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.

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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.

ARTISTS

Ala Leresteux, Alexandra Maciá, Alfie Greenwood, Alve Lagerkranz, Camille Belmin, Giorgio Aloatti, Jeremy Leresteux, Juliette Collas, Karolina Cykowska-Halczuk, Lou Huss, Maria Dębińska, Mauricio Franco Tosso, Ramona Gomez, Rininta Isdyani,
Tim van der Loo, Tom Lane, Xristina Sarli, Yelta Köm

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.

ecoSYNTH² operates as a values-based initiative grounded in human rights and ecological justice. It stands in solidarity with communities affected by war, military occupation, and forced displacement in all its forms—including Palestinians. The project works against ecocide and the erasure of lifeworlds. Understanding ecological work as inseparable from anti-colonial commitments, ecoSYNTH² seeks to address structural violence while creating space for collective knowledge-making.

FULL PROGRAMME 

Friday 30.01 

15:00-17:00 Papermaking Workshop — Tim van der Loo

17:00-18:00 TOP PRESENTS — Panel with Xristina Sarli, Alve Lagerkranz and Juliette Collas

18:00-20:00 Talks — Maria Dębińska, ECOSLAY, RAPSODICA

21:15-22:00 Desquamation — Expanded cinema performance by Tom Lane

22:00-00:00 Film Screenings — ecoSYNTH² PROGRAMME III & AWARDS

WORKSHOP

PAPERMAKING WORKSHOP (15:00-17:00)
Cancelled due to unforeseen health circumstances
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.

PANEL DISCUSSION & THE WRONG BIENNALE WALKTHROUGH—PRIMA MATERIA Pavilion (17:00-18:00)

TOP Lab presents a panel discussion followed by a guided walkthrough of the PRIMA MATERIA Pavilion at The Wrong Biennale.

The panel brings together Xristina Sarli, Alve Lagercrantz, and Juliette Collas to discuss community-run biolabs, citizen science, and artistic research. The conversation addresses ecology as an interdisciplinary science and explores how independent spaces operate as sites of knowledge production, experimentation, and resistance within Berlin’s cultural and technological ecosystems.

Following the panel, participants are invited to a curatorial walkthrough of the PRIMA MATERIA Pavilion, introducing the four interconnected spaces and selected works.

The PRIMA MATERIA Pavilion becomes a site of origin stories—both biological and machinic—where sacred matter, ancient gods, and synthetic minds blur into one continuum. Visitors enter an elemental ground zero where myth, biology, ecology, and computation intermingle to reimagine intelligence beyond the human. The pavilion unfolds across four interconnected spaces, each tracing a strand of more-than-human intelligence.

Works by:
AI, Alessandro Volpato, Alfie Greenwood, Alina Tofan, Alexandra Maciá, Alve Lagercranz, Andrea Bonfini / FADE OUT LABEL, Anna Maddalena Cingi, Arezou Ramezani, Benjamin Janzen, Christos Kourtidis, Cordyceps militaris, Emma Patmore, Emma Sicher, Enrico Dedin, Fomes fomentarius, Ganoderma applanatum, Ganoderma lucidum, Ganoderma sessile, Giorgio Alloatti, Helena Elston, Ivona Pelajic, Jan Klappenecker, Juliette Collas, Karin Weissenbrunner, Maria Dębińska, Maria Kobylenko, Markella Davu, Matteo Campulla, Mizuki Ishikawa, Mycelionaires, Mycohackers, Panellus stipticus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, Physarum polycephalum, Sharlene Durfey, Sigrid Savva, SYLIA, Tanja Vujinovic, Ulises Urra, Xristina Sarli, Yiou Wang.

🔗 Pavilion link:
https://thewrong.org/PrimaMateria

Curated by Xristina Sarli
In collaboration with TOP Lab
Berlin, Germany

TALKS

Composting Horror Barbie (18:00-19:00)
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

ECOSLAY (19:00-20:00)
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.

DOVES THE COLOR OF LEAD (20:00-20:30)
performative reading by Ramone Gomez

Ramona Gomez is an artist studying the cultural and historical significance of pigeons. For ecoSYNTH², she’ll be presenting her poetic sculptural work, Doves the Color of Lead

RAPSODICA (20:30-21:00)
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.

🔊

FILM SCREENINGS

ecoSYNTH² — PROGRAMME I · WAR AGAINST THE EARTH (140 min)
Playlist order 15:00–17:20

Dreams of the Past — Dmitri Frolov
PROLOG — Daniel Kuge
Shot on 9.5mm — Antonio Arango
FIRE! — Bruno Pavić
Our Day Will Come — Matteo Campulla
LA ESPIRAL DE LA CORRUPCIÓN NOS MANTIENE FLOTANDO (THE SPIRAL OF CORRUPTION KEEPS US FLOATING) — Mauricio Franco Tosso
echoes of Clayoquot Sound — Zoran Dragelj
THE MESSAGE — Bruno Pavić
Exit Through the Debt Shop (Full Movie) — Jan Schekauski
The Kittens’ Tea Party— MilleFeuille
A Weak & Panicked Animal — Jake Starr
2nd Day & the End of the World — Sara Koppel
Consider — Ж
LandBack — Magda Lampropoulou
We will definitely talk about this after the last air raid alert stops — Yuri Yefanov
succession — David Anthony Sant

ecoSYNTH² — PROGRAMME II · ECOLOGIES OF ATTENTION (150 min)
Playlist order: 17:30–21:00

Poetry for Strangers — Martin Krafft
Est-ce-là tout ? — Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu
Synthetic Forest — Jesed
Affordance — Jean-Michel Rolland
(a)live — Szabina Péter & Kristóf János Bodnár (blanche the vidiot)
Manifesto of Feeble and Bitter Love — Abinadi Meza
Being Here, Dreaming There — Péter Lichter
Silent Flowers and Other Signs — Tessa Ojala
Time Traces — Max Schleser
Reflections of the Invisible — Tina Šulc Resnik
The Human Memories of the Red Garden — Aytana Angela Ávila Vidalón
Fioritura — Raluca Croitoru and Elena Butică
Kami no Aika — Emilia Haar
Circadian Silence — Johannes Christopher Gerard and Natalie Launay
Ensoilment — Alina Tofan
The Memory of Matter — Sofie Santos
My body covered with a handful of Earth — Maria Plucińska
Lácrimas — Jeremy Moss
L’Acqua Xe Morta / The Water Is Dead — Benjamin Darville

ecoSYNTH² — PROGRAMME III · MORE-THAN-HUMAN (120 min)

Playlist order: 22:00–00:00
Roller — Pierre-Yves Clouin
Twiggly Twig — Katrin Hahner
There Is Magic in the Syllables Today — Edoardo Mulato
The Birds and I — José J. Martínez
Quadratura — Sara Bonaventura
Shubnoorah — Milan Zulic
Chasing Whales — La Fille Renne
When Flowers Dream of Us — Robert Minassian
INVISIBLE (La voz del bosque) — Rocío Wabizasui
KINESINTESI (2022) — Livia Ribichini
Memories for an Unstable Future — Sandrine Deumier
Preludio de un destello — Nicolás Onischuk
The Ghost of Creation — Matteo Campulla
Error_1 — Aram Karsi
SpringForth — Andrew Tamburrino
PHANTASIA — Jorge Moneo Quintana
The Stream XIV — Hiroya Sakurai
in the animal’s skin — Yuliya Tsviatkova
Night Will Never Come — Daniela Lucato
Yagoria — Alina Tofan, Plastic Art Performance Collective
TR333 — april forrest lin 林森
END — Rita Casdia

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