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Weekend Tips: What to Do This Weekend in Berlin
October 2 to 4, 2026: Events, festivals, exhibitions and more things to do for your perfect weekend in Berlin. more
Rafik Greiss – 'The City and the City'
“We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?”
– Chris Marker
Working across film, photography, and sculpture, Egyptian artist Rafik Greiss (b. 1997, IE) considers time not as a linear movement from past to present but as something composed of fragments – moments that accumulate, dissolve, and may unexpectedly resurface as sensation or afterimage. Spanning digital and analog processes, his practice moves between the distant and the proximal at once, reflecting more broadly on transformation, memory, and the shifting states of images and objects.
At the center of The City and the City, Greiss’s first institutional solo exhibition, is the artist's newly commissioned film of the same title. Conceived as a cinematic essay, the work follows enigmatic figures inhabiting vast desert landscapes, watching and waiting for something that seems yet to happen. Time stretches around the possibility of an event that may never occur, and seemingly empty scenery becomes charged with anticipation. The expectancy of the characters becomes a kind of labor – repeated, prolonged, and without resolution – while vigilance turns into a way of inhabiting territory. The film’s soundtrack, composed by musician 7038634357, carries the film’s atmosphere beyond the screen and into the exhibition space. Also presented is a series of black-and-white photographs by Greiss, depicting artifacts, objects, and emptied places detached from their original contexts – fragments of sites and events that cannot quite be recovered.
Withholding geographical and historical markers, Greiss shifts attention from interpretation toward experience, leaving room for us to shape how the images might be understood. In his oeuvre, memory hovers at the edge of consciousness, shaped by what is seen and half-remembered, suspended between personal recollection and collective history.
– Chris Marker
Working across film, photography, and sculpture, Egyptian artist Rafik Greiss (b. 1997, IE) considers time not as a linear movement from past to present but as something composed of fragments – moments that accumulate, dissolve, and may unexpectedly resurface as sensation or afterimage. Spanning digital and analog processes, his practice moves between the distant and the proximal at once, reflecting more broadly on transformation, memory, and the shifting states of images and objects.
At the center of The City and the City, Greiss’s first institutional solo exhibition, is the artist's newly commissioned film of the same title. Conceived as a cinematic essay, the work follows enigmatic figures inhabiting vast desert landscapes, watching and waiting for something that seems yet to happen. Time stretches around the possibility of an event that may never occur, and seemingly empty scenery becomes charged with anticipation. The expectancy of the characters becomes a kind of labor – repeated, prolonged, and without resolution – while vigilance turns into a way of inhabiting territory. The film’s soundtrack, composed by musician 7038634357, carries the film’s atmosphere beyond the screen and into the exhibition space. Also presented is a series of black-and-white photographs by Greiss, depicting artifacts, objects, and emptied places detached from their original contexts – fragments of sites and events that cannot quite be recovered.
Withholding geographical and historical markers, Greiss shifts attention from interpretation toward experience, leaving room for us to shape how the images might be understood. In his oeuvre, memory hovers at the edge of consciousness, shaped by what is seen and half-remembered, suspended between personal recollection and collective history.
Runtime: Sat, 17/10/2026 to Sun, 10/01/2027
Price info: Berlin Welcome Card holders 6,00 €
Tickets can only be purchased on site and with card payment.
Price: €10.00
Reduced price: €6.00
Reduced price info: Berlin Welcome Card holders 4,50 €
Free admission to visitors up to and including 18, Friends of KW and Berlin Biennale, and KW Lover* cardholders, Berechtigungsnachweis holders (former berlinpass), Recipients of ALG II, students of Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and Universität der Künste Berlin, ICOM Members and Museumsbund Members
Tickets can only be purchased on site and with card payment.
Price: €10.00
Reduced price: €6.00
Reduced price info: Berlin Welcome Card holders 4,50 €
Free admission to visitors up to and including 18, Friends of KW and Berlin Biennale, and KW Lover* cardholders, Berechtigungsnachweis holders (former berlinpass), Recipients of ALG II, students of Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and Universität der Künste Berlin, ICOM Members and Museumsbund Members
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