In the organizer's words:

Silence and whispers, secret relationships, unknown relatives, inherited stories and hidden heirlooms. Are there secrets in your family? Are you grateful for these secrets or would you rather get rid of them?

Do secrets connect people or isolate them? In playful, artistic and performative formats, we approach the most hidden areas of community.

Performances

Experience Sarah Ama Duah's living statues - hidden biographies can be glimpsed beneath their latex surfaces.

Chinese artist Li Binyuan invites visitors to become part of a unique soundscape: Through your voices alone and guided by familiar sounds of your family members or friends, you become part of the Performance Plaza.

The evening program includes two profoundly different approaches to the hidden. The musical reading from Hewa Rwanda by Rwandan actor and director Dorcy Rugamba is authentic and moving: 31 years after the genocide in Rwanda, he tells of family, culture and hope.

The video snippet lecture by Jürgen Kuttner is humorous: look forward to family stories from East and West.

In conversation

Anne Rabe encourages a conversation about her unsparing GDR family history The Possibility of Happiness.

Shaped by stories of cultural repression in Turkey, a new film by performer and filmmaker ŞOKOPOP reflects on his own coming out as a queer person and shows how inherited silences can be broken. There will also be a discussion with ŞOKOPOP (Ekim Acun) and Umut Özdemir.

Guided tours, workshops and children's program

In the admission-free living room, a newly designed activity room on the first floor, you can explore diverse family histories and transgenerational relationships. In the Library for All you will find a diverse selection of books about family, compiled by Black Dads Germany, and in the handicraft workshop series Gift of the Spider , a large-format wall collage of weaving and knitting contributions will be created. Take a look and join in!

The historic Berlin Palace also holds secrets. A scenic tour takes a look behind the facades of patriarchal history and memory and makes it possible to experience the under-exposed sides of the Hohenzollern family.

In the live role-playing game Broken Archive, you can speculate together in small groups about why a family album was torn up - and then reassemble it.

Children get their money's worth in the Story Theater , learn all about lying in the live recording of the podcast Kakadu and can record family secrets together with their parents in the Book Dash Workshop. Children and adults can explore self-determination and imagination by painting flags - based on designs by artist Na Chainkua Reindorf, whose large-format works will adorn the foyer in January.

- from 3 years

- Locations: 1st floor, 2nd floor, 3rd floor, foyer, hall 3, ground floor, sculpture hall, ground floor

- Belongs to: Family relationships

- Theme days: 24.01.-25.01.2026, 10:30 am - 6:30 pm

- Access to the exhibition areas at a special price of €9 / €0