Berlina Atonal x Unsound: Final artists confirmed
With five weeks to go, Berlin Atonal and Unsound confirm the final wave of artists for The Infinite Now, the thirty-hour continuous programme unfolding at Kraftwerk Berlin from the evening of Saturday 16 May to the night of Sunday 17 May 2026. Over twenty acts artists will present work across a single unbroken span - an experiment in ambient and durational listening at a scale and duration without clear precedent in contemporary music programming. Kraftwerk's cavernous upper hall becomes the main musical space, with resting areas and beds integrated throughout, while a large-scale screening area on the lower level carries durational film and image works through the night and into the following day.
The final additions are Caterina Barbieri, Kali Malone, Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke present Kotonski Reworked, Adam Wiltzie presents A Tired Reworking of Stars of the Lid For the Sleep Deprived, Lois Patiño with Xabier Erkizia, and four environmental works installed across the building by Brennan Wojtyla, Alex Reynolds & Robert M Ochshorn, Fabien Giraud & Anne Stern and Marcel Weber.
The shape of the programme
The Infinite Now runs continuously from 7pm on Saturday 16 May until the small hours on Monday 18 May. Over thirty hours, the programme moves through distinct phases, dusk, night, dawn, day and a second dusk, with the architecture of Kraftwerk opening and closing around the audience as the hours pass. Sleep is treated here as a condition of listening rather than an interruption of it, and many works have been programmed in the knowledge that much of the audience will be horizontal and drifting.
Saturday evening opens at dusk with a run of solo performances, Shane Parish's acoustic guitar readings of Autechre, the granular ambient electronics of 7038634357, Joanne Robertson alone with her voice and guitar, and by 22:00 the German unveiling of Caterina Barbieri's remarkable new work for electronics, vocal ensemble and brass with light and scenic design from MFO and Ruben Spini. Brìghde Chaimbeul carries the programme on amplified smallpipes to midnight, where the Italian theatre director Romeo Castellucci and his long-time collaborator, the composer Scott Gibbons present the first of two performances of their new work To Carthage then I came on the ground floor. Upstairs, Paul Jebanasam performs material from mātr.
The deep night belongs first to Lois Patiño and Xabier Erkizia, whose two-hour cinematic journey guides a recumbent mass audience through a collective dream sequence, and then to Kali Malone, playing an extraordinary set composed almost entirely of long-form installation works otherwise heard only inside gallery and museum commissions, timed to unfold through the quietest hours of the night. The set bleeds into dawn and into Adam Wiltzie's A Tired Reworking of Stars of the Lid For the Sleep Deprived, a three-hour revisiting of the Stars of the Lid catalogue assembled expressly for an audience waking into the second day and presented here for the first time. Late morning brings Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke's Kotoński Reworked, a rare presentation of their reworking of the Polish electronic pioneer in the form of an installation, followed by the second performance of To Carthage then I came.
Sunday afternoon passes through guitarist Raphael Rogiński's solo interpretation of John Coltrane, the Słyż and Rożynek commission And The Sun Stood Still for brass and electronics – performed with the tuba trio Microtub, Marta Salogni's tape-machine performance, and then the massive three-hour presence of Marginal Consort, the cult Japanese collective improvisation group convening for one of their rare appearances outside Japan. Sunday evening brings Joy Guidry on bassoon and electronics, two distinct sets from Keiji Haino, one for voice and one for guitar and electronics, Darren Cunningham's new Actress live show, and the four-way 2k88, Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller and Bianca Scout collaboration born from an Unsound residency in Gdynia. Terrence Dixon closes the thirty hours at 23:00 with the world premiere of A Cosmic Display of Beauty, a new work by one of Detroit techno's most uncompromising figures. Throughout the full span, four environmental works by Brennan Wojtyla, Alex Reynolds and Robert M Ochshorn, Fabien Giraud and Anne Stern, and Marcel Weber remain installed across the building, available to be discovered, returned to, or inhabited at length.
The next full edition of Berlin Atonal will take place in August 2027. The flagship Unsound festival takes place in Poland at the start of October 2026, alongside events in Adelaide, New York and London.
The Infinite Now is partly supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and the Polish National Foundation.