Reflexes & Reflections

Key Visual Reflexes & Reflections 2025

4-Day Focus at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, curated by Saba-Nur Cheema and Meron Mendel

Reflexes & Reflections 2026

Reflexes & Reflections 2026 will take place from 27 August to 30 August.

Save the date!

Impressions 2025

Reflexes & Reflections in the Media Library

On the future of debate culture: The videos of the second edition of “Reflexes & Reflections” with lectures, discussions and a late-night programme are available in the Media Library.

Visual Berliner Festspiele Mediathek

About Reflexes & Reflections

The “Reflexes & Reflections” theme days are a programme series organised by Berliner Festspiele. In times of increasing polarisation of social debates, it aims to create open and controversial spaces for discussion. “Reflexes & Reflections” brings together artistic and discursive positions to negotiate social problems and contentious issues.

More Berliner Festspiele

Black-and-white portrait of a man touching his eye with his right hand.

Exhibition

Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision

19 March to 28 June 2026

Working in New York City between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the onset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Peter Hujar captured a pivotal cultural moment in piercing black-and-white photographs. In the exhibition Persistence of Vision, Hujar’s photographs are interspersed with contemporary works by New York City-based artist Liz Deschenes, opening up an intergenerational dialogue on photography. 

Collage of three individuals perceived as female, whose faces are partially painted with colorful dots and collaged with floral motifs.

Performance

Leila Hekmat: Roses Rising – The Movement

6 and 7 March 2026

How does the bourgeois longing for revolt take shape, when the faith in progress and reason is unsettled? Berlin-based artist and director Leila Hekmat explores this question in her newly commissioned performance Roses Rising – The Movement. Moving between concert and ballet, the piece transforms the space into a landscape hovering between bunker, rehearsal room and dreamscape and invites the audience to witness a dinner party unravel into a happening.