Berlin Art Week x KW Institute for Contemporary Art: Performance LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander) 'soft thought'

Open format (drop-in / drop-out)

For the Kyiv Biennial's closing weekend, the Berlin-based artist duo LABOUR – Farahnaz Hatam (b. Tehran) and Colin Hacklander (b. Minneapolis) – present soft thought, a newly commissioned performance. Rooted in Berlin's electronic and experimental music scene, their interdisciplinary practice operates at the intersection of sound, performance, and spatial composition.

Taking its title both from the everyday expression soft thought – an intuitive and tender  way of approaching an idea – and from scholars Luciana Parisi and Stamatia Portanova’s eponymous essay (2011), the work explores a mode of thinking that foregrounds openness, possibility, and relational fluidity. At a moment when realities feel increasingly fractured by political and social tensions, the work explores listening as a way of inhabiting uncertainty together. Lasting four hours, the multi-performer piece has no fixed beginning or end. Instead, it remains in continuous flux, as percussion, spatialized sound, ecstatic dance, intimate conversations, moving image, and live acts emerge, dissolve, and reconfigure throughout the evening.

Spanning KW's entire building – from the attic and stairwells to the exhibition spaces – the large-scale composition unfolds across multiple sites. The work moves between the spatial motifs of the line and the circle, as simultaneous events unfold within the exhibition’s main hall before dispersing throughout the house. The recurring dramaturgy invites audiences to move through the work rather than observe it from a fixed point of view.

Price info: Free Admission. No pre-registration necessary.

Next date:

• Date Saturday, 12/September/2026 20:00 bis 23:55
• Venue KW - Institute for Contemporary Art
• Address Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin-Mitte