June 6, 2025
‘Dissident Paths: Walking Together as a Method’—a year-long project unfolding across Berlin’s public spaces—began in April 2025 and runs through February 2026. Conceived by the nGbK working group of seven cultural practitioners—Clementine Butler-Gallie, Bengisu Çağlayan, Raphael Daibert, Luise Leon Elbern, Eirini Fountedaki, Viviane Tabach and Sarnt Utamachote—the program centers on collective movement as both a physical and political act.
Organized into five thematic ‘PATHS,’ the 23 walks trace, imagine and uncover routes through the city. These walks reveal barriers and impossibilities while opening new perspectives. Each one responds to socio-political urgencies raised by artists, collectives, poets and theorists, who bring diverse backgrounds, experiences and approaches. A walk might take the form of a performance, reading, screening, workshop, sound intervention, foraging session, board game or after-party.
Harun Morrison: ‘Flowing Streams,’ 2025
In May, ‘PATH 1: SPACES AS THRESHOLDS (on crossovers and commons)’ explored urban space as a site of encounter, transition and negotiation, shaped by environmental precarity, historical complexity, collective movement and shifting ideas of the commons.
The second part, ‘PATH 2: TRESPASS & TRANSIT (on migration and access),’ considers migration as both a lived experience and a political condition, examining how borders regulate movement, challenging the erasure of migrant histories and reflecting on the politics of memory and decolonial engagement. It begins June 11th with ‘Walking-Through Allesandersplatz’ at nGbK Rooftop, an activation with Alternative Monument for Germany (ADfD), imagining a monument to migration in public space. On June 28th, Nour Sokhon will lead a sound workshop at Westhafen, a site of movement, memory and containment. Participants will walk the harbour area, collect sounds and conclude with a short recording session at ZK/U.
Alternative Monument for Germany
In July, ‘PATH 2’ continues with Minh Duc Pham’s ‘Mit Liebe und Beispiel’ (July 5th), an interactive walk along the Berlin Wall. Reflecting on GDR refugees and resistance to the authoritarian regime, participants will gather flowers to lay at the Marienfelde reception center, a former safe haven for those fleeing to West Germany. On July 6th, Project In/Visibility (Samirah Siddiqui & Tasnim Elboute) will lead a walk through Volkspark Rehberge, focusing on the urgency of decolonial engagement and confronting the erasure of Palestinian solidarity within Berlin’s remembrance culture. Later in July, ‘PATH 3: STREETS & PROTESTS (on movements and demonstrations)’ will examine collective movement in public space—walking, marching, gathering—as acts of dissent and resistance.
Gabriel Lemos
In August and October, ‘PATH 4: DECELERATE (on alternative temporalities)’ calls for a slower, more sensorially attuned way of being. Through scent, touch, sound and movement, artists will explore migrant space-making, reimagine rituals around mortality and gender, invite children to set the pace, rethink monuments through acts of touch and walk with forests while listening to their fungal networks. In September, ‘PATH 5: CRUISE (on cruising and queer route-making)’ will feature queer practices that reimagine urban spaces, tracing unruly lines of intimacy, survival and solidarity.
Following each walk, the program contributors will leave a ‘TRACE,’ whether through documentation, material-making, textual reflections or yet-to-be-defined forms. These traces will be gathered and shared during a four-day public program at nGbK in February 2026, and published in a booklet titled ‘Walk Notations.’
Additional Info
nGbK
‘Dissident Paths: Walking Together as a Method’
Program: Apr. 2025-Feb. 2026
ngbk.de/dissident-paths
Various Locations
