Metaxy

Wars, conflicts, and environmental disasters are destroying cities and living spaces around the world. Reconstruction is an urgent task. Millions of people need shelter, space, and safety. Yet all too often, reconstruction is treated as a technical project—a quick return to order, a supposed “zero hour,” and an opportunity for investment and innovation. In the process, there is a risk of losing sight of who decides how it is shaped and in whose interest.

“Metaxy: Zwischen” addresses precisely this issue. This exhibition, event, and educational project focuses on the period between destruction and reconstruction—that uncertain moment when it remains to be seen how societies will deal with loss, guilt, and memory. Before construction begins, questions must be answered: Who is allowed to return? Who owns the land? What story will be told? If these questions are suppressed, violence continues in other forms—through exclusion, erasure, and new power dynamics.

For the Academy of Arts, the exhibition is linked to a self-examination of its location in the Hansaviertel as a historic site of post-1945 reconstruction. At the same time, it opens up a global perspective featuring artists and spatial practitioners who develop their work from those liminal states caused by war, conflict, and ecological disasters.

The three thematic areas that structure the exhibition—Houses, Floors, and Times—are reflected in the discursive and performative program of events, which features symposia on these topics. To this end, a venue will be set up in the exhibition halls to host artist talks, film screenings, performances, and staged readings. Part of the curatorial dramaturgy consists of performative-musical miniatures conceived as “interludes,” which take place both in the event space and throughout the exhibition halls. They intervene in ongoing situations, interrupt them, shift perspectives, and connect different levels of the exhibition with one another. An extensive educational program accompanies the project.

Opening: September 9, 2026, 6:30 p.m.
Speakers: Manos Tsangaris, Regine Keller, Dr. Michael Helbig

Curatorial Team: Anh-Linh Ngo, Johanna M. Keller, Christian Hiller, Felix Hofmann, Markus Krieger, Daniel Kuhnert, Melissa Makele