30 October 2026 — 30 November 2026

3hd 2026: Beyond Imagining – Creamcake in the IBB Video Space

As part of their festival 3hd 2026, Creamcake presents a video programme at the Berlinische Galerie. Titled Beyond Imagining, the festival confronts a world in which the real and the invented bleed into each other, distorting what we see and inciting violence so extreme that it defies belief, yet rarely earns more than a passing glance. It examines how images, words and gestures acquire meaning and power, and invites viewers to question familiar ways of thinking and social structures. The film programme, presented here and online via 3hdTV, explores the idea that looking on is never neutral. Four works by four artists set a single figure, real or invented, against a force beyond their control: the state, the crowd, the camera, the institution. Found footage and essay film, allegory and impersonation each trace what gets remembered and who bears the blame for forgetting. Sara Sadik’s Ultimate Vatos: Force & Honneur (23 min.) follows Zabuza as he is trained to become the “ultimate man” in a fictional military programme, during which he experiences isolation, surveillance and physical challenges. Through shifting camera angles and a personal voice-over, the external pressure and his feelings of loneliness, stress and fear are laid bare, confronting stereotypical notions of strength and toughness with vulnerability and insecurity. Zabuza’s inner monologue reveals how marginalised individuals build resistance, solidarity and community care as tools for survival and affirmation. Vika Kirchenbauer’s This Suffocating Now (16 min.) reflects on the increasingly fascist tendencies the artist identifies in contemporary Germany, focusing on Palestine solidarity, queer and trans rights, and the forms of violence and discrimination that expose the illiberal undercurrents of a supposedly liberal society. Combining personal experiences of medical gender discrimination with archival, protest and personal footage, the video examines the relationship between state power and contemporary art, drawing parallels to the authoritarian dynamics that preceded the Nazi takeover. Simone C Niquille’s The Fragility of Life (24 min.) is a short film following Teresa Barnwell, a Hillary Clinton impersonator, in the final days leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. It questions the ownership of one’s own image in a time of visual saturation: viral images, fake news, the mass distribution of information and networked cameras create a slippery slope of identity, privacy and personal data. Simona Andrioletti’s Defence. What do you do with your anger? (10 min.) is a found-footage collage that brings together a succession of situations in which individuals try, in different ways, to defend themselves against physical, emotional and environmental oppression – ultimately without success. The found footage has been re-filmed with a smartphone pointed at a computer monitor, an additional layer of mediatisation that deliberately reproduces the dynamics of voyeurism and Schadenfreude embedded in the original material. The gesture of filming rather than intervening becomes an integral part of the work: a form of passive participation in which witnessing suffering is transformed into entertainment.

Berlinische Galerie