Under the motto “Kultur zählt!” [“Culture Counts!”], 21 of Karlsruhe’s cultural institutions open their doors on August 1, 2026, from 6 pm to midnight, inviting visitors to explore Karlsruhe’s cultural diversity together through guided tours, readings, and concerts.
A particular highlight is the premiere of the performance Elene’s Lines of Flight. Developed by Natia Chikvaidze, Davit Khorbaladze and Karolina Sobel, the piece is part of an artistic exchange between the two UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Arts, Karlsruhe and Tbilisi. Taking the Georgian painter Elene Akhvlediani (1901–1975) as its starting point—whose varied life and work resist any clear narrative categorization—the project engages with questions of queer and feminist visibility, absence in archives, and the historical conditions of silencing. It explores how stories fade, disintegrate, or remain untold.
The performance combines dance, text, and live music, moving between two chapters of Akhvlediani’s life: her early years in Paris, when her painting focused primarily on nude studies, and the landscapes that shaped her life and identity during the Soviet era in Georgia. Structured as a lecture disrupted and fractured by movement, the performance follows the rumors and gaps in the archives rather than official accounts. Its title refers to a concept developed by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, describing a movement away from fixed structures toward contradiction, multiplicity, and imagination.
The performance on August 1st as part of KAMUNA marks the premiere of Elene’s Lines of Flight. Documentation of the performance will become part of the video installation Soft Signals, also Natia Chikvaidze, Davit Khorbaladze and Karolina Sobel, on view on the LED wall in the ZKM foyer from August 13 to September 13, 2026, as part of the exhibition Media Art Is Here.
The ZKM will also offer a wide range of guided tours through its current exhibitions, including curator-led tours, Pride Perspectives – Media Art in a Queer Context, low-barrier tours, and behind-the-scenes insights into the ZKM. The program is complemented by music and sound art in the Kubus, workshops, and various exchange formats and talks.
Next door at the HfG, students and alumni will present their own designs at the Art and Design Market (6 pm–midnight), ranging from small treasures to unconventional design objects. The Kino im Blauen Salon will screen a program of student films. In collaboration with the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts, Julian Wolfgang Schreiner and Francesco Perale will transform the ZKM Pavilion on Brauerstraße into a walk-through installation combining painting and spatial design (Even Mayflies Dream of Tomorrow, 6 pm–midnight).
For further information and the full program, click here.