Berlin Atonal 2025 : The landmark festival reopens Kraftwerk Berlin with total‑format performances, immersive art, and its first edition as a recognised biennial.
Berlin Atonal 2025 marks its first edition as a member of the International Biennial Association, affirming its position as one of the world’s leading platforms for experimental, interdisciplinary, and non‑commercial sonic art. With this official status, the festival strengthens its ambition to become the foremost music‑first biennial for contemporary art and sound.
Expanded Music Programme Across Monumental Spaces
From August 27 to 31, the festival takes place at Kraftwerk Berlin, Tresor, and OHM. The cavernous main stage—encompassing 70,000 m³—hosts “total‑format performances” that merge sound, haze, visuals, and audiences into an immersive experiment.
Highlights include new commissions and premieres from Merzbow × Iggor Cavalera × Eraldo Bernocchi; Amnesia Scanner × Freeka.tet (S.L.O.T.H.); Djrum’s beatless exploration with custom-built instruments; Lord Spikeheart & NMR’s REIGN; Lee Ranaldo × Yonatan Gat × Peder Mannerfeld; Puce Mary × Rainy Miller’s GRIEND; Billy Bultheel’s A Short History of Decay: The Fugue State; Jokkoo Collective’s Organic Intelligence; Bendik Giske × Barker; emptyset’s dissever; Heith’s Escape Lounge; and the collaboration between Okkyung Lee & Mark Fell.
August 28 (Thursday)
A night of improvisation and world premieres. Lee Ranaldo, Peder Mannerfelt, and Yonatan Gat unite for a spontaneous live collaboration. Bendik Giske & Barker debut their saxophone-electronics duo project. Carmen Villain presents new dub-inspired works with Norwegian instrumentalists. London-based vocal collective NYX explores the human voice in the raw Kraftwerk space. Experimental sets from Ghosted, Mouth Wound, Lamb K305, and TYGAPAW round out a diverse lineup.
August 29 (Friday)
Lord Spikeheart with NMR present REIGN, an audiovisual exploration of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion, blending industrial metal and African rhythms. GRIEND (Puce Mary & Rainy Miller) offer a charged post-drone performance. John T. Gast debuts Petrols, a personal, improvisational sonic journey. Billy Bultheel premieres A Short History of Decay II: The Fugue State, combining music and sculpture. bela unveils Korean Love Sonnets, a textured vocal work. Live sets include intense performances by YHWH Nailgun, raw techno from St. Agnis, precise live rhythms by Civic Instruction (Hadone & UFO95), and an exclusive sound documentary by Rashad Becker. DJ Marcelle delivers inventive mixes.
August 30 (Saturday)
Amnesia Scanner & Freeka.tet premiere their immersive new work S.L.O.T.H., blending sharp beats with grotesque visuals, while DJ E delivers an intense set mixing traditional Aymara rhythms with noise and synths. Lechuga Zafiro & Verraco present Hyperverbena, a dynamic fusion of DJing and live electronics, and Mark Fell & Okkyung Lee offer a rare collaboration of cello improvisation and computer-generated sounds. The free-spirited live set of Gombeen & Doygen, the ethereal introspection of Sofii, the warm ambient techno of Purelink, the melodic blend of classical and electronic music by Kettel, and Nina Garcia’s precise electric guitar performance round out the program. The night closes with everything upful (Gavsborg feat. Kat 7, Tóke & groundsound), combining diasporic rhythms, dancehall, dub, and live vocal improvisation in a vibrant show.
August 31 (Sunday)
Merzbow, Iggor Cavalera & Eraldo Bernocchi premiere a powerful fusion of noise, metal, and experimental sound, blending decades of genre-defining expertise. Niecy Blues delivers a hypnotic live set combining vocals, electronics, and improvisation. Heith debuts Escape Lounge, a multi-sensory performance mixing organic instruments with digital textures, accompanied by visual and lighting art. Jokkoo Collective presents Organic Intelligence, an audiovisual journey blending African electronic sounds with ecological and cultural themes. Topdown Dialectic offers a mysterious, glitch-infused electronic set focused purely on sound experience. Finally, Tikiman & Arthur collaborate on a deep dubwise, bass-heavy techno meditation, merging vocal and club culture traditions.
Third Surface: A Speculative Model for Nightlife and Art
The festival’s art counterpart, Third Surface, transforms a corner of Kraftwerk into an experimental, socially charged environment echoing Weimar-era night venues. This hybrid exhibition foregrounds interaction and improvisation through sculptural performance, sound, moving image, textiles, sculpture, works on paper, and even video‑game installations. Featured artists include Kristoffer Akselbo (Barracuda), Joanna Rajkowska (Emergency Light), Roberto Cuoghi, Mouneer Al Shaarani, Steinar Haga Kristensen, Tot Onyx, Ran Zhang, and others. Simultaneously, PAN curates a Listening Room in the Kraftwerk control room with soundtracks by Anne Imhof, Jenna Sutela, Mohamed Bourouissa (LILA), Cyprien Gaillard (Retinal Rivalry), and Jeremy Shaw (Phase Shifting Index).
