Dissident Paths: TRACES
February 26–28, 2026
nGbK, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin
No registration required
Free admission

Press tour: February 26, 2026, 5 pm
Please register by email at: presse@ngbk.de

Book launch Walk Notations: February 26, 2026, 7 pm

Concluding Dissident Paths, the three-day program TRACES brings together elements from the walks and some of the artists of the project. Across the gathering, different artistic traces are interwoven through the formats of an installation, workshops, performances and collective meals, foregrounding live contributions as well as the Walk Notations publication launch.

The year-long curatorial project Dissident Paths: Walking Together as a Method unfolded through artistic walking practices across Berlin—from Tempelhof to Wedding, Spandau to Lichtenberg, Tiergarten to Hellersdorf, and Moabit to Marzahn. Between May and October 2025, different parts of the city were traversed with 23 inclusive walks led by invited artists and collectives, across five chapters titled PATHS. From each walk, the contributors were invited to leave a TRACE—whether through documentation, material-making or textual reflections. 

The publication Walk Notations brings some of these traces together. Moving between artistic practices, curatorial conversations, and reflections, the book approaches walking as a method for being together in public space. Some contributions revisit specific sites or gestures while others move further afield, driven by personal memory archival research, theoretical analysis, or speculative fiction. Conceived as a portable companion, Walk Notations invites the readers to navigate the city otherwise—attentive to detours, thresholds, and the possibilities that emerge when paths are made collectively.

The publication launch commences a three-day program, which condenses last year’s walks,  and during which many of the participating artists will further develop the traces they collected: On each day, workshops with Rüzgâr Buşki give visitors the opportunity to make their own screen print to complement their copy of Walk Notations; and collective meals with Yasmeen Al-Qaisi invite the audience to break fast with assortments of grains and stories.

On Friday, a sound performance by Nour Sokhon translates collective fieldwork into a performative score; Saverio Cantoni’s and Dana Cermane’s performance interprets spoken words and sonic improvisation into sign language; and Mahshid Mahboubifar addresses police violence in a film-essay.

In a clay workshop facilitated by Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling on Saturday, the participants will exchange experiences and thoughts on material memory culture and try to make monuments from the past, present, and future visible and tangible. Suelen Calonga’s workshop explores the limits of critical thinking as the dominant language of reflection in art and cultural institutions. The Alternative Monument collective asks what a monument to migration might be, who it is for, and what it can carry into the future. Artists Ashkan Sepahvand and virgil b/g taylor, who together form the collective ssssSssssssss, will reflect on their walk in an informal couch-conversation.

Also on Saturday, a reading performance by Liz Rosenfeld explores cruising beyond its homonormative structures, and as a mode of thinking with the body while communicating through sexuality. Through poetry, movement, and sound, hand breast heart kollektiv‘s performance takes the audience on a cathartic journey propelled by the energy of collective healing and the promise of a new future. In a performative reading, Gabriel Francisco Lemos explores mushrooms not only as biological organisms, but as teachers of attention, impermanence, and entanglement. The program ends with a DJ set to celebrate the paths walked and new paths opened.

Parallel walk-throughs for children and adults will be led through the space of TRACES, at times intersecting in playful overlap, turning walking together into a method for mediation.

Across the three-day program some of the participating artists are sharing physical traces from their walks in the form of a collective installation, integrated with research material from the curators’ library.

With contributions to the installation by: Lucía Alfaro Valencia, Yasmeen Al-Qaisi, Mirja Busch, Suelen Calonga, Gabriel Francisco Lemos, Carolin Genz, Jane Hwang, Pol Merchan & Sarah Martinus, Pitchaya Ngamcharoen, Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling, Liz Rosenfeld, Natthapong Samakkaew, Lauryn Youden, Alternative Monument, ssssSssssssss (Ashkan Sepahvand & virgil b/g taylor)

nGbK work group: Clementine Butler-Gallie, Bengisu Çağlayan, Raphael Daibert, Luise Leon Elbern, Eirini Fountedaki, Viviane Tabach, Sarnt Utamachote

Graphic design: Paula Buškevica

The full program is available here.

Walk Notations
Eds.: Eirini Fountedaki, work group Dissident Paths, nGbK, Berlin, 2026
Softcover with flaps and thread binding, 10 x 15,5 cm
256 pages, 3 colors, numerous ill.
Retail price: 14,00 €
ISBN: 978-3-949969-06-5

We will be happy to provide you with a review copy.

Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds