Berlin Atonal

Berlin Atonal operates with no commercial fallback. Its credibility rests entirely on curatorial judgment; one misjudged programming decision can undo years of trust with an audience that knows exactly when a festival is playing it safe.

I joined in 2017 and progressed across eight editions: from artist and stage management, through agency and festival logistics with full production oversight, then into co-curation from 2023, where I took responsibility for the club programme's creative direction specifically. A role carrying reputational risk, where resisting hype cycles and market homogenisation mattered as much as the work itself. Atonal and Tresor's main audiences converge on days three and four of the festival. The club programme required positioning itself between both worlds, remaining accessible to some whilst challenging to others. This resulted in me saying no to artists who would normally be regular staples of the Tresor lineup outside the festival ecosystem.

By 2025, the festival had shifted from being read as an experimental music festival to being recognised by the Biennial Foundation as the first biennial rooted in music and sound. An evolution that came from consistency of judgment, not from scale. Atonal is where I learned what a small senior team can hold together under real institutional stakes: creative judgment, logistics and financial pressure moving as one system. That has been the foundational model I've carried into every large-scale project since.