Vorspiel

a citywide programme
by spaces and initiatives
around transmediale
and CTM festivals


Coming soon: Vorspiel 2027



Articles


The Vorspiel Collection brings together artworks, films, photo-essays, texts, graphs, images, podcasts, sound experiments, and more.


Image Gallery

Find some impressions of the 2022 opening here.


Video

Our famous interview Staffette has returned! Watch this year's edition featuring a few of the participating spaces of Vorspiel / transmediale & CTM. The 2022 edition marks the 11th anniversary of our initiative and aim to showcase the richness and diversity of Berlin's independent project spaces and artist initiatives.


Video

A look behind the Shared Frame streamed event for Vorspiel 2021 (pandemic edition).


Essay

How we got there and how important it was for Panke.


Essay Artwork

Postcards from the Metaverse speculates on the value of the popular 20th century medium – the postcard – in providing accessible and underrepresented perspectives on a newly- hyped infrastructure


Essay

Former transmediale artistic director Kristoffer Gansing applies a bit of home-grown numerology to reminisce about the secrets of Vorspiel!


Essay

The reSource network has been an extremely valuable resource in the process of establishing and running SPEKTRUM Berlin. It allowed us to connect with like-minded people in the city, to start up new collaborations, and to learn from those facing similar issues in running project spaces.


Essay

The essay summarizes the Czech-Brazilian cultural theorist and media philosopher Vilém Flusser’s ideas on the apparatus, codes, and programmed and manipulated society. He ends his texts by highlighting the importance of artists who might be able to play with and against the apparatus and challenge mass media and their preprogrammed functions.


Essay

From 2011 to 2014, Tatiana Bazzichelli and a team of others designed a sprawling event program called “reSource transmedial culture Berlin,” which picked up on transmediale-related projects and flung them far further.


Essay

Since 2013 designtransfer – the gallery and communicates interface of the Faculty of Design, Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) and the public – participates yearly at Vorspiel to present various projects as exhibitions, installations, and talks related to their New Media & Design courses.


Video

Watch a digital interview Staffette with some of the participating spaces of Vorspiel / transmediale & CTM. The 2021 edition marks the 10th anniversary of our initiative and aim to showcase the richness and diversity of Berlin's independent project spaces and artist initiatives in collaboration with transmediale.


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Events Performance, Workshop, Installation, Lecture, Screening

Pilz Kunst Labor (Fungi Art Lab)


16:00 –
Pilz Kunst Labor / Satellit

16:00 Koji as a Co-Operator : Greetings from the Mould-Based Fermentation Kitchen (Fingerfood & Drinks) Pierre Lorenz

16:30 ๓ɏƈɛʟɨǟ (Lecture Performance, 30 min) Maria Kobylenko

17:15 Art Beyond the Human: Co-Creation with Fungi (Lecture, 30 min) Elisabeth Gontov

18:15 Collaborating with Algae: A Hands-On Introduction to Biopolymers (Workshop, 60 min) Val Solari

19:15 Poetics of Mycelium (Screening, 42:05 min) Essay film by Ma Yongfeng

At the Pilz Kunst Labor (Fungi Art Lab), artists, scientists, citizens and students work to combine artistic practice and fungal research. Using mycelium composite, a biomaterial that grows on waste materials, they explore ecological design processes and new relationships between humans and the environment. This creates a learning space in which new ideas for a sustainable future are developed together. The project is a collaboration between Mitkunstzentrale, Haus der Materialisierung and the Department of Applied and Molecular Microbiology at Technical University Berlin.

Koji as a Co-Operator : Greetings from the Mould-Based Fermentation Kitchen Pierre Lorenz

As a sensory opening to the program, curious taste buds are invited to tingle, wander, and recalibrate. A small experimental finger-food buffet explores the delicious potentials of edible fungi. Accompanied by a short introduction, the tasting opens up fermentation as a practice of care and cooperation with microbial life — a way of sharing time, digestion, and transformation with other organisms. The contribution reflects on fungal metabolism as a tool for circular kitchen practices and as an invitation to rethink how we relate to living systems through taste.

Food and drinks are offered on a donation basis, together with the overall program.

๓ɏƈɛʟɨǟ Maria Kobylenko

The performance explores mycelium as a living organism, tracing its diverse functions within ecosystems, material properties and speculative potentials. It demonstrates how mycelium acts as a decomposer and can be used as a biomaterial. During the performance the production of mycelium composite becomes a participatory act, making knowledge tangible and experiential.

Art Beyond the Human: Co-Creation with Fungi in Contemporary Art Elisabeth Gontov

Mycelium has recently emerged as a material across various disciplines – from packaging and architecture to fashion and textiles. In contemporary art, however, fungi are not only used as a material, but increasingly approached as collaborators. This 30-minute lecture introduces contemporary artistic practices that work with fungi and mycelium as both material and co-creator. It explores why artists choose to collaborate with living organisms, what values and possibilities arise from these practices, and which challenges they entail. Through selected artistic positions and artworks, the lecture opens a space to reflect on co-creation beyond the human, artistic authorship, and alternative modes of making. The session concludes with an open discussion, inviting the audience to share their own experiences, questions, and inspirations around working with fungi and other more-than-human collaborators.

Collaborating with Algae: A Hands-On Introduction to Biopolymers Val Solari

This workshop introduces algae-based biopolymers as materials derived from living systems and frames making as a collaborative practice rather than an exercise in control. Although the biopolymers themselves are not alive in a biological sense, they behave in dynamic, responsive ways. Through a guided demonstration accompanied by hands-on exploration, the materials reveal how viscosity, drying, shrinkage, and texture actively influence form. Outcomes emerge from negotiation between human intentions and the material’s own tendencies and constraints, fostering sensitivity to co-creation with life-derived materials.

Poetics of Mycelium Ma Yongfeng

Mycelial techniques embody a form of edge-centered wisdom, where perception and response arise from the margins, dissolving the need for centralized hierarchical structures. In the dystopian context of relentless human intervention in the biosphere, it becomes essential to reimagine planetary eco-politics through the living architecture of mycelial networks. This alternative political vision seeks to cultivate cross-species kinships and to de-anthropocentrize ecological thought, moving beyond frameworks that place humans at the center of the biosphere. It aspires to re-commonize interdependent relationships grounded in symbiosis, synergy, resilience, and multi-local responsiveness, offering an alternative to the prevailing systems of unilateral, monopolistic, and hierarchical eco-political dominance.

Donation based. (Suggestion 10 - 20 €)

Pilz Kunst Labor / Satellit Weinstraße 11 10249 Berlin

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