Friday 26 October 2007 | 11:00 hrsOrganizerBerliner FestspieleSupported by the Federal Cultural FoundationCurator Richard Castelli

Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau 2023

Vom Funken zum Pixel. Kunst + Neue Medien

From Spark to Pixel. Art + New Media

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place for encounters with art and each other. As an internationally renowned exhibition centre, it offers space for major exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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There are currently no exhibitions on view at Gropius Bau.

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Gropius Bau 2026

Events

Exhibitions & Projects

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Our newsletters keep you updated on current and upcoming exhibitions and events. Learn more about our kids programme and plan your next visit.

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We’re Looking Forward to Welcoming You Again in March!

Gropius Bau is currently closed for exhibition preparations. Our restaurant Beba and our bookstore will reopen on 4 March, before we kick off our spring programme, featuring a performance by <a href="${link:{uuid:{16d14ae2-9463-45b4-91de-95a846c0f377},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2026/veranstaltungen/leila-hekmat}}}">Leila Hekmat</a>, the <a href="${link:{uuid:{fd3f9e70-97e8-46fb-b639-fc701f8d4039},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau/veranstaltungen/baubau-play-day-pop-up-26}}}">big pop-up</a> of our play space BAUBAU and the opening of our <a href="${link:{uuid:{baa82be9-6411-41e5-806b-4889004c8459},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2026/ausstellungen/peter-hujar-liz-deschenes}}}">Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes</a> exhibition. Find more details in our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> section.

See You Soon

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Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition

Marina Abramović

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With Andrew Durbin, Biliana Voutchkova, Gary Schneider, Queer Analog Darkroom and Selin Davasse – free admission

Sp&auml;tschicht x C/O Berlin

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Tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are available. The programme includes Gy&ouml;rgy Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Musikfest Berlin

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In 2026 the Berliner Festspiele celebrate their 75th anniversary. A selection of events programmed throughout the entire year engage take the anniversary as their theme or mark the occasion with works at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Gropius Bau, the Philharmonie Berlin, on Berlin’s Ringbahn and at other locations in the city.&nbsp;

75 Years of the Berliner Festspiele

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The programme has been published. Advance ticket sales will start on 18&nbsp;April at 10:00.

Theatertreffen

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The programme has been published. Tickets are available now. Selected from more than 700&nbsp;productions, Theatertreffen once again presents the 10&nbsp;most remarkable productions of the year in May. The festival is complemented by the new format Mehr Drama! as well as a series of conversations curated by Matthias Dell on aesthetic, social and culture-political issues.

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The Practice – What Moves Artists

The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a book series by Gropius Bau that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time. In the third volume of the series On the Erotic, performance artist Marina Abramović talks about female sexuality after menopause, the eroticism of the masses and her love for the planet.

Marina Abramović: On the Erotic

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A Vibrant Place for Enganging with Art and Each Other

Located in the centre of Berlin, Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution is part of the Berliner Festspiele and stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists, offering new perspectives on our present.

About Gropius Bau

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The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a book series by Gropius Bau that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time. In the second volume of the series, artist, performer and author Vaginal Davis looks back on the saucy underground scenes of Los Angeles and Berlin together with former bandmates.&nbsp;On Dangerous Ground recounts past gigs, spectacular live performances and well-kept secrets.

Vaginal Davis: On Dangerous Ground

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Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With&nbsp;Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date.

Diane Arbus: Konstellationen

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Ligia Lewis is a central figure in redefining performance within the context of the visual arts. Her solo exhibition&nbsp;I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR… at Gropius Bau&nbsp;brings&nbsp;together new and existing works that explore themes of race, gender, violence and resistance.

Ligia Lewis:I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR...

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With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

BAUBAU:A&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

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What is and has been the role of play in public space? Gabriela Burkhalter’s&nbsp;Playing in the City&nbsp;presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to BAUBAU’s entrance.

Playing in the City:A Short History from 1900 to the Present

Currently at Gropius Bau

Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date. Featuring 454 prints, many of them shown here for the first time, Konstellationen offers new perspectives on Arbus’ iconic images and the wide range of her portraiture.

Ligia Lewis is a central figure in redefining performance within the context of the visual arts. In her multifaceted practice, she combines performance, live installation and film. From autumn 2025, Gropius Bau presents I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…, the artist and choreographer’s most comprehensive solo exhibition to date. It brings together new and existing works that explore themes of race, gender, violence and resistance.

Ligia Lewis: I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…

Current Exhibitions

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Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision

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Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities. They set the tone and decide what happens in this place.

BAUBAU

Spielen in der Stadt

A Short History from 1900 to the Present

What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s Playing in the City presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City

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Marina Abramović, one of the most influential contemporary artists, presents Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition at Gropius Bau, marking her first major solo show in Berlin since the 1990s. The exhibition brings together historical and new works by the performance artist, tracing her ongoing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death and the body as a site of political resistance.

Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition

Currently and Upcoming

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With Andrew Durbin, Biliana Voutchkova, Gary Schneider, Queer Analog Darkroom and Selin Davasse

On the occasion of <a href="${link:{uuid:{baa82be9-6411-41e5-806b-4889004c8459},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2026/ausstellungen/peter-hujar-liz-deschenes}}}">Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision</a>, Sp&auml;tschicht x C/O Berlin turns its focus on 26 March to photography within the shifting terrains of urban space, visibility, and resistance. Look forward to performances, a workshop, a screening and a reading. Admission is free.

We are looking forward to welcoming you back in mid-March with the reopening of our play space, <a href="${link:{uuid:{df42e57d-a14a-4b44-a5e4-9d3e7dcab5a6},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau}}}">BAUBAU</a> (on 22 March), and two exhibitions, <a href="${link:{uuid:{55d64239-53fe-4b12-8567-a63191c6cae4},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/vaginal-davis}}}">Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt</a> (from 21 March) and <a href="${link:{uuid:{9618c701-bd05-432e-b688-5943e1f7fc57},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/yoko-ono}}}">YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND</a> (from 11 April). For details on opening hours and tickets, please visit our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> page. We look forward to seeing you soon!

See you in March!

Persistence of Vision

Working in New York City between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the onset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Peter Hujar captured a pivotal cultural moment in piercing black-and-white photographs. In the exhibition Persistence of Vision, Hujar’s photographs are interspersed with contemporary works by New York City-based artist Liz Deschenes, opening up an intergenerational dialogue on photography.&nbsp;

Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes

A&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

A Short History from 1900 to the Present

From sandpits to adventure playgrounds, urban play spaces have – throughout their evolution – taken many different forms. What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s Playing in the City presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City &nbsp;

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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Festivals & Programme Series

Ausstellungen 2007

Events 2007

The “From Spark to Pixel” exhibition will present developments in contemporary art involving the large-scale use of digital and interactive media. The technical possibilities in this field have given this area of art a more international dimension than that of almost any other. Thus the exhibition will feature works both by renowned and as yet unknown artists and groups of artists from all over the world. Works by pioneers and works that are being shown in Europe or Germany for the first time or have been specially developed for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, will enable visitors to discover spectacular forms of artistic expression and radical changes in perception in the relation between the observer and the moving image. Immersive and interactive approaches feature frequently in the artists’ strategies.
Installations by: 
 Romy Achituv (Israel): BeNowHere Interactive, 1997 (German premiere) 
 Gregory Barsamian (USA): The Scream, 1998. No, Never Alone, 1998 (German premieres) 
 Jean Michel Bruyère (France): Si Poteris Narrare, Licet, 2002. CaMg(CO3)2 (Dolomit), 2007 (world premiere) 
 Du Zhenjun (China): Presumption, 2000 (German premiere) 
 Dumb Type (Japan): Voyages, 2002 (European premiere) 
 Brad Hwang (Korea/Germany): Time May Change Me / I Can’t Change Time, 2007 (world premiere) 
 KAI (Germany): Feuerkasten, 1991/2007 
 Ulf Langheinrich (Germany/Austria): Hemisphere, 2006–2007 (German premiere) 
 Dirk Lüsebrink / Joachim Sauter (Art+Com) (Germany): Invisible Shape of Things Past, 1996/2007 (premiere at the Martin-Gropius-Bau) 
 Marie Maquaire (France), Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu, Berlin, 2003 (German premiere) 
 Thomas McIntosh (Canada): Ondulation, 2002 (German premiere) 
 David Moises (Austria): Hanoscope, 2002 (German premiere) 
 Nam June Paik (Korea/USA): Candle TV, 1975 
 Christian Partos (Sweden): Visp, 2000. Striptease, 1998. (German premiere) M.O.M, 2003 
 Erwin Redl (Austria/USA): FLOW Berlin, 2007 (world premiere) 
 Jeffrey Shaw (Australia) / Sarah Kenderdine (New Zealand): PLACE Hampi, 2006 (German premiere) 
 Pierrick Sorin (France): Quelques inventions remarquables, 2003 
 Shiro Takatani (Japan): Chrono, 2007 
 Shiro Takatani (Japan): Camera Lucida, 2005 (European premiere) 
 Saburo Teshigawara (Japan): Light Behind Light, 2004 (German premiere)
Nearly all the works will be on view in Berlin for the first time.
The exhibition has been designed by Richard Castelli (Paris) for the Martin-Gropius-Bau and shows the interactions and connections between art and electronic media. The four central concepts of the exhibition – fire and electricity, light and pixel – act as paradigms for this development and for “immaterial states”. Starting with fire, the first form of energy to be mastered by man, the exhibition passes, in parallel to human evolution, through the stages of electricity, light and the pixel, which, as the spark is in the case of fire, is the “nucleus” of the electronic image. The electronic image is the source of another form of energy that is free of all fossil properties: information of which we cannot be quite sure if it really has been mastered by man.
The magnificent Lichthof of the Martin-Gropius-Bau will be dominated by particularly impressive installations, including one by Erwin Redl, who redesigned the façade of the Whitney Museums in New York. He is creating a work expressly commissioned for the Lichthof of the Martin-Gropius-Bau and called FLOW Berlin 2007. It consists of a large light wave made of 30.000 light-emitting diodes, which seeks to “de-realize” the horizon of human perception.
Other examples of premieres or spectacular installations include:
A new electrostatic creation Time May Change Me / I Can’t Change Time by Brad Hwang. On the subject of light the choreographer and performance artist Saburo Teshigawara will be showing a fascinating work involving mirrors and entitled Light Behind Light.
Thomas McIntosh’s Ondulation, an environment of flowing waves of light, is a game with reflected light, which shows how one can play with music and tones.
Jean Michel Bruyère is represented with two interactive artworks: the “ifilm” (for Jeffrey Shaw’s EVE Interactive Cinema) Si Poteris Narrare, Licet, an interactive film journey in which the time of the finished film, registered and fixed in advance, harmonizes with the real-time sequence of its geography. In the world premiere of CaMg(CO3)2 visitors will find themselves in the lounge of a shaman, as in an extreme mixture of the most primitive technology and the highest of high-tech.
The entry of Jeffrey Shaw, a pioneer of digital cinematography, and Sarah Kenderdine in the exhibition will be PLACE-Hampi, interactive stereoscopic panoramas of the ruins of Hampi, the “Angkor of India”.
Making its European premiere is the artists’ collective Dumb Types with Voyages, a monolith of horizontally arranged images as impressive as those in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Joachim Sauter and Dirk Lüsebrink (Art + Com) present works of architecture such as the art museum Shanghai’ or Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz in the form of digital film sculptures which they call The Invisible Shapes of Things Past.
In Ulf Langheinrich’s aesthetic plasma Hemisphere, the viewer finds himself dominated, protected and at the same time attracted by a constantly changing granular virtual world, which seems just about to implode.
Although “From Spark to Pixel” will show aspects of the evolution of our notions of energy in its various phases, the exhibition will surprisingly enough be one of contemporary art and hence offer a poetic platform for contemplation and meditation.

