Trauma

In the 20th century, you had to seek out art to experience it. Today, art seeks you—through the feed, in between videos of a DJ, a choreographer, an Unreal engine worldbuilder, a filmmaker, a Bulgarian choir, a media theory podcaster, and an underground magazine publisher. Today, art’s discourse is more likely to take place in a group chat or meme page than it is in a print journal, and an art scene is more likely to gather at a nightclub than it is at a gallery. 

Traditional art institutions are unequipped for this new paradigm, but Trauma is not. Trauma is an arts organization for art as it is now. 

Trauma is a substrate for new culture, providing infrastructure for site-specific interventions aggregating visual art, media, performance and music. Trauma acts as curator or collaborator, antagonist or institution, depending on need and context. Trauma is also a network of social relations, channeling the shared vision of the distributed swarms that assemble at its events. Trauma is IRL, maintaining a base in Berlin with studios for its artists-in-residence. 

In 2018, Trauma opened as Trauma Bar und Kino in an old commercial block on Heidestraße near Berlin’s central station. The venue was conceived by artist Adrian Ghenie, who imagined a labyrinthine layout of rooms, platforms, vitrines, and a cinema that could be continually rearranged, repurposed, and rebuilt. This fluid approach to the architecture, in turn, shaped Trauma programming. Here, unexpected arrangements of diverse creative practices could collide during events lasting through the night. 

Over time, Trauma has developed a novel curatorial vision fortified by full-stack production. A rising generation of multi-modal artists found Trauma to be an ideal partner—especially when realizing unorthodox (or virtual) artworks as collective, embodied, ecstatic experiences. Increasingly, the ideas started exceeding the parameters of the bar and kino. So in December 2024, after nearly seven years of pioneering shows and concept-driven music nights, Trauma departed its static location to expand its possibilities. 

In 2025, Trauma became a non-profit gGmbH, instantiating acts of immediate art in Berlin and the world. Trauma is now everywhere.