The artist collective Para explores speculative futures that will already have passed, opening up a space that allows us to see the present through a new lens. Performances by the group investigate the ruins of financial speculation; question social inequality; hold the summit of Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze, ›hostage‹ in a museum to facilitate the return of the summit of Kilimanjaro, which German colonial geographer Hans Meyer absconded with in 1889. Para’s group exhibition ›Orangery of Care‹ is set to open at nGbK—neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst in the context of Berlin Art Week. In a conversation with Carolin Schmidt, Para’s Lina Brion and Amelie Neumann discuss the limits of regenerative activity, the colonial history of plants, and the transformative possibilities of care practices.

Since 2016, Alya Sebti has been artistic director of ifa-Galerie Berlin, which she now co-runs with Inka Gressel. With the ongoing project ›Untie to Tie‹, she has established a multidisciplinary and far-reaching research programme to investigate the colonial structures of the everyday. We meet Sebti, who in 2020 also co-curated Manifesta 13 in Marseille and who is currently part of the curatorial team for the forthcoming São Paulo Biennial 2025, in a café in Berlin-Mitte to discuss the forthcoming show during Berlin Art Week, modes of collaboration, infrastructural thinking—and questions of beauty.

The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program is one of the world’s most respected and prestigious residency programmes for established artists. For over five decades, it has played a pivotal role in Berlin’s emergence as a leading international art centre, and yet the history of this institution has remained relatively unexplored. A major research project, accompanied by three exhibitions at different institutions, seeks to rectify this. A conversation with art historian and curator Nóra Lukács and Melanie Roumiguière, Head of the Visual Arts Division at the DAAD—both of whom have been instrumental in organising these exhibitions—on their research, an often-challenging history, and lessons learned.

A stroll at Schlachtensee with Lisa Marei Schmidt (Brücke-Museum), Anna Gritz (Haus am Waldsee), and Kathleen Reinhardt (Georg Kolbe Museum)—exploring contemporary perspectives on a difficult legacy, the potential in the histories of their institutions, and the garden as a place where everyone gets together