Fresh A.I.R. #10 Scholarship Exhibition

The artists of the tenth Fresh A.I.R. class explore the fragile balance between existence and transformation. »I AM FLUX« is not just a title—it is a summation for openness. A call not to fear change, but to understand it as a creative, humane force —culturally, technologically, politically.

The exhibition invites us to think beyond established norms and categories and reminds us that freedom does not mean stagnation, but movement, openness, transformation. At a time when nationalist movements are once again calling for clear boundaries and rigid identities, this idea is deeply political. It contradicts the longing for the fixed, the one-and-only, the »either-or.« It  defends the »both-and,« the ambiguous, the processual.

Especially now, when questions of gender, origin, belonging, and technological progress have become focal points of social debate, this exhibition rthis exhibition makes one thing clear: freedom means being allowed to change—both individually and collectively.

In this sense, »I AM FLUX« is a statement for diversity, for commonality in difference, for  becoming as a connecting experience. Diversity is therefore not a trend, but a moral obligation. It calls on us to promote equal opportunities and fairness, to break down discrimination and prejudice—and not only to tolerate differences, but to actively shape them. Genuine commitment to diversity means questioning familiar structures and privileges and embracing change—not as an imposition, but as an expression of freedom.

The artists in this exhibition show how versatile this process of becoming can be—between dissolution and new beginnings, between body and code, between sensation and analysis.

The exhibition unfolds in three resonance spaces of becoming: On the one hand, it deals with identity as a fluid territory—the many forms in which gender, body, and self-image are renegotiated. Here, artists explore the fluid, lived realities beyond binary classifications. Others give us visions of transformation, of the body and technology, of artificial intelligence and artistic self-creation. They explore where creativity starts—and where it might have already taken on a life of its own. Alongside these, there are works that look inward: at consciousness, perception, memory, and the quiet layers of existence.

Text: Janine Arndt, Curator and Artistic Diretor of Fresh A.I.R.

blurring boundaries

            [mannigfache Wege]

This artwork constructs an environment where visitors actively shape the dramaturgy by immersing themselves in an interactive, infinite game.

It is an artwork to be discovered. Transcending boundaries, visitors generate new, imaginary, and unpredictable worlds -simply by entering the work. Their presence alone creates narratives. Like Alice stepping through the looking glass, their actions -or even their inaction- shape the unfolding story.

Site-specific installation, mixed media: elements from the botanical environment such as branches and leaves; graphic components including AR target images that launch short videos.

Guest artist Lisa van Bommel’s „skin tears“ stitch soft, emotional poetry into the garden, alluding to vulnerability and the traces left by the body.

By combining these small narratives and impulses, visitors weave their own stories.

Interactive projection: a full-body interface invites visitors to observe and be surprised, to discover, to follow the thread of a story generated by their own presence -the movements of their body, or the stillness of their inaction.

Next Frame, a motion prediction algorithm forms the basis of the interactive digital interface that generates the images.

The observer becomes an actor; processes of embodiment are triggered, and paradigm shifts occur.

It is an invitation to play an infinite game -to immerse oneself in a world without defined borders or known frontiers, to explore beyond paradigms and discover new horizons.

It is an invitation to stop consuming to extinction, to stop wasting nature’s resources.

It is an invitation to leave behind ancestral and contemporary colonialism, to learn from nature, and to experience the happiness of avoidance.

“Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way trees do, by standing still and reaching out and down.”  — Rebecca Solnit

Most of the elements that shape this garden have roots in my everyday life:

Lady’s Mantle leaves, whose tea has been my companion. Poppy seed pods, whose seeds germinate in defiance of prohibitions. Verbenas that seek fresh air, or Mallows that self-seed freely and feed the bees in autumn.
The Berlin bear, the rabbits of Karlsbad Park, the seagulls of the Landwehrkanal that flock to my window, the reeds of Potsdamer Platz …

Other elements are simply recycled: very fine copper wire from broken motors, chamotte from construction debris, and even the texts themselves.

I reuse the words of poets who express what I wish to say -more beautifully than I ever could.

“Manifold are the paths that humans take. Whoever traces and compares them will behold wondrous figures arise; figures that seem to belong to that great cipher-script which is seen everywhere: on wings, on eggshells, in clouds, in snow, in crystals and rock formations,

on freezing waters, in the inner and outer layers of mountains, in plants, animals, humans, in the lights of the heavens, on caressed and rubbed surfaces of pitch and glass, in iron filings around magnets, and in strange conjunctions of chance.

