Humor in Photography

Opening: Thursday, June 25, 6–10 PM

Through 10 or so contemporary positions, the exhibition Humor in Photography explores the role of humor in photographic works. Far from standing in opposition to the seriousness of the pieces, humor serves as one of many vehicles—each work engaging with distinct thematic fields—to delve into deeper layers of perception. The comic, in all its facets—from wit and slapstick to irony—shifts the gaze beyond the factual into the ambiguous, establishing itself as a possible antipode to documentary photography. It adds something ephemeral and free to what we actually see in the images.

The contributions span a broad spectrum of the photographic medium and appear in various representational and presentational forms as part of the exhibition: as books, posters, sculptures, or images on the wall.

Participating Artists:

Susanne Bürner Natalie Czech Daniela Comani Ingo Gerken Sylvia Henrich Lisa Herfeld Claudia Kugler Luise Marchand Johannes Raimann Marie Rief Michael Schmid Stefanie Seufert.

We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening “Half-Life: 40 Years After Charnobyl — The Belarusian Fallout” opens. The project of contemporary art brings together artists from Belarus who were born after the Charnobyl disaster and whose lives and artistic experiences have been shaped by its long-term consequences.

The curatorial concept draws on the notion of “half-life” as a metaphor for the prolonged impact of the catastrophe on memory, bodies, and identity. Through installations, video works, and artistic objects, the project explores how Charnobyl continues to exist in personal stories, collective memory, and the cultural imagination.

The exhibition creates a space for critical reflection on the disaster and highlights the Belarusian perspective within the contemporary geopolitical context.

Artists:
Uladzimir Hramovich
Daria Sazanovich
Yuliya Tsviatkova
Kristina Satsina
Lesia Pcholka

Parallel program:
Julia Cimafiejeva
Oxana Gurinovitch

Opening 24th April 18:00
daily open from 12:00 - 18:00

Uq-Bar-A-Ba
Schwedenstr. 16
13357 Berlin

We invite you to the first presentation of "Akten,” a single-channel video installation by visual artists Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter. The video documents the artists’ performance of a score in the ABA Salon — an artist-run space housed in a temporary construction trailer that will disappear at the end of 2026. The work manifests as a feedback loop hovering at a threshold, as the two artists work with files and filing cabinets to find space amidst a world coming loose, evaporating, and falling into new arrangements that mirror centuries-long rituals of management.

Opening: April 12th 16:00-19:00

Further visits by appointment only April 13th-18th

We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening of our current resident Elisabeth Prehn on 26th of March at 19:00. Presented will be works developed during her residency at ABA.

Moving images today are produced and consumed at enormous speed and in large quantities. As observers, we are constantly adapting to read and process the content and power relationships within them. Whether information given by a body is seen as true or false depends on many factors, one of them being the rhetorics used. What effects does a ‘neutral’ performance create within different contexts? Elisabeth’s moving image research investigates how artistic performance and political testimony share gestural strategies of affect and restraint.

Opening: March 26th 19:00-22:00
Finissage: April 3rd 19:00-22:00

Further visits by appointment only

A series of prints on transparencies with the potential to be projected as 35 mm slides. The prints are made from scaled down and inverted graphite drawings on A4 paper, made during a residency in a studio that stands in the same location as a former observatory in Kreuzberg, once on the periphery of Berlin.

The drawings are gestural markings that relate to language marks and the conditions in which they are made. The prints are made with an inkjet printer on a surface that stays wet, allowing shifts and streaks of the mechanical printing process to become visible. Along with this, studio dust—attracted to the transparencies that became static as they rubbed against each during transport—mixes with the ink, and the ink is repelled by oil left from skin where the sheets were handled.

A double sided A4 sheet contains a series of texts written during the residency at Air Berlin Alexanderplatz between September and December, 2025. The texts first appeared as blog posts on the ABA website, and is printed on the occasion of the exhibition.

Ich gehe durch den U-Bahnhof Wedding, vorbei an diskutierenden Gruppen, Wind kommt auf, eine einfahrende Bahn übertönt jedes Wort. Die hintere Treppe nach oben laufend sehe ich die roten Buchstaben "S P D" an einer Hausfassade und gegenüber das Jobcenter Berlin Mitte.

Weiter geht's, vorbei am geschlossenen Karstadt, in dem sich Lidl befindet. Am Rathausplatz das Jobcenter im Hochhaus. Wo ist die Oper?

Under the working title Oper Wedding, Katja Stoye-Cetin is working on an installation consisting of large-format screen printed posters and a programme booklet printed with linocuts. The screen prints, which formally tie in with her previous photographic work, consist of overlays of shapes and letters. They reproduce reworked symbols from public spaces.

For Oper Wedding, Katja is also constructing cardboard models of the above-mentioned buildings, such as a new office building with the Edeka supermarket at the Wedding S-Bahn station. The work reflects the urban space that surrounds her and hallucinates the desire for a utopian space.

You are warmly invited to join us for coffee and Talk & Build your Supermarket paper-sessions during the exhibition opening times:

13:00–18:00
On Saturday, 23 Nov & Sunday, 29 Nov

Can we feel time? How to reimagine urgency, responsibility and call to action through art-science collaborations?
This event offers an opportunity to engage deeply with leading voices in the field of art-science, focusing on the theme of temporal perception and ecological responsibility. Hosted by I-opener e.V., a Berlin-based collective working at the intersection of art, psychology, and sustainability sciences, the workshop and panel talk explore how interdisciplinary approaches can open new pathways for ecological awareness and public engagement.

The afternoon program consists of:
Workshop on Ecological Consciousness (15:30–16:30)
Led by members of the I-opener collective, this interactive session links psychological insights with sustainability science, inviting participants to reflect on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of environmental behaviour. This workshop format has been presented previously in the Annual Conference of the Social Studies of Science in the Hawaii Convention Center in 2023.

Break (16:30 - 17:00)

Panel Discussion & Participatory Installation (17:00–19:00)
In response to Berlin Science Week’s theme Beyond Now, the roundtable explores the following guiding question: How can art-science collaborations reshape perceptions of time and responsibility?

Drinks (19:00 - 21:00)

The session includes short contributions from each speaker followed by a moderated discussion led by curator Zuleykha Ibad, concluding with an open dialogue with the audience. The event closes with a participatory screening of “A Call for Empathy in Times of Ecological Collapse”, a participative video installation directed by I-opener's founder and director Oliver Juan.

Registration required – please register here.

Please arrive either before 15:30 or during the break session (16:30-17:00) to avoid disturbances.