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.
Program Overview
30 January opens with workshops, talks, and the exhibition in our main space.
Film screenings and experimental cinema take place inside the biolab basement, creating an intimate, scientifically and aesthetically charged environment where digital culture meets living processes.
FREE ENTRY
31 January deploys as a three-stage club night curated by RAPSODICA, a Berlin-based collective rooted in underground culture, pushing the intersection of art and technology and gradually creating new standards within the scene.
RAPSODICA will present INTERFERENZA, a collaborative effort with TOP LAB, a biolab edition of their ongoing series, where experimental art spaces converge with rave and club culture through the work of forward-thinking artists.
Doors open on 31 January at 22:00 for a three-stage club night inside the biolab, carrying us through the night into 1 February.
ENTRY donation based – suggested 15€-22€
By opening our wet lab to the public and inviting people into living systems in progress, we create a shared space for curiosity, care, and collective responsibility, blurring the line between learning, celebration, and being together—toward more regenerative ways of relating to the ecosystem and each other.
ecoSYNTH² creates space for critical conversations and hybrid practices operating between code, culture, and biology—and for experiencing science as something lived, shared, and embodied, dancing until early morning inside a mushroom lab.
TOP Lab is a community-run, self-organized biolab and project space. We work with biofabrication, biohacking, citizen science, XR, and artistic research, bridging living materials and digital culture.
We are part of Berlin’s independent cultural landscape and operate outside institutional neutrality.
We actively support anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-war positions, and we stand in solidarity with communities and peoples resisting occupation, genocide, ecocide, and structural violence—including explicit solidarity with Palestine.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
- Ala Leresteux
- Alexandra Maciá
- Alfie Greenwood
- Alve Lagerkranz
- Camille Belmin
- Giorgio Aloatti
- Jeremy Leresteux
- Juliette Collas
- Lou Huss
- Maria Dębińska
- Ramona Gomez
- Rininta Isdyani
- Tim van der Loo
- Tom Lane
- Ulises Urra
- Xristina Sarli
- Yelta Köm
FULL PROGRAMME
Friday 30.01
15:00-17:00 Papermaking Workshop — Tim van der Loo
18:00-20:00 Talks — ECOSLAY, Maria Dębińska, RAPSODICA
20:00-21:00 TOP PRESENTS — Panel with Xristina Sarli and (TBA)
21:15-22:00 Desquamation — Expanded cinema performance by Tom Lane
22:00-00:00 Film Screenings (TBA)
WORKSHOP
PAPERMAKING WORKSHOP
Tim van der Loo
Using a traditional mould and deckle, we transform leftover paper and natural fibres into a custom non-woven material that sits between paper and textile. By shredding the materials into smaller pieces, we create long fibres that, when laid onto the mould and deckle, form a uniform, continuous surface. This sheet is then pressed and dried in a warm environment. Because the fibres are sufficiently long, they interlock and bind to one another, creating a self-supporting surface suitable for a wide range of applications in art, architecture and design.
TALKS
ECOSLAY
Ramona Gomez (in person, Berlin) Camille Belmin (online)
Talk (Hybrid: on-site & online)
Ecoslay is a collective and association promoting eco-social engagement and intersectional environmentalism through popular culture formats and artistic strategies. Their work operates at the intersection of art, politics, and pop culture aesthetics, often approached through the figure of The Girl.
In October 2025, Ecoslay published the first volume of their publication Ecoslay, bringing together artistic and theoretical contributions that address ecology, power, desire, and representation through accessible and provocative visual languages.
Composting Horror Barbie
Maria Dębińska
Maria Dębińska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and an Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin. She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Warsaw in 2015 for her research on trans politics in Poland and works at the intersections of queer theory, science and technology studies, and bio-art.
Composting Horror Barbie explores the nexus of human, microbial, and inorganic temporalities, focusing on how different timescales interact and collide. The project examines a polyurethane corset that once belonged to an online entity known as Horror Barbie, investigating the possibilities of its decomposition by plastic-eating fungi. Through this case, the work reflects on mediation between biological decay, synthetic permanence, and cultural afterlives
RAPSODICA
Hybrid Spaces Between Art, Science, and Nightlife
RAPSODICA transforms the biolab into a three-stage club night where sound, bodies, and living systems intersect, collapsing boundaries between laboratory, exhibition, and rave.
This talk introduces RAPSODICA’s practice within Berlin’s underground ecosystems, framing nightlife as a hybrid cultural space where art, science, and technology already co-exist. Drawing from DIY club culture, experimental art, and collective knowledge-making, the talk positions nightlife as an informal laboratory—a site of embodied research and shared experience that actively interferes with institutional logics of access, authorship, and control.
PANEL
TOP PRESENTS ( Top Lab Panel)
Panel discussion
TOP Lab presents a panel with TOP Lab researchers (speakers to be confirmed), focusing on community-run biolabs, citizen science, and artistic research. The panel will address how independent spaces operate as sites of knowledge production, experimentation, and resistance within Berlin’s cultural and technological ecosystems.
FILM SCREENINGS
(Open call closes 20.01 — titles to be announced)
FULL PROGRAMME — Club Night
INTERFERENZA
31 January → 1 February · 22:00–??:??
Curated by RAPSODICA
OFFICE
OVERTHINK 71
Anaté
Funken
LAB
Solito Caleb
Dr. Schock
COIDO
Svoora
CORRIDOR
Rapsodica’s residents
🎟 Get your free RSVP → https://ra.co/events/2344955
RAPSODICA deploys a three-stage club night inside TOP Lab; pressuring points between sound, systems, and bodies.
A night moved by interference: club culture colliding with experimental practice, ecological thinking, and living interfaces.
Part of ecoSYNTH² — Living Interfaces, a two-day convergence exploring multispecies worlds, biohacking, and ecological resistance within Berlin’s first biolab and transdisciplinary community.
INTERFERENZA is the nocturnal extension of this process, collapsing boundaries between infrastructure and ritual.
LAB [bass/club] @coido__ @drschock.mp3 @solitocaleb @svoora_
OFFICE [electro/leftfield house/techno] @anatemusic @tvfunken @overthink71
CORRIDOR [ambient/downtempo] Residents
Hosted by @top_ev_berlin
As part of Vorspiel 2026 · CTM × transmediale