-
Jan 30, 2025 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Born 1979 in the English town of Hexham, Pete Doherty is a musician, poet and visual artist best known as the frontman of The Libertines and Babyshambles. A defining figure of the early 2000s indie rock scene, Doherty gained a devoted following for his poetic lyrics, raw performances and magnetic presence.
-
Jan 28, 2025 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the body behind the Neue Nationalgalerie, must have been dreading the opening night of Nan Goldin’s latest exhibition, cursing museum director Klaus Biesenbach for programming a show with the world’s most celebrated photographer – who just happens to be one of the fiercest advocates for the plight of Palestine. She didn’t hold back.
-
Jan 22, 2025 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
“We’re so limited in our capacity to translate these experiences to one another”Phase Shifting Index is an immersive seven-channel video installation by the Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw, now on view at Hamburger Bahnhof as part of the group exhibition ‘Museum in Motion. The installation features seven distinct subcultures, each captured exploring variations of modern dance, with costumes and choreography that evoke historical footage from the 1960s to the 1990s.
-
Jan 17, 2025 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Covering the visual arts in a city like Berlin has its undoubted perks: travelling all around the city, a sense of purpose, press-conference croissants. But there’s also an almighty drawback and that’s the constant, unrelenting drip of events. Every day, messages and emails fizz into my inbox with reminders to attend openings, performances and other happenings; occasionally embossed invitations are pushed aggressively through my letterbox.
-
Jan 13, 2025 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
As the son of an antiquarian art book seller, you’d think I’d love hanging out in art bookshops, flipping through the oversized tomes, nodding to other literary-minded Berliners as we sift through catalogues, monographs and all the inventive oddities that constitute artist books. But the truth is I tend to avoid them.
-
Dec 10, 2024 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Pumping up water from transparent cisterns, four lo-fi rain machines sporadically turn on to let the water patter down into terracotta bowls. Arranged in layered tiers, these vessels wait for rain like great gaping mouths. And when it finally comes, it’s a release, splashing over the bowls and drizzling onto the floor. Over time those unglazed pots will crack and disintegrate, leaching sediment back into the water.
-
Dec 2, 2024 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
In its attempt to explore the art and cultural legacies of the DDR and its international alliances, this meagre, poorly-conceived exhibition offers only a shallow, truncated view of what could do with a deeper, meatier examination. Leave this field empty if you're human: It begins with a vitrine dedicated to the historic design fair, Intergrafik, before jumping into Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya’s commemoration of his late wife, who died by suicide.
-
Nov 26, 2024 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Everyone has at one time been cornered at a party by that veteran Berliner who can’t stop banging on about how great the 90s were. Back then, they’ll say, Berlin was so cheap, people could afford to have a different apartment for every day of the week and techno parties would go on for three days straight, with Bowie and Hasselhoff manning the turntables.
-
Nov 21, 2024 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean-born artist and filmmaker based in the US, whose work explores socio-political issues, and focuses on human rights, conflict and power structures. He is known for his public interventions and thought-provoking installations that challenge viewers to confront uncomfortable truths. His latest site-specific work, The End of the World, reflects on the long-term effects of large-scale mining of metals and the struggle for resources on our ailing planet.
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
the-berliner.com | Duncan Ballantyne-Way
Earlier this summer, the brand-new project space GROTTO offered free vegan ice cream to all visitors over a 24-hour period. The goal was to spark an exchange between the performers serving the ice cream and the guests. “Everything was going smoothly until we ran out of ice cream,” recalls co-founder Leonie Herweg.
