Zwischen Zwei und Vier ・ Pop-Kultur Festival 2026

August 24–30, 2026 | silent green Kulturquartier, Festsaal Kreuzberg, Kulturbrauerei, Pierre Boulez Saal, and more 

Live concerts, experimental music formats, talks, and more. You can look forward to international and local artists, world premieres, and music in all its forms—from large stages to intimate club shows.

“Between Two and Four”—Rosalie Ernst and Melanie Gollin in conversation with... With their newsletter “Between Two and Four” and their live events, Rosalie Ernst and Melanie Gollin aim to do nothing less than turn you into better fans—or at least fans who listen more closely. What initially sounds like an industry panel is actually a controlled loss of control: a 60-minute ride through the breaking points of the contemporary music industry—somewhere between a quiz show, a theory seminar, group therapy, and a live podcast. It’s about industry secrets, favorite songs, power structures, absurd facts, and the question of why pop culture often sounds more progressive than it actually is. Rosalie Ernst and Melanie Gollin present music not as a closed cultural form, but as an open system full of contradictions, desires, and possibilities. This has little to do with traditional music journalism and everything to do with a practice that blends criticism, entertainment, and attitude. Anything can happen: spontaneous, off-the-cuff talks about the hidden mechanisms of the industry, obsessive declarations of love for pop music, quiz segments, chaos, poetry, or moments of collective outrage. Raw, provocative, and with a penchant for pushing boundaries. “Zwischen Zwei und Vier” exists as a newsletter, podcast, and live show, and for more than five years has been an attempt to challenge established music formats. Ernst and Gollin are united by an approach to pop that never separates analysis from passion. Melanie Gollin works for Musikexpress and FluxFM, among others, and focuses primarily on issues of money, labor, and justice within the music industry. Rosalie Ernst, a cultural and music scholar with a queer-feminist perspective on German pop culture, writes for tipBerlin and Missy Magazine, among others. Together, they dissect contemporary music with a mix of nerdiness, a love of criticism, and an obsession with pop-cultural details.