Review of Project Space Festival 2026

by Jesse Slater // June 18, 2026

Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ has been on my mind lately. I like thinking about her monster; what it means to be feared, what happens when animation teeters over into existence. Somehow, as I traversed around Berlin’s self-organized spaces for this year’s edition of the month-long Project Space Festival, I was reminded of Shelley and of her creation story. The first week of the festival unfolded for me as a series of encounters with bodies taking form as objects, outside themselves, sentience leaking from their surfaces.

The prism I came to experience the week through was ‘Heimwee / Riḍu’ at Errant Sound, a multimedia installation which, to me, felt more like a disembodied performance piece. First gathering us in the modest courtyard outside the project space, composers Jelmer de Haan and Bilawa Ade Respati, along with lighting designer Nindya Nareswari, shared the context of ‘Heimwee / Riḍu,’ how it engages with the concept of home at the end of Dutch colonial rule during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. Inside, the installation centered on a gamelan instrument hooked up with microphones and wires to allow automated batons to thrum down on its keys. Large pieces of canvas covered the windows. Veils of gauze-like fabric intersected the smoke-engorged space. We settled; a lull subsiding before a throng of vocalizations suddenly played, punctuated by the tinny ring of the instrument’s keys. The voice of the Dutch Queen during occupation looped, sounding distant and resigned. A simple melody, almost nursery rhyme-like, played out from the instrument. The effect was of a system operating on autopilot.

Bilawa Ade Respati, Jelmer de Haan, Nindya Nareswari: ‘Heimwee / Ridu’ at Errant Sound as part of Project Space Festival Day 5, June 3, 2026 // Photo by Piotr Pietrus

Throughout the course of the 25-minute piece, some moments felt hopeful—whimsical notes ascending—before, a minute later, the speed intensified and the sounds grew raucous. Synths droned. Notes clashed. The experience of being in the space was full, disorientating even. We were invited to move around as the installation played. Some obliged; their faces illuminated for moments as they stepped in and out of flares of yellow and blue light. Others were fixed, eyes closed, sat on simple plinths turned over into benches, or on the floor. Somehow, we were all positioned towards the instrument, anticipating its next self-possessed trill.

After the piece, we emerged back into the courtyard, Bilawa Ade Respati explaining how the instrument originally accompanied shadow puppet performances and is often used in ceremonies to commemorate ancestors. I thought of the instrument being puppeteered by the dead, discordant constellations of individual people, corralled into an oppressive system. I returned into the installation where the piece played out on a loop for the rest of the evening. The room was emptier. I didn’t see others’ faces; bodies making space between one another, obscured by the veils of fabric. The instrument even seemed to be decentered. Instead, my experience of the work felt more internal, notes pacing at the rate of flurried thoughts; swooping, bowing, condensing, easing again. The soft thuds of the gamelan still caught as I left through the courtyard, before mixing with the highs and lows of chatter and fading out of earshot.

Pedro Moraes: ‘Groteske’ curated by Victor Auberjonois at Passage, Project Space Festival Day 3, June 1, 2026 // Photo by Joe Clark

The following day, I travelled through Hermannplatz U-Bahn station, going by the exhibition space Passage. The space is a glass container embedded in the original architecture of the U7 platform, flanked by its pearlescent mint-green tiles. ‘Groteske’ by Pedro Moraes opened a few days prior, as part of Project Space Festival. In it, Moraes presents an Erikli water bottle suspended by a metal system, with a piston extending from inside the bottle, almost touching the glass. The space was lit bright white like a supermarket. Looking closer, I saw a small cloud of condensation settle on the pane from the piston. It struck me that, in this case, the water bottle—the cheapest you can buy from the station’s shop—was a body, breathing out every so often thanks to its carefully-constructed exoskeleton.

Pedro Moraes: ‘Groteske’ curated by Victor Auberjonois at Passage, Project Space Festival Day 3, June 1, 2026 // Photo by Joe Clark

I stayed the time it takes a few U-Bahns to pass, curious to watch the silvery edges of condensation bleed out if the piston operated again. As I waited, I thought of how much of our bodies are made of water, and how disposable this plastic bottle is. I noticed one of the panes had graffiti on it, the white paint of the tag dripping down the window. Eventually, I gave up waiting and took one last look at the vapor, feeling strange to leave it behind.

The breathy residue stayed on my mind as I swung up the escalators at Hermannplatz to head towards the next Project Space Festival event; the opening of the group show ‘Hyperbleed’ at Solaris Space. I already felt cautious ahead of arriving, having read that the exhibition focuses on the artist’s role in reality-making as our lives are reshaped by AI. The first work I encountered was expectedly unsettling; mobile phones caged in metal structures that seemed to autonomously write prompts about the artist for an AI chatbot. “A photo of Sarah Friend sitting on her knees in a position that highlights her ass with a mirror behind her” is typed out on the screen. The machine pings back an explicit image. Even the prompts for the AI are presented as writing themselves. A video work, this time by Martyna Marciniak, played on a screen nearby. It messed with authenticity, presenting various Wikipedia articles on topics such as “Blobsquatch” (sightings of both humanoid and non-humanoid figures whose existence is disputed, captured in low res) and “Polidactylites” (you can make your own guess to the meaning assigned here). I sat there yearning for the days when Wikipedia was considered a questionable source, rather than the computer-churned slop we consume today. The cold AI glare made me want to leave the exhibition quickly.

Aleksandra Cieślewicz, Sarah Friend, Martyna Marciniak, Aistė Stankevičiūtė: ‘Hyperbleed’ at Solaris Space, Project Space Festival Day 6, June 4, 2026 // Photo by Joe Clark

Something changed with the final event I attended the next day. I was thankful that it was a poetry reading, presented in the airy courtyard outside ACUD Gallery. ‘Venus in Three Movements: Part 1’ encompassed works engaging with echo, gossip and alienation. The highlight for me was Amelia Ada’s reading, her piece a sumptuous retelling of a date she went on, dangling confessional details about being impressed by her lover’s German language use, questioning if they’re a chaser as well as locating the moment she knew they “would fuck,” alongside a quote from Emily Dickinson on awe and Ada’s own musings on echoes. “What is the silence of an echo except for a body?” she demands to know. I think again of Mary Shelley, of animation and what it means to be alive, messy details leaking. Life force is back in the center here, and the body appears to have found it.