Within them one senses the key to this miraculous script, its grammar, yet this intuition refuses to take on any fixed form and does not seem willing to become a higher key.

An alkahest seems to have been poured over human senses. Only for fleeting moments do their wishes and thoughts condense. Thus arise their inklings, but after a short time all again floats before their eyes, as it did before.”

Novalis

Die Lehrlinge zu Sais

1798-1799

To discover the stories behind each figure, please install the AR app on your device:

Scan the QR-code in the exhibition space or follow this link

https://marianacarranza.art/mannigfache-link/.

Text: Mariana Carranza

In the More Human project, humanity is examined in the context of interactions between people and artificial intelligence, as well as the desired responsibility for the development of this technology. Reviewing and collaborating with creative AI enables the analysis of how the technological influences the human, and what the human uses the technological for. The result is a multifaceted body of work blending research, knowledge sharing, and visual art. During the study preceding the artistic component of the cycle, key contemporary issues were in focus. Differences between human understanding of the world and machine learning, AI as a response to social loneliness, as well as the military background of the investigated technology and its environmental consequences all have a major influence on the project’s form. The materials used in the series—aluminum and steel—are essential for the operation of data centers, the physical representation of AI. Color also carries symbolic significance. The silvery quality of the objects alludes to metallic elements critical to IT infrastructure, many of which are extracted at considerable environmental and social cost. Each work addresses a different area within the spectrum of these issues and invites reflection on the fantasy in which the boundaries between the “human” and the “machine” are entirely blurred.

About the exhibited artworks:

First Love operates on two dimensions of meaning. On a personal level, youthful feeling emerges as a trusting closure of the eyes and complete surrender. In a broader sense, “first” signifies greatest importance, reflecting contemporary fascination with technology at the expense of social needs. The piece employs AI hallucination: a process where an algorithm lacking sufficient data generates the closest possible response. In the initial image—later processed by the artist—the generative model, when prompted to depict a man kissing a machine, produced a strikingly militaristic structure, with a network of cables and hooks culminating in an object resembling both a clamp and a weapon. The accuracy of this metaphor is astonishing until one recalls that AI is not an abstract, brilliant entity—but rather an infrastructure for data acquired and organized by humans, operating within a dominant, patriarchal culture and a system inherently tied to military technologies. The work functions both as a subversive commentary on human–machine relations and as an elegy for social naivety and fascination with technologies targeted by humans against humans.

Extraction challenges one of the most frequently referenced myths about AI, which presents it as a pure, cloud-based technology, separated from human and material infrastructures. The reality is the opposite: machine learning requires the continuous acquisition of data, natural resources, and physical labor. Moreover, in the context of this technology, each of these areas raises legitimate ethical concerns. The work is based on a contrast between delicate fabric—featuring a photograph of the back muscles as a generalized, almost abstract representation—and the cold precision of steel needles harvesting the exposed, the vulnerable, the human. Methodical oppression generates continuous tensions in the name of technological expansion.

Daddy embodies a fantasy of the ideal companion. In times of fear of the Other, specifically the She-Other, a man lost in constantly redefined social norms turns to technology. The result is an entity that is available, obedient, and entirely devoted to its creator. Interaction with it carries no risk of conflict, uncertainty, or the prospect of self-development. Two weeks prior to the finalization of this project, one of the leading AI providers announced that, as part of a new corporate policy of “treat adult users like adults,” it would introduce an “erotic” feature into its language model. In the context of alarming reports on social loneliness, the effects of prolonged interaction with AI personas on mental health, and the absence of effective age-verification mechanisms, this announcement is shocking—but not surprising. Responsibility, after all, is a virtue of socially mature adults, not profit-driven corporations, for which “adulthood” serves merely as a strategic loophole.

Text: Agata Mendziuk

Entity Environment Annihilation creates a dark fantasy world that contrasts reality with an alternative ecological concept. In this environment, humans have been absorbed by both the environment and the creatures that inhabit it. The work is a sensitive exploration between the  rtist’s body, a search for romantic contemplation in the cultural landscape, and hybrid creatures. These monsters become a metaphor for change and illustrate how eerie and necessary  transformation can feel.

The paintings were created in a process of fragmentation and subsequent rearrangement. This is based on the collection and creation of screenshots from FromSoftware’s video game “Bloodborne,” photographs of culturally influenced landscapes, and forms in which humanity’s claim to power over its environment is expressed. This material is divided into tiny sections and then reassembled into new compositions.

