Vorspiel 2026 · CTM × transmediale 30–31 January 2026 · Berlin
ecoSYNTH² returns for its second edition as part of Vorspiel 2026 (CTM × transmediale), hosted by TOP Lab, a transdisciplinary community space and Berlin’s first DIY biolab.
As part of the Vorspiel program, which highlights independent and self-organised spaces across Berlin, we reopen our exhibition space and basement biolab for screenings, discussions, and hybrid encounters between art, ecology, and technology. ecoSYNTH² focuses on living interfaces, multispecies alchemy, biohacking, and more-than-human ecological synthesis—where digital media meets living systems, and art becomes a tool for sensing, resistance, and transformation.
We aim to incubate anti-capitalist futures, host critical conversations, and create space for practices operating between code, culture, and biology.
13 December 2025 · TOP Lab Berlin · Industriestraße 40 · 18:00–END With Giorgio Alloatti, Alexandra Maciá, Xristina Sarli & Pestalotiopsis microspora
About TOP Presents
TOP Presents is TOP Lab’s monthly series, featuring community artists, researchers, and activists whose work confronts eco-social issues through hands-on experimentation. Hosted inside TOP Lab, Berlin’s first DIY BioLab and transdisciplinary community space, the series opens conversations around regenerative cultures, more-than-human practices, and multispecies resistance.
Premiered in Istanbul at the end of 2024, Above the Clouds: Underground aimed to create a speculative universe at the intersection of literature and theatre—one that opens up a queer space of imagination and breaks away from established narrative structures. Supported by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul, this multi-layered reading performance was developed through a creative writing workshop and expanded with visual and auditory elements. Since its first showing, the performance attracted significant attention, was staged five times in a short span, and resonated widely both for its literary content and performative form.
Directed by İrem Aydın and co-created with Seçil Epik, the performance features artists Bulut Sezer, Jilet Sebahat, Akış Ka, Seçil Epik, and Zeyno Erdost. It now comes to Berlin in the form of an installation using video recordings of the original performance.
Taking place at TOP—Berlin’s transdisciplinary production space and first community-based DIY biology lab—on Friday, July 25th from 18:00 to 22:00, the installation will be accompanied by a live reading of a section from the performance, followed by a conversation with the project’s creators, İrem Aydın and Seçil Epik. Together with the audience, we will explore the creative process behind the project, queer modes of production, and how collaboratively written texts are brought to the stage. A section of the performance will also be presented as a live reading.
To close the evening, Jade and the DJ duo bbs will take over the decks—words give way to sound, the stage to dance.
⚠️ Update: Our first public event has been rescheduled to Saturday, July 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM. We are hosting Merve Gül Özokcu and Zeynep Ataş for this inaugural event.
Spatial Narratives Beyond Geographies is a year-long public program initiated by TOP e.V. dedicated to exploring architecture and spatial practice beyond disciplinary, geographic, and institutional boundaries. The series brings together a diverse group of practitioners—architects, researchers, activists, and artists—who work at the intersections of community-based design, cultural heritage, and socio-ecological transformation.
The program centers on alternative architectural narratives that emerge from contested territories, peripheral geographies, and informal or collective spatial strategies. It asks: How can architectural and spatial practices respond to displacement, ecological crisis, and social marginalization? What kinds of built environments and spatial imaginaries emerge from solidarity, memory, and repair?
Venue: TOP’s project space, Berlin
TOP project space Schätzelbergstr 1-3, 12099 Berlin /
Entrance through the back side of the house: Industriestrasse 38, 12099 Berlin
This year’s bio-art exhibition at >top showcases ongoing explorations at the intersection of biology, art, and technology. Working with living organisms—primarily algae and FUNGI—our hybrid projects explore sustainable materials, speculative tools, and community-rooted research. Featured works include a pee-powered energy reactor, kombucha-based garments, mushroom leather sustainable fashion, and a VR/AR mycofabrication school, alongside other experimental formats still in development.
Exhibiting artists & guests:
Alve Lagercranz
Benjamin Janzen
Juliette Collas
Yelta Köm
Melissa Harrison
Ulises Urra
Xristina Sarli
FADEOUT Label
Tim Van Der Loo
24.05.2025-25.05.2025
14:00-20:00
Workshop – Square Loom Weaving
was initiated to explore ways of reusing low-value T-shirts through upcycling. Using a square frame with evenly spaced pegs, yarn is woven diagonally in a twill pattern—from the center outward. This technique, originally a home craft in the 1930s, is adapted with larger, handmade looms and yarn made from T-shirts cut using an open-source method that minimises waste. The finished fabric requires no extra finishing, as the woven edges naturally hold together, forming rugs, towels, or cushions. The project promotes circular practices by transforming textile waste into functional, sustainable objects through accessible tools and hands-on workshops.
by Tim Van der Loo— 24.05.2025, 16:00
Performance: Weaving a Rhizome – Kombucha Textiles and Mucous Interfaces by Benjamin Janzen — 24.05.2025, 20:30
Opening reception: Friday, February 28, 2025 @ 18:00 Opening times: Saturday, March 1, 2025 @ 16:00-20:00 Location: TOP project space, Schätzelbergstr 1-3, 12099 Berlin / Industriestr 40
“Upside Backwards” is an exhibition exploring the different dimensions of transformation within and outside of ourselves.
Between eagerness for change and the cage of stillness, the exhibition refers to a sense of contant transit. Adapt, remake, redefine. Transform. In different works, the artists are looking at states of matter, on the conditions of transformation itself – the before, the after and the in-betweens. Through installation, performance, photography, painting, mixed media, sculpture and writing the artists are opening up a space to experience and reflect.
