When does walking become a refusal, a reclaiming, a reimagining? What stories does the city whisper when you move through it at different paces? What forms of knowledge emerge when we walk together, rather than alone?

Dissident Paths is a curatorial project unfolding over a year, by means of collective movement along traced, imagined, and yet-to-be-discovered paths across Berlin. Walking can be both a necessity and a gesture of dissidence, a refusal to accept the given infrastructures of a world increasingly defined by polarization and devastation. Walking through the city can change perceptions and awareness, at once exposing barriers and impossibilities, whilst also opening up new routes. Movement, in both its bodily and political forms, holds the potential to reshape our sense of belonging and collective agency.

Between May and October 2025, across five chapters titled PATHS, a total of 23 walks will take place. Led by invited artists, collectives, poets and cultural theorists, these walks take on multiple formats, expanding the idea of the walk towards performances, readings, open-air film screenings, workshops for children and adults, sound interventions, foraging, board game sessions, after-parties, and more. Each walk embodies a set of socio-political urgencies, as articulated by its contributors—who come from different backgrounds and lived experiences, bringing various forms of accessibility to each event.

From each walk, the contributors are invited to leave a TRACE—whether through documentation, material-making, textual reflections, or something yet to be defined. These traces will be collected and shared during a 4-day public program at nGbK in February 2026, as well as in the form of a booklet  titled Walk Notations. The traces will reflect on the trajectory of the program whilst opening space for reflections and discussions about future steps.

Contributors: Yasmeen Al-Qaisi, Elena Biserna, Mirja Busch, Rüzgâr Buşki, Suelen Calonga, Saverio Cantoni & Noah Gokul & Lo Moran & Iz Paehr, Gabriel Francisco Lemos, Carolin Genz, Jane Hwang, Mahshid Mahboubifar, Pol Merchan, Harun Morrison, Pitchaya Ngamcharoen, Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling, Minh Duc Pham, Liz Rosenfeld, Natthapong Samakkaew, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, Nour Sokhon, Lauryn Youden, Alternative Monument, hand breast heart kollektiv, House’ it going? (Laura Margarete Bertelt & Uli Kneisl), Project In/Visibility (Samirah Siddiqui & Tasnim Elboute), 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