Dissident Paths

When does walking become a refusal, a reclaiming, a reimagining? What stories does the city whisper when you move through it at different paces? What forms of knowledge emerge when we walk together, rather than alone?

Dissident Paths unfolded across one year in Berlin as a curatorial project that takes collective movement as both method and material. Walking here is a way of working collectively between people and places: a response to a cultural landscape in which institutional space is shrinking, access is tightening, and the urgency to gather requires invention. Curated and organised by seven curators in collaboration with numerous creatives, the project has become like a rhizomatic network in motion. As Clementine Butler-Gallie, describes it, “walking became a response to this; a refusal of it by creating a space in itself, one that is flexible, one that can shapeshift”. Rather than asking how to fit into existing infrastructures, Dissident Paths asks what happens when the curatorial framework itself moves.

Conceived for nGbK, the project consists of 23 walks that took place between May and October 2025 across five chapters titled PATHS. Led by artists, poets, theorists, architects, and urban practitioners, these walks extend into performances, readings, workshops, foraging, sound interventions, children’s activities, and gatherings. Clementine remembers that: “the walks traversed many unexpected areas of the city, like tunnels, harbours, rooftops, playgrounds, even a public bathroom. We also went around the museum rather than inside the museum.” Thus, the city becomes exhibition architecture; its overlooked spaces become sites of encounter.

From the outset, the project was framed as research. “At the beginning we called it a research project,” says Luise Leon Elbern, “asking how far we can go, if it is possible to explore the city differently and what kind of space does the city hold for us as an artistic space.” This research is not abstract. It responds to lived urgency as Bengisu Çağlayan notes. The word dissident in the title is not rhetorical; it describes a position taken in relation to the city’s cultural and political climate.

The project also grows out of existing collective initiatives. “Our departure point comes from our shared practices as curators in the form of Cruising Curators and Rerouting,” Clementine continues and Raphael Daibert adds, “Both initiatives are very much about being in contact with the public space, with the spontaneous and ephemeral encounters they create.” In this sense, movement becomes many things at once: a refusal of institutional limitation, a way to gather publics, a way to access the city differently, a way to hold process instead of product, a way to practice care, attention, and collectivity, and a way to create temporary, mobile, informal spaces. 

This approach is inseparable from Berlin itself. Asked about the common narrative that the city has lost its experimental energy, Raphael reflects, “one beautiful thing about the walks was to re-engage with the city, with what the city has the most to offer, public space, green areas…” At the same time, Bengisu recalls how institutions once offered free space to artists and self-organizing initiatives during off seasons: “Funding cuts have closed that possibility, and the scene has hardened around a centre. A walk program around the city has been our attempt to push back against the tightening circle.”

The project also challenges habitual geographies. “The project was an invitation to bring people not just to Mitte but to neighbourhoods that aren’t frequented so regularly,” says Clementine. It is the intention of entering spaces that Dissident Paths highlights here. The understanding that once presence does something and that in turn spaces influence our bodies and movements. This operates as an intentional practice in which the walks do not guide or explain neighbourhoods; they create situations within them.

Working as a group of seven is described as an evolving methodology rather than a fixed structure. Raphael recalls “a constant process of building trust, of really building something together,” supported by a system of lead and supporting curators for each walk. Clementine notes, “no one has all skills, by being a group, we were able to understand what our skill sets were and then work together.” Duration becomes crucial here. As Luise says, “with a long term project, you can redefine or adapt to the mistakes you made before.” At the same time, Viviane Tabach points to the precarity behind this work: “this is very challenging because it makes certain work invisible too.” A challenge that especially independent practices face, in which the process is often not compensated while crucial to the project. This is something Dissident Paths has achieved, integrating the process into the project in order to make it visible and accountable. 

Having set a framework in which the group collaborated with so many others, the walks themselves demonstrated the range of what this method can hold. Around the Humboldt Forum, one walk became a ritual: “with Suelen Calonga we did seven rounds counter clock around the museum, to cast a counter spell” (Raphael). At Westhafen, another walk with Nour Sokhon required improvisation: “we were trespassing and so had to reroute” (Clementine). On a playground, children built a dragon that ate trash with artist Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, showing how connection can arise through making rather than discussion that showed how to: “connect people when you don’t try to overly intellectualise but through building something” (Luise). In Brandenburg, a mushroom foraging walk with Gabriel Lemos shifted attention to silence: “another way of seeing aspects of nature and like this more than human” (Viviane). And through live drawing, “artist Natthapong Samakkaew produced maybe 200 pieces during a series of walks”, (Bengisu) instead of photographs, capturing what could not be recorded.

This leads directly to the question of TRACE. From the beginning, the curators asked themselves, as Clementine puts it, “how to document in motion experiences or ephemeral experiences.” Photography only was deemed insufficient, so artists were invited to trace their walk beyond the usual. These collected traces will be shared during a three-day gathering at nGbK on February 26th–28th and in the publication Walk Notations, but this is not conceived as a conclusion. As Luise explains, it is “not a wrap-up but more like a trace that also links to the present and opens a path to the future.” A clear boundary is articulated by Viviane: “what happened there happened there.” This position is affirmed in the idea that untraceability is completely fine. What remains is not evidence but continuation. 

Although this interaction of Dissident Paths concludes, the methodology does not. “It was really like an opening of paths and we definitely don’t see them as being a concluded pathway,” says Clementine. Raphael imagines taking this approach elsewhere: “how to replicate this in other places?” The final note returns to the beginning: “our methodology of walking together allowed for a start of that. It definitely doesn’t answer it, but it was a start”, concludes Clementine.

What Dissident Paths has shown is that process can become the project itself without being a gimmick but with a serious intention of opening spaces we often take for granted. Berlin still very much has spaces – public and institutional – that we can and should use. Maybe we became lazy? These seven curators have shown us that bringing together their own stories in conversation with collaborators and spaces can be deep, fun, intentional, exciting and mostly a moment of connecting with a city that also is a living entity of which we are all part of. 

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https://ngbk.de/en/programm/programm/dissident-paths-traces 

ContributorsYasmeen Al-Qaisi, Elena Biserna, Mirja Busch, Rüzgâr Buşki, Suelen Calonga, Saverio Cantoni & Noah Gokul & Lo Moran & Iz Paehr, Gabriel Francisco Lemos, Carolin Genz, Jane Hwang, Mahshid Mahboubifar, Pol Merchan & Sarah Martinus, Harun Morrison, Pitchaya Ngamcharoen, Marlene Oeken & Martha Schwindling, Minh Duc Pham, Liz Rosenfeld, Natthapong Samakkaew, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, Nour Sokhon, Lauryn Youden, Alternative Monument, hand breast heart kollektiv, House’ it going? (Laura Margarete Bertelt & Uli Kneisl), Project In/Visibility (Samirah Siddiqui & Tasnim Elboute), ssssSssssssss (Ashkan Sepahvand & virgil b/g taylor)

nGbK work groupClementine Butler-Gallie, Bengisu Çağlayan, Raphael Daibert, Luise Leon Elbern, Eirini Fountedaki, Viviane Tabach, Sarnt Utamachote