Kristoffer Akselbo
A Danish artist known for sculptural performances exposing the banal and absurd in daily life. His project Barracuda features a solitary man tending a hydroponic garden under UV lights, enclosed by a simple fence and hut.
Nino Bulling
Works across comics, textiles, and publishing exploring political violence, sex, and gender. For Third Surface, presents work inspired by Pasolini’s Le ceneri di Gramsci, focusing on the emotional language of pressure.
Roberto Cuoghi
An enigmatic Italian artist working in painting, sculpture, animation, and sound. His contribution features slogan-based image designs revisited with disenchantment to allow multiple interpretations.
Steinar Haga Kristensen
Works across painting, sculpture, performance, and exhibition architecture to explore image, authorship, and recognition. Contributes three large-scale pieces addressing interior and exterior spaces, including a video game installation.
Tanja Al Kayyali
Based in Berlin, uses traditional Palestinian embroidery (Tatreez) in large-scale installations that confront architectural space. Her work is informed by her heritage and experience in refugee camps.
Bill Kouligas
Sound artist collaborating with architects to create Limbus, a spatial audio environment structured around his new sound work, exploring nocturnal time and emotional states.
Billy Bultheel
Performance project exploring collapse as sonic and political condition. Features a monumental tower installation with music and speech fragments reflecting survival and enchantment amid ruins.
Joanna Rajkowska
Polish artist engaging with historical memory and political trauma. Emergency Lights installation features a giant emergency light warning about the downward spiral of the world.
Mouneer Al Shaarani
Syrian calligrapher and typographer whose politically charged poster campaign against military repression from 1977 is reproduced for Third Surface. His work combines archival images, silkscreen, and custom typography.
Tot Onyx
Tokyo-born Berlin-based sound artist focusing on metal objects and bodily presence. Presents a performance with actors in police uniforms reflecting on the irony of numerical identification in state violence.
Ran Zhang
Artist working between Rotterdam and Berlin combining micrographs of chicken skin with political graffiti. Explores biological vulnerability alongside suppressed political urgency.
Listening Room: Reimagining the Soundtrack
PAN hosts a daily listening session in Kraftwerk’s control room, featuring works from its ENTOPIA series. These compositions—by artists such as Cyprien Gaillard, Jenna Sutela, Anne Imhof, Mohamed Bourouissa, and Jeremy Shaw—treat sound not as background, but as a central, structuring force. Each piece conjures a distinct sonic world, expanding the concept of what a soundtrack can be.
Screening Program: Resistance in Moving Image
Co-curated by DEMO MOVING IMAGE and supported by the Italian Council, the screening series presents one film per night, highlighting experimental works that confront colonial legacies, state violence, and collective memory. From Kamal Aljafari’s counter-archival A Fidai Film to Nelson Makengo’s meditative Rising Up At Night, the program offers cinematic strategies for imagining liberated futures.
Basma Al-Sharif: O, Persecuted (2014, 11”)
Creates a filmic performance from restoring a 1974 Palestinian militant film, framing restoration as a physical, historical, and cinematic act.
O, Persecuted emphasizes the embodied passage of time and history through film restoration.
Ben Russell & Guillaume Cailleau: Direct Action (2024, 221”)
Document the post-resistance life of the ZAD activist community in France, focusing on ecological protest and state violence.
Direct Action offers an immersive and hypnotic portrait of a collective political movement envisioning a better future.
Kamal Aljafari: A Fidai Film (2024, 78”)
Innovative Palestinian filmmaker who reclaims looted Palestinian archives to construct a cinematic counter-archive.
A Fidai Film meditates on displacement, resistance, and the politics of appropriation through historical fragments.ㅌ
Noor Abed: A Night We Held Between (2024, 30”) our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021, 20”)
Combines sonic and visual elements to evoke Palestinian history and folklore, emphasizing land and collective memory.
Works like A Night We Held Between and our songs were ready for all wars to come reclaim erased stories and communities.
Nelson Makengo: Rising Up At Night (2024, 95”)
Portrays Kinshasa’s blackout condition amid power plant construction, capturing residents’ endurance and faith.
Rising Up At Night reveals the city’s nocturnal struggles and resilience beyond electric illumination.
Club Nights Activate Tresor, Globus and OHM
Across five nights, Berlin Atonal activates club floors at Tresor, Globus, and OHM. The lineup spans boundary‑pushing selectors like Lil Mofo, livwutang, STILL, and TNTC, alongside legend‑level artists Rrose, Pinch, and Calibre. Special back‑to‑back moments include Vlada with Skee Mask, re:ni with Mia Koden, Moritz von Oswald b2b Azu Tiwaline, and a rare triple B2B featuring Anthony Linell, DJ Red, and Neel.
MORE INFO ON BERLIN ATONAL
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Our next event : TRESOR – Berlin – 18.09.2025 – get pre-sale tix
