Global Dystopia – Sound Art Biennial 2026
Patricia HegglinSOMA OF THE TREE – Rituals of Repair
What if our bodies preserve connections to the living world that our minds have forgotten? And what if scents open up pathways to remember and reimagine collective care?
Soma of the Tree invites us to explore tree resins sensorially as embodied archives in which traces of vulnerability, regeneration and memory continue to resonate. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of Mon-kō [listening to scent], we practice smelling as a form of deep listening.
Exploring Scent as a way of knowing that moves through the body and activates memories even before language, whilst the burning of resins becomes a liminal experience between body and environment.
The workshop combines the practice of olfactory perception with the composition and creation of a personal scent object. Opening with a sensory listening session featuring the delicate smoke of various tree resins, accompanied by sound artist Amelie Neumann.
Registration until 5 October 2026 at patricia@thesoundescape.com
Patricia Hegglin is a Swiss-born interdisciplinary researcher and sound artist based in Berlin. Her work explores the intersections of listening, ecology, and nervous system resilience. Through multisensory ritual formats, resonant instruments, and gongs, she creates spaces for deep attunement grounded in somatic practice and trauma-sensitive care. With a background in design and education, her approach bridges research and artistic practice, emphasizing knowledge sharing as a collective endeavor. Her current work with tree resins reflects on scent and smoke as carriers of cultural memory and collective presence. Influenced by her lived experience with ME/CFS, she reframes listening as a practice of attention, regeneration, and relationality.
Web: www.patriciahegglin.com
Instagram: @the__soundescape
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Workshop: October 8, 2 pm
LOCATION
frontviews at HAUNT
Kluckstraße 23 A Yard
D – 10785 Berlin
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full festival programme
www.dystopia.berlin
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LOCATION
frontviews at HAUNT
Kluckstraße 23 A Yard
D – 10785 Berlin
ORGANISER
Errant Sound e.V.
Rungestr. 20
10179 Berlin
www.errantsound.net
SOCIAL MEDIA
@frontviews_
@haunt_berlin
@dystopiabiennial
@errant.sound
Berlin Museum of Medical History @bmmcharite
Flutgraben e.V.@flutgrabenberlin
Floating Berlin @floatinguniversity
Deep See @ Café Babette Public Space @deep_see_berlin
WEB
HAUNT Berlin
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Bus Linie M48 or M85 from Potsdamer Platz/Bus Stop
Lützowstr./Potsdamer Str. and a 4 minute walk // U-Bahn
Kurfürstenstraße Line U1 and U3 and a 6-minute walk // M29 Bus Stop Gedenkstätte Dt. Widerstand and a 2-minute walk.
The Global Dystopia Sound Art Biennial and HAUNT are generously supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The HAUNT part was also made possible with the initiative of the whole frontviews collective.
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Global Dystopia – under this title, the fourth Dystopia Sound Art Biennial, taking place from 26 September to 17 October 2026, brings together more than 40 international artists with sound installations, performances, talks, and workshops at five venues across Berlin, in public space, and on Instagram. The biennial opens on 26 September at HAUNT/frontviews.
This year’s edition gathers sound art perspectives from different regions of the world: Global Dystopia invites audiences to experience dystopias as spaces of encounter between memory and the future, between loss and resistance, and between ecological crises, political conflicts, and speculative visions of
the future.
Field recording archives enter into dialogue with research into oral traditions; sounding fungi encounter contemporary sound system practices; the fatigue of a city drifting along the Spree meets Berlin’s hidden Underground.
Global Dystopia understands listening as a political, ecological, and social practice. The works on display attend to the entanglements of global power relations – past, present, and future – and open up perspectives on more-than-human relationships, the environment as an acoustic space of experience, and the material conditions of listening.
What forms of knowledge become accessible through sound? How can suppressed histories, marginalized perspectives, or ecological processes be made audible? What role can listening play in confronting climate change, extractivism, colonial continuities, or collective trauma?
Programme and Information
www.dystopia.berlin
