A smartphone filming a computer monitor: in Simona Andrioletti’s video “Defence. What do you do with your anger?”, the camera is turned on other people’s bodies for a second time. Who is watching here – and from what distance? The work is part of the forthcoming film programme at the Berlinische Galerie.
The programme’s announcement can be read alongside two forthcoming exhibitions in Basel and Vienna. The three projects begin where the body becomes a mediated image, an artificial counterpart or a field of research. In doing so, they also bring viewers and their perceptions into focus.
Berlin: Who is holding the camera?
Creamcake’s 3hd film programme “Beyond Imagining” opens on 29 October 2026 at the Berlinische Galerie; it runs in the IBB video room from 30 October to 30 November. Works by Sara Sadik, Simona Andrioletti, Simone C Niquille and Vika Kirchenbauer have been announced, also available online on 3hdTV.
Andrioletti edits together found footage in which people resist harassment. In her account, filming it again with a smartphone deliberately repeats the voyeuristic gaze. Alongside the suffering depicted, this also calls into question the position of those who record rather than intervene. Niquille’s “The Fragility of Life” follows a Hillary Clinton lookalike in the run-up to the 2016 US election. Here, physical resemblance raises the question of who can control an image in circulation.
Basel: Screens as bodies
Kunsthalle Basel’s autumn announcement gives the dates for Özgür Kar’s “Rock Bottom” as 30 October 2026 to 24 January 2027. His first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland is set to unfold across several rooms as a new theatre production.
Kar treats video as a sculptural medium: the screen is not merely a carrier for a sequence of images, but an object in space. In “DAWN” from 2023, black-and-white skeletal figures appear on tall screens; recurring scenes come together in a multipart soundscape. The work’s documentation identifies references to the medieval dance of death and existentialist monologues. For Basel, the institution has announced new figures, along with a script and score by the artist. It will be interesting to see what relationship develops between the isolated screen beings and the visitors who can move among them.
Vienna: A body is not alone
“Inter Acting Buggy Worlds” by Mel e Logan opens on 4 November 2026. From 5 November to 7 January 2027, the exhibition will be on view in the Sala Terrena of the University Gallery of the University of Applied Arts Vienna at Vienna’s Heiligenkreuzerhof, staircase 7, ground floor.
According to the university, bodily fluids and acoustic activation form the starting point. Logan brings together collaborative paintings, video projections and interactive sound sculptures; participants include Sonja Bäumel, Charlotte Jarvis and Barbis Ruder. The announcement places the project in the tradition of scientifically inspired art of the early 20th century. Unlike in Berlin, the focus here is less on the image of an individual than on the body and its microbial dependencies. Whether scientific processes become comprehensible or primarily give rise to associations remains to be tested against the works themselves.
Herein lies a possible strength of this juxtaposition: digital distance and physical proximity would not be simple opposites. Instead, it would become possible to ask more precisely what kind of relationship a camera, a screen or a sound makes possible in the first place.
Original reviewed by the editors · 25 October 2026