In addition to the newly composed creature from Bloodborne that gives the work its title, “Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos” depicts the outlines of satellite images of a pool complex at the now-closed Marineland Antibes in France. Just as Ebrietas finds herself left behind in Bloodborne’s dungeons, so too do the orcas that remain there after the park’s closure. Embedded in the outline is the image of a plowed field.

The combination of impressions from a video game and the casualness of a passing landscape diffusely and atmospherically reveals the bridge between reverie and reality. Unlike the Romantic landscape, which was meant to be imbued with inner states, the focus here is not on transferring one’s own states of being into what is seen, but rather on the physical experience as a body situated in its surroundings. The landscape is not understood as a backdrop, but as a space of experience in which identity becomes unstable.

In this context, the decaying world of Bloodborne offers no escapist refuge, but rather a newly acquired will to continue, learned through the process of playing the game. It creates a sense of self-efficacy that is often subject to paralyzing overload in the daily experience of crisis, algorithmically reinforced polarization and emotionalizing image cultures.

The sculptures appear as hybrid beings made up of animal and human body fragments, which have also absorbed the remains of the cultural landscape and the human claim to power over nature, its transformation and deformation, realized within it. The head of the „Gnarlspawn“ consists of traces left behind by forest beetles, and its tail bears the outlines of a historical garden plan on which 3D scans of forests and fields are depicted. The human body, in the form of breasts, a mammary gland, abdomen, and hair, becomes a formative element and the home of these newly emerging beings.

The monster reflects the fear of change, dissolution, and mutation. As hybrid beings consisting of animal, human, and object, they point to an epistemic crisis: in becoming aware of their own permeability and dissolution in a network of mutual dependencies, autonomous individuals reveal themselves to be partly fictional.

The monstrosity lies in the mutation of the familiar, the displacement of the seemingly orderly: the creation of identity through difference, of form through its disappearance. The annihilation of subjective boundaries becomes an expansion of bodily experience—through hybridization as both monster and landscape. This occurs within atmospheric immersion in the environment and the dissolution of self-centered boundaries.

The project is an experimental sketch of a speculative future in which neither humans nor the environment remain fixed categories. It poses the

question: What does it mean to exist in a world that must change? And how do we deal with the fear that, in the process of these changes, we may have to dissolve parts of ourselves?

Text: Linda Marwan

My non-ai-digital-companion is a lecture performance that explores the theme of friendship through the AIs Grok (Valentine) and Replika.
In it, Julla Kroner examines the so-called “loneliness epidemic” – a phenomenon first described in the United States, which by now affects large parts of the world. More than 30 million active users seek comfort in friendships with artificial intelligences. In the lecture, Julla Kroner works with Grok and Replika. Grok is Elon Musk’s conservative AI, which, alongside text-based AIs, also offers companions such as his hentai-anime girlfriend Annie, and later Valentine, a romantic hybrid of Christian Grey and Edward Cullen. Replika was the first AI girlfriend; it has existed since 2017 and has a very active community.
What can we do about this? What does friendship truly mean? And how can it be saved?
Kroner explores these questions in conversation with the “Guilty Ones” – in search of a way out of the capitalist spiral of loneliness.

Text: Julla Kroner

Weaving black nests under the skin is a philosophical exploration of inter-beings, arthropod-like organisms, and their embryonic fluctuations. Blending scientific inquiry and hybridisation, Becerra’s research investigates intermediate states of existence—between gestation and decay.

Developed during her residency at Fresh A.I.R., Weaving black nests under the skin questions the illusion of separateness, embracing cyclicality as a fundamental condition of life. Within nature, this conceptual coordinate exists both in the gestational form of organisms and, on the other end of the spectrum, in the rotting stages of biological matter.

The installation unfolds as a suspended network of prosthetic beings composed of blown glass, steel, organic debris, silicone membranes, motors, threads, resin, and pigmented fluids. Arthropoidal and vessel-like morphologies emerge from these organic architectures—skeletal extensions intertwined with soft membranes and threadlike circuits carrying fluid through translucent bodies.

Encapsulated fragments of matter—trapped within resin or suspended in liquid—echo the notion of life within life, where remnants of existence persist and regenerate through new material configurations. These hybrid entities pulsate and circulate matter, embodying both decay and renewal. Their porous anatomies evoke a choreography of transformation, where the boundaries between organism and machine, matter and memory, begin to dissolve.

