From 15 April to 23 August 2026:
A naked body lies entwined with a human skeleton. It breathes.
The skeleton doesn’t. And yet something passes between them.
This is Nude with Skeleton, one of the live performances you can witness daily at Gropius Bau this summer. It sounds extreme. It isn’t. It’s one of the most intimate things you’ll see in Berlin this year.
Marina Abramović has spent fifty years asking the question nobody else dares: what does the body actually mean? Not the body as object of desire. Not the body as performance for someone else’s gaze. The body as the last territory that is truly yours, spiritual, erotic, political, mortal, all at once.
Balkan Erotic Epic draws from the folklore of her native Balkans, where erotic energy was never separate from life, death, ritual, or community. Women beat their chests in lamentation. Men fuck the earth in fertility rites. The erotic here is not entertainment. It is a force that holds the world together.
Ten rooms. Film. Sculpture. Live performance. And a quote that will stay with you long after you leave:
“All energy we have in our body is sexual energy. We can use it for creativity, for spiritual matters or it becomes aggression, war, anger.” As Abramović has said.
Why we at BERLINABLE are going
Because this is exactly what we believe that desire is never just desire. That the erotic body is always also a political body, a spiritual body, a body that society has always tried to control. Abramović has been making that argument with her own flesh for fifty years. We think you should see it.
Before you mark your calendar: always double-check dates, location, and ticket info directly with the organizers.
Even the best promises come with fine print.