OPEN CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS AROUND PAPIERSTRASSE!

Poetics of Resistance invites artists to develop context-specific interventions in the everyday life around Papierstraße. We are looking for works that engage with the public realm as a field of experience, negotiation, unexpected beauty and potential subversion. Inspired by our approach to the poetics of resistance, interventions should explore the tactical and insurgent potential of artistic action: gestures that provoke reflection, open new meanings, and create moments of social and spatial imagination.

The interventions will take place as part of the Insertions public program from 18 to 25 July 2026, offering an opportunity to engage with a diverse public in the surroundings of a particular street in Berlin. Papierstraße is a site of many encounters: a short street at the border between Wedding, Reinickendorf and Pankow, surrounded by gardens, vacant lots, and light industry in a working-class, migrant residential neighborhood. Artists are encouraged to work with irony and metaphor, playful provocation, subtle disruption, and performative ambiguity, creating effects that ripple through everyday routines and social circuits.

Selected artists will receive a material budget of 300 Euros and an honorary of 600 Euros, and can use the space of Make-up e.V. for research, production and rehearsal. Interventions may be performative and/or object-based, but should be developed for and with the street, and engage directly with social and environmental aspects of the neighborhood.

APPLICATION: due 20 April, 2026

HOW TO APPLY AND TIME SCHEDULE: Download PDF

CONTACT: If you have questions regarding the programme and the application, write to:
info@poetics-of-resistance.net

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.

T.B.A

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.

@ Project Space Festival? (tbc.)

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.

T.B.A

T.B.A

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.

How can art remain resistant when critique is continuously absorbed, neutralized, or repressed? How can artistic action work politically besides the conventions of opposition?

Talking Poetics of Resistance is a monthly reading and discussion group exploring artistic and theoretical positions situated between aesthetics and life. We focus on artistic languages that are rather metaphorical than didactic; subtle, precise, and humorous interventions that generate political resonance without collapsing into slogans.

Each session brings together collective reading, discussion, and artistic work. We read key passages, debate central arguments, and relate them to concrete practices. Guiding questions accompany us: What makes a practice resistant? How does aesthetic or poetic form operate politically? Where can we locate the poetics of resistance today?

To join this session and to access the reading material, go to
· "Talking Poetics of Resistance" on this website.