Caught in a Landslide / Suzanne Lacy: Uncertain Futures / Yoko Ono: TOUCH

Caught in a Landslide
March 2–May 4, 2025
Artists: Özlem Altın, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Stephanie Comilang, Kristina Paustian, Babette Semmer, Jasmin Werner
Curators: Feben Amara, Krisztina Hunya

With the exhibition Caught in a Landslide, n.b.k. and the KINDL present recent works by international artists based in Berlin who received the Berlin Senate’s 2024 visual arts work stipend. Spanning two venues, the exhibition showcases current developments in Berlin’s art scene and explores contemporary artistic themes through video, sound, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Central to many of the works is an engagement with states of ambivalence and uncertainty—both societal and personal. The artists explore internal processes, emotional landscapes, and imaginations sparked by radical change—be it migration, the collapse of a political system, or the onset of puberty.

Several artists render these unconscious and hidden processes perceptible through speculative visualizations or by activating alternative sensory modalities, such as touch and hearing. Fragile moments of contact and transference emerge in the representation and staging of bodies and body parts. Incorporating themes of individual and collective memory or repression, several works investigate and reinterpret places of transit and encounter, as well as historical architecture in Berlin. With sensitivity to the details and nuances of societal processes, the artists create new forms of expression and visual languages that emphasize ambiguity and transformation.

The title Caught in a Landslide reflects the exploration of psychological, physical, and social thresholds that unify the works in the exhibition. Borrowed from a line in the song Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) by the British rock band Queen, it also alludes to the landslide-like restructuring of Berlin’s cultural landscape and the uncertainty facing many artists as they look to the future.
 

Exhibitions
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)
March 2–May 4, 2025
Artists: Özlem Altın, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Stephanie Comilang, Kristina Paustian, Babette Semmer, Jasmin Werner
Curators: Feben Amara, Krisztina Hunya

KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art
March 2–July 6, 2025
Artists: virgil b/g taylor, Christopher Kline, Luzie Meyer, Nguyễn + Transitory and Bussaraporn Thongchai, Andrea Pichl, Neda Saeedi, Melanie Jame Wolf
Curator: Sadaf Vasaei


Discourse program
Finissage weekend n.b.k.
Saturday, May 3, 2025, 8pm
SAUL “There, years after,” concert and performance with Fabian Saul, Tanasgol Sabbagh, among others.
Venue: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

Sunday, May 4, 2025, 2 and 4pm
Federico, performance by Alex Baczyński-Jenkins
Duration: 8 minutes
Venue: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

Free admission to all events at n.b.k.
Find more information here.

n.b.k. Showroom
Suzanne Lacy: Uncertain Futures
March 2–May 4, 2025
Curator: Michaela Richter

The American artist Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945 in Wasco/California) is regarded as a pioneer of socially engaged performance art. Since the 1970s, she has collaborated with diverse communities on projects and interventions addressing gender equality, violence against women, racism, immigration, and workers’ rights. For the project Uncertain Futures, Lacy worked with Manchester Art Gallery, university academics, an advisory group, and more than 100 women in Manchester, UK, from 2019 to 2024 to develop interviews, workshops, and presentations examining the inequalities faced by women over 50 in relation to work and unemployment. Bringing together a range of stories that highlight experiences of intersectional disadvantage, the video installation produced as a summary of this project will be shown in Germany for the first time at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.).

Discourse program
Thursday, April 10, 2024, 7pm
Artist Talk: What’s Good Socially Engaged Performance Art?
Conversation with Suzanne Lacy and Alistair Hudson (Scientific and Artistic Director of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe)
In English
Free admission

Find more information here.

n.b.k. Billboard
Yoko Ono: TOUCH
March 2–August 31, 2025
Curator: Lidiya Anastasova

Multisensory experiences and an experimental use of language are fundamental to Yoko Ono's cross-media artistic practice. The word TOUCH—similar to FLY—functions as a conceptual key in her work and serves as the starting point for several pieces. In 1960-61, Ono created her first series of Touch Poems in small booklets. These works—incorporating materials such as strands of hair and paper strips—are “read” by touch. “I thought of creating poems you take into your body by touch,” Ono explains. This also aligns with her interest in the multidimensionality of interpersonal communication and the desire to overcome social isolation and alienation. In the 1960s and 1970s, the performance Touch Poem for Group of People (1963) was staged multiple times, based on the artist's instruction to “Touch each other,” which also appeared in her seminal artist’s book Grapefruit (1964). Another variation, Touch Piece, featuring the minimalist instruction “Touch.,” was included in a later edition of Grapefruit.

With TOUCH by Yoko Ono, n.b.k. continues its collaboration with the artist and her studio as part of the n.b.k. Billboard series. This follows the presentation of Ono’s work FLY, which premiered during Berlin Art Week in September 2024. Both works extend the artist’s engagement with billboards, a medium she has used since the 1960s. TOUCH will be shown in parallel to the survey YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND at the Gropius Bau (April 11 to August 31, 2025) and the exhibition YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER at the Neue Nationalgalerie (April 11 to September 14, 2025).

Find more information here.


The exhibition Caught in a Landslide is a project by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) in cooperation with KINDL - Centre for Contemporary Art, supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein is supported by the Kriket Foundation.
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k. GmbH is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.