Vom Funken zum Pixel

From Spark to Pixel

Veranstaltungen Vom Funken zum Pixel

2007

Programm

Programme

Upcoming

The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Berliner Festspiele

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furtherInformation

Theatertreffen-Blog Header

In 2026 the Berliner Festspiele celebrate their 75th anniversary. A selection of events programmed throughout the entire year engage take the anniversary as their theme or mark the occasion with works at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Gropius Bau, the Philharmonie, on Berlin’s Ringbahn and at other locations in the city. Outstanding international that liberal societies and their cultural institutions face in a new, multipolar world order. artists such as Marina Abramović, Gabriele St&ouml;tzer and Akira Takayama will set the agenda both thematically and aesthetically. Entitled “Die gro&szlig;e Unordnung” (The Great Disorder), the four-day focus Reflexes &amp; Reflections will also enquire about the challenges.

75 Years of the Berliner Festspiele

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The massacre, hostage-taking and rocket attacks by Hamas have shaken us deeply. The grue-some attack on Israel on 7&nbsp;October left us stunned and initially lost for words.

The Berliner Festspiele on Current Events in Israel, Gaza and Germany

With this letter of intent, we, the signing cultural organizations, express our intention to welcome, host and stage Ukrainian theatre artists in our venues, to make Ukrainian dramatic work visible to the European community.

Support of the Ukrainian Cultural Scene

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In June 2026, Sasha Waltz &amp; Guests will be performing the productions Beethoven&nbsp;7 and In&nbsp;C at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Sasha Waltz &amp; Guests will also be staging a special evening to celebrate the 75th&nbsp;anniversary of the Goethe-Institut.

Sasha Waltz &amp; Guests

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Tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th&nbsp;anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are already available. The programme includes Gy&ouml;rgy Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

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The exploration of myths and rituals shapes the fourth edition of the Performing Arts Season with works by Marina Abramović, Mario Banushi, Marie Chouinard, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas, Ictus, Bl!ndman, Dumb Type, Damien Jalet / Kohei Nawa and Gisèle Vienne. The programme will be published on 18 June, and advance ticket sales will start.

Performing Arts Season

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The Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of the 10 most remarkable productions for the 2026 Theatertreffen. The programme will be published on 2&nbsp;April, advance ticket sale will begin on 18 April, 10:00.