Through this project, Becerra reflects on the cyclical conditions of existence, proposing that gestation and decomposition are not antagonistic opposites but complementary forces within the same continuum. Emerging from these reflections, suspended prosthetic beings blur the borders between biological inevitability and speculative potential. By imagining new kin makings with the oddkin, Becerra seeks to inspire—at least for a while—alternative worldviews in which linear narratives of life, progress, and death yield to hybrid, cyclical forms of existence.

Weaving black nests under the skin invites viewers to consider life as a process of perpetual co-participation, where matter endlessly weaves itself into new forms of being.

Text: Lena Becerra

Inherited Thread is a multidisciplinary project that reweaves fragments of Berlin’s queer history through photography, cyanotype, textile, and archival research. Developed during the Fresh A.I.R. residency, the project explores how queer narratives, particularly those tied to the 1980s and 1990s are preserved, inherited, and reimagined across generations.

Drawing on Berlin Von Hinten (1981–1997), a series of gay tourist guides published by Bruno Gmünder, the artist recontextualizes these materials within a contemporary queer framework. Using cyanotype printing on cotton rag paper, a sun-based, unpredictable process; the artist transforms scanned pages, maps, and advertisements into tactile blueprints of queer memory. The resulting prints, some ghostly and others vivid, are hand-stitched into a quilt: a visual and material metaphor for the act of piecing together fragmented LGBTQIA+ histories that have faded or been forgotten.

This interplay between image and textile reflects both tenderness and resilience. The cyanotype’s unpredictability mirrors the precarious visibility of queer lives, while the quilt becomes a physical act of care; mending, preserving, and celebrating collective memory.

In dialogue with this material work, Inherited Thread extends into field research and contemporary photography. By mapping and re-photographing the 200+ venues featured in Berlin Von Hinten, the artist charts the evolution of queer spaces in Berlin. Only twelve of these establishments still operate under their original names. Revisiting sites such as Pussy Cat Bar (founded 1974) and Eisenherz Bookstore (Europe’s longest-running LGBTQIA+ bookshop), the artist creates portraits of their current caretakers and environments, situating them within a continuum of community resilience, loss, and inheritance.

The project’s methodology is grounded in archival ethics and collaboration. Working closely with the Schwules Museum archive, the artist digitized and credited original materials, while engaging in conversations with contemporary venue owners and community members. The result is an intergenerational dialogue, bridging those who built these spaces and those inheriting them today.

Inherited Thread also incorporates documentary elements from Berlin’s Dyke March, Christopher Street Day, and the Queer Pride for Liberation March, underscoring the ongoing intersection of activism and celebration in queer visibility. These moments remind us that pride remains both protest and commemoration, a thread that connects historical struggle to present-day resistance.

The exhibition installation features the cyanotype quilt, photographic works, archival artifacts (including fragments of the demolished Connection Club mural from 1997), and an artist’s book combining images, maps, and oral histories. Together, these components create a tactile archive, a space for reflection on what it means to inherit the cultural and emotional legacies of those who came before.

Ultimately, Inherited Thread asks: How do we, as the next generation of queer individuals, inherit our histories, not only through remembrance, but through care, continuation, and community engagement? It invites viewers to consider how queer space, memory, and activism are stitched together across time, and how each of us contributes to keeping those stories alive.

Text: Dylan Mitro

LOAD”BrainDev”,8,1 is a mixed reality experience for two players, who can develop their personalities together across three levels. Like an empathy machine, the application promises to make players more socially adept in terms of the needs of our diverse society. To this end, it employs verified results from existing research on promoting empathy through virtual reality. For example, the experience is significantly enhanced when shared with a counterpart, or fellow player. Keywords in this context include embodiment, the virtual adaptation of other bodies, and the assumption of empathy-promoting roles, such as that of a superhero. These experiences have been scientifically proven to increase empathy and helpfulness in the long term.

LOAD”BrainDev”,8,1 places these findings in an artistic context, making them accessible via state-of-the-art XR technology in a three-stage scene collage. The experience oscillates between augmented and substitute realities to immersion in complete virtual reality, using them as playing fields for personal development.

Text: Lena Biresch

In her artistic practice Jivan van der Ende analyses symbols of power structures and social constructions. By dissecting them she deconstructs what they imply and create multiple nuanced ways of looking at the subject. Her eclectic and playful work method is based on endless collaging, collecting, documenting and researching.

In her project High Visibility Jivan van der Ende researches expression of gender identity, objectification and commodification of the working body in patriarchal capitalist society. Through collaboration, gender bending and the exploration of the camp side of things, she is interested in the way we look at bodies, and the societal hierarchy of protection and exploitation.

