The Paris Biennale in Berlin
Translation: There is nothing to see here.
The Paris Biennale in Berlin is a project by the Donbat Institute, developed in connection with the Biennale de Paris. It takes as its starting point the strained economic situation of Berlin’s art scene and seeks to respond through a situated, progressive and experimental form.
The project is currently in a phase of research, meetings and structuring. Initial exchanges have taken place with Annette Maechtel at the Akademie der Künste, SAVVY Contemporary, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Haus am Lützowplatz, Galerie gr_nd, IFSE, bbk berlin, the Berlin Biennale, UdK — Kunst im Kontext, Kommunale Galerien Berlin, Z/KU and Dr Ingrid Wagner, former deputy director in the Berlin Senate’s Department for Culture.
These conversations have brought several central issues to the fore: the increasing precarisation of artistic labour, the fragility of cultural infrastructures, the economic pressure affecting venues and artists, the growing dependence on public funding or the market, and the need to invent new models of production, cooperation and visibility.
The biennale has already begun. The meetings, preliminary communications, contacts, discussions, research, journeys, negotiations and networks being formed are not merely preparations for a future event: they constitute its first manifestations.
The project was never conceived as a one-off exhibition. It is being built through the situations encountered, the imbalances identified, the people brought into contact and the actions made possible. The public moment will therefore be a culmination rather than a final endpoint: a period of intensification during which the research, alliances, proposals and experiments will become more visible, shareable and open to discussion. The project will continue through the effects, extensions, forms of transmission and new possibilities it enables.
One of its central lines of inquiry concerns invisual art. Art is not limited to visible or exhibitable objects. It may take the form of situations, relationships, processes, economic gestures, social arrangements, research, organisational methods or forms of cooperation. This approach makes it possible to question the place of art in a context marked by fragile working conditions and by the difficulty of sustaining independent practices.
The project follows the Donbat method: detecting an imbalance, analysing its context, devising a proportionate response and transforming that response into a transmissible experience. Here, the imbalance concerns the economic, social and symbolic conditions of artistic production in Berlin.
The Paris Biennale in Berlin is therefore not intended solely as a critical commentary on precarisation. It experiments with other ways of producing a biennale: not as a simple programme, selection or showcase, but as a platform for research, dialogue, support and transformation.
It operates simultaneously as an investigation, an intervention and a process of transmission. It examines the economic conditions of art while developing concrete responses: meetings, alliances, support formats, visibility arrangements, shared-resource tools, public discussions and para-economic experiments.
The project is also connected to the international programme of the Biennale de Paris in Tunis, planned for October 2026, under the theme Unvisual Art as a Driver of Creativity for Developing One’s Own Economic Models. This connection makes it possible to approach Berlin as a field of research and experimentation in dialogue with other international contexts.
A first synthesis document has been developed from the preparatory work. It brings together observations concerning Berlin’s art scene and outlines possible lines of reflection. It is not a definitive programme, but a basis for discussion with potential partners.
Economic Situation of the Berlin Art Scene
Graphic design: Ralf Porzel