SEAM Festival and Symposium

SEAM, the new festival of experimental play and interactive performance, invites audiences to an adventurous programme of intense, multi-sensory encounters.

Every two years, SEAM explores the tenuous links between theatre, games and installation; between materiality and digitality; between fight, flight and freeze; between identity and public space; between reality and the seemingly true.

At the heart of SEAM 2026 are six final productions by graduates of the MA Spiel und Objekt / Experimental Play at the Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts Berlin, each with their own interdisciplinary teams. The festival is curated by Hannah Perner-Wilson and Sebastian Quack.

The accompanying discursive programme includes artist conversations and a symposium dedicated to the pedagogies of play, art and technology, under the theme “Troubling Interactivity”.

Symposium “Troubling Interactivity”
Digital systems condition us to expect immediate feedback. To “trouble” interactivity is to look beneath slick interfaces, moving towards an understanding of interactivity as a decision, a relationship, and a force. The symposium features inputs from artists, curators and educators, as well as peer-to-peer exchange sessions around the following themes:

The Co-option of Play: Reclaiming critical interactivity beyond simplistic logics

Reactivity, Response-ability, Refusal: Creating interactive art that values the unproductive, the nonsensical, and the right to refuse

Pedagogy in a Burning World: Navigating the ethics of e-waste, military entanglements, and the environmental costs of digital infrastructure within interactive art education

Festival Graduate Productions
Yeganeh Shafie—It won’t take more than a week. 
Set in a dystopian city where people are constructed and dismantled, a person leaving a trail of memories through her own body parts forms the core of this narrative. The audience is split into two entirely separate, parallel perspective groups. Venue: bat-Studiotheater

Annick Durán Kandzior—VIVERO. Tecno-imaginación sudamericana.
While Europe faces an endless winter due to energy crises, a biotechnological greenhouse breeds and exports hybrid, warmth-generating organisms called "Oscars." The audience enters as temporary workers to question affect and commodity. Venue: bat-Studiotheater (public space)

Frederik Britzlmair & Co-Respondents Group—soft corps.
A site-specific LARP (Live Action Role Play) and queer speculative re-enactment occupying the historically militarized space of the Zitadelle Spandau. Participants drift through immersive soundscapes and choreographed collective interventions to re-negotiate institutional histories. (Note: Smartphone and headphones recommended). Venue: Zitadelle Spandau

Szerafina Schiesser—Verfilztes Schweigen.
A sound installation and collective performance approaching silence not as an absence, but as a supportive weight. Visitors participate in a foot-washing ritual before stepping onto a collectively hand-felted carpet that interprets their physical movements into a real-time sonic environment. Venue: ( ( NYT ) ) Art Space

Anastasia Landa—David—Prinz Klitzi.
A participatory, multilingual performance exploring fragments of a volatile life. Weaving memories of youth, relocation, and nightlife subcultures, the piece reflects on gaps in biography, memory loss, and the haunting gravity of addiction. Venue: bat-Studiotheater

Paolo Artisi and Marla Gaiser / anseranser—Generalprobe eines Widerstands.
Staged in direct temporal alignment with the real-world 2026 AfD party convention, this participatory performance functions as a political rehearsal. Collapsing timelines between 1926, 2026, and 2036, it interrogates collective agency, responsibility, and resistance in relation to the theater space. Venue: bat-Studiotheater

Tickets and registration
Participation in the programme is free of charge, but events have limited capacity. Book your tickets and register for the Symposium at https://www.spielundobjekt.de.

Venues
Spiel und Objekt Raum Vorne, Zinnowitzer Straße 7, 10115 Berlin / bat-Studiotheater, bat-Studiotheater, Belforter Str. 15, 10405 Berlin / Zitadelle Spandau, Am Juliusturm 64, 13599 Berlin / ( ( NYT ) ) Art Space, Philippistraße 7, 14059 Berlin

Funding
The Festival and Symposium is funded by HfS Ernst Busch Berlin and produced by MA Spiel und Objekt / Experimental Play. soft corps is realized in cooperation with Zitadelle Spandau and co-funded by ‘Fonds Dezentrale Kulturarbeit des Bezirks Spandau von Berlin’.