and musician Augustin Maurs. They will be performed with flutes and voice specially produced for these pieces by Afif. The second part of the program will present a selection of lyrics written for the work "Anthologie de l’humour noir," which reflect on themes such as transience and the museum as a guarantor of the preservation of art.

Tuesday, June 23, 2026, 8 p.m.KM28
The Old & Melancholic Beat Live

Afif commissioned his first lyrics in 2004 for the four works in his exhibition “Melancholic Beat” at the Museum Folkwang. These four texts, along with the twelve lyrics written in 2025 for the work complex “The Old,” will be performed. The performance “Melancholic Beat Live” is a commission from the Museum Folkwang as part of the exhibition “Saâdane Afif. Posters,” Museum Folkwang, Essen, March 13–October 4, 2026.


Tuesday, July 7, 2026, 8 p.m.Kantine am Berghain
2000 millimètres d’infinis possibles & Live
In this two-part program, the lyrics to the works “2000 millimètres d’infinis possibles” and “Live” will be performed by musicians working in the fields of improvised and experimental music.