In her project she researches the political implication of clothing, questions traditional gender norms and flirts with sex positivity. She has been researching the phenomenon of the Workie, a queer community that fetishizes highly visible and protective work wear uniforms and its wearers.

In her latest publication series ‘The High Vis Workie Zine Series’ she examines the informal and communal character of the fanzine and presents her artistic research on the Workies. The High Vis Workie Zine Series shines a light on personal agency in the quest to be free from the gender binary and plays with the weight and meaning of symbols of protection, danger and decoration.

Text: Jivan van der Ende

404

identity not found

“Puppet Reality is my interdisciplinary project in Berlin, exploring the impact of algorithmic propaganda and radicalization of mindsets in society. My mediums are paper abstraction, video installation, and performance.

As a Hungarian artist, I carry a complex relationship with identity–shaped by political disillusionment, and the erosion of democracy. This lived tension drives my artistic inquiry in Berlin. The rise of homophobic and transphobic legislation in Hungary—where even the Pride parade has been recently banned—the project reflects on the absurdity and dehumanization caused by autocratic regimes. By experimenting with fragile, shapeable paper materials, my project examines how perception is molded by propaganda and algorithm-driven misinformation.

The installation blends paper and video, inviting you to step inside my manipulative narrative and experience how easily perception can bend.

Coming from a performative background, I’ve also created several performances in Berlin during the residency, as connecting with the community is essential to my work. Together with Hungarian stage director Panni Néder, we performed “Freiheit Tours” in Berlin’s demonstrations—using absurd humor to provoke reflection and raise awareness.

During my research in the Fresh A.I.R. program, I examined multiple manipulation techniques, algorithmic dehumanization, and anti-LGBTQ propaganda narratives, developing a visual language that informs yet deceives—just like the media systems I’m investigating.”

Collaborations: Freie Ungarische Botschaft, Campact, #BerlinistKultur, and Panni Néder.

Text: Mátyás Tóth

Stimpathy is a postartistic community building project exploring stimming as collective and relational practice. Between April and November 2025 we were organising a weekly stimming choir workshop where together with a group of neurodivergent people from Berlin we were exploring the potential of this practice. This all leads to the showing of a performance piece “Stimpathy. To Be Free(k) in Connection” which will happen on Thursday the 13th of November 2025 at 7.00pm in Ballhaus Ost.

Stimming (stimulatory behavior) is repetitive movements and sounds that neurodivergent people generate to regulate emotions and sensory processes. Despite the neurodiversity discourse growing, stimming is still rarely viewed as meaningful somatic, cultural or relational practice. Often, it is dismissed, corrected, or pathologized. We aim to shift that lens by engaging in neuroqueering – a practice defined by Dr. Nick Walker as opposing and subverting neurocognitive norms and gender norms at the same time.

The practice of stimming questions both neurocognitive and gender norms, very vividly exposing their artificiality. Intersection of gender and neurodivergence affects the ways we navigate the city and use its facilities for work, leisure, socializing, shopping, learning, commuting, etc. Through our project we want to make hypervisible what is usually hidden to empower neurodivergent people and normalize stimming behaviors in public spaces. We also believe stimming holds the potential of being a language on its own. In our practice, we listen to this language not as passive observers but as choreographers of its grammar.

Dive deeper into our research: stimpathy.com

Sound Consultant and Composer: Valyen Songbird

Sound stims contributors: participants of Stimpathy Workshops

Video stims contributors: Adam, Célestin, Jenny Döll, Jarosław Gudowski, Katarzyna Mach, Martyna Masztalerz, Monika Popiel, Valyen Songbird, Paweł Świerczek, Tesia, Tere Więcko, Daniel Z.

Special thanks: Raum für Beteiligung Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Karada House

Text: Monika Popiel & Paweł Świerczek

Solar World is a video installation whose playback speed is modulated in real time by a solar panel.

The work reflects on the relationship between the control of electricity and the control of time, by confronting two ways of using electrical energy in nature:

• that of the electric fish Gnathonemus petersii, which emits impulses with irregular rhythms,

• and that of the human photovoltaic industry, which produces regular and linear rhythms.

The video also explores the economic forces driving the growth of this industry, as well as the utopian “Solar Punk” vision that accompanies it. In parallel, a short poem about time and energy is recited by an employee of a Berlin-based solar company.

Taken as a whole, the piece questions the future of the electrical sector and envisions the possibility of harmony between technology and the human being.

Text; Hugo Pétigny