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26 Mar 2026–3 Apr 2026

A composed public body

Elisabeth Prehn

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

Opening: 26 March at 19:00

Elisabeth Prehn (Germany/Netherlands) is a Sandberg Institute alumni working with sculpture, found objects and moving image. Her practice examines how social roles, neutrality and authority are materially produced and reproduced through everyday objects, spatial arrangements and institutional formats. Through material interventions and repetition, she creates installations that foreground processes of fabricated neutrality. Her work investigates how the “neutral” or “universal” operates as a cultural norm, shaping what becomes visible and what remains unseen. Objects in her installations carry material rhetorics, traces of persuasion, embedded in form and use. At ABA, she is developing a video-based project that examines neutrality as a strategic performance, using Bertolt Brecht’s 1947 hearing in front of the House Committee of Un-American Activities as a case study. Supported by WerktuigPPO

2–14 Dec 2025

Dustings from the observatory

Ilke Gers

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.

Opening: 5 December at 17:00

Supported by Mondriaan Funds

Image for Dustings from the observatory

Photos by Jens Franke

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Double sided A4 sheet with texts by Ilke Gers written during her residency at ABA.

Image for Dustings from the observatory

23–29 Nov 2025

Wo ist die Oper?

Katja Stoye-Cetin

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

Maxine Maxine is a Musician and artist whose practice weaves together samples, pop melodies, and an ethereal strangeness. Her stage presence is both fantastical and bizarre, exploring the boundaries between reality and imagination.

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Image rights: VG Bildkunst

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Image for Wo ist die Oper?

8 Nov 2025

Time Flows through Art-Science

Workshop & Panel

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.

The gathering is designed for researchers, artists, educators, and science communicators interested in critical, practice-based approaches to the climate crisis and cultural transformation.

Previously

2025

12 Sep – 28 Sep

A Hidden Well

Murat Adash, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Tony Cokes, Kasia Fudakowski, Judith Hopf, Aykan Safoğlu, Shade Théret, Leyla Yenirce


09 Jun – 20 Jun

It's okay now

Isabelle Konrad & Gloria Müller


25 May – 30 May

Berlin–Wedding

Carsten Lisecki


08 Mar – 30 Mar

At your fingertips 
I see my moving lips or not?

Sylvia Henrich


21 Feb – 25 Feb

Spiralling

Lysann König, Laurie Mlodzik & Linus Weber


2024

08 Nov – 28 Nov

Ruins of Belarus

Uladzimir Hramovich & VEHA Archive


22 Aug – 25 Aug

Eclipse

Damien Juillard


03 May – 24 May

running stitch

Tsolak Topchyan


27 Apr

Let’s meet at U Magdalenenstraße

Dóra Benyó


14 Feb

Taking the Form of a Mortal Girl

Julia Nusser


2023

15 Dec

Review

Elif Satanaya Özbay & Jazmina Figueroa


11 Nov

Public Un/Happiness

Christine Würmell


08 Sep – 01 Oct

MYOPIA_2

Sławomir Brzoska, Katarzyna Górczynska, Rafał Górczynski, Wojciech Hora, Henrik Jacob, Karolina Komasa, Anne Peschken / Marek Pisarsky, Veit Stratmann, Line Wasner, Marc Tobias Winterhagen


16 Jun – 20 Jun

grounding gravity / growing stones

Kato Six, Inne Eysermans, Filarowska


20 Jan – 05 Feb

Unintentional, Junctions

Neige Sanchez, Machiel van Stokkum, Matheline Marmy


2022

14 Sep – 18 Sep

Finally I couldn’t resist to draw you in my photography

Iden Sungyoung Kim


29 Apr – 01 May

International Coalition of Cultural Workers against the War in Ukraine

Anna Chistoserdova, Susanne Kriemann & Aleksander Komarov, Valentina Kiselyova


26 Mar – 16 Apr

Darookhaneh Apotheke Pharmacy

Sohrab Kashani, Anahita Razmi


2020

09 Jun

VOR GERICHT

Anna Knoeller


01 May

Today I left home and

Camille Kaiser


2019

29 Nov – 11 Jan

PEPVCPTFEPEG

Alexander Theis, Annette Hürter, Eleanora Pfanz, Hanna Jurisch, Jonas Zilius, Iden Sungyoung Kim, Leonie Mühlen, Minh Duc Pham, Nis Petersen, Silvie Wipfler, Vera Gärtner


uq-bar-a-ba project space is located in the middle of a culturally diverse and lively district of Berlin. Here we offer artists an exhibition space where they can show their work to a wider audience and enter into an exchange with the local communities. We also offer artists at every stage of their career a space to explore and experiment. We hold workshops and readings to encourage exchange between communities and promote critical thinking through collaborative projects. The aim of our project space is to make connections and engage with artists, thinkers and institutions from different fields of knowledge and expertise.

Since February 2020, ABA joined forces with uqbar, which was initiated by Antje Weitzel, Dorothee Bienert, Dortje Drechsel and Marina Sorbello. Visit the uqbar archive here.

Schwedenstraße 16
13357 Berlin

The space is available for hire to be used as an event space. If you would like to know more about the use of space or submit a proposal, please send us a request, and we will review it.
Floor plan PDF.

Info sheet – for those interested in using the space.

Visit by appointment