A Shadow Takes No Room in Space

A Shadow Takes No Room in Space summons reverberations of an ancient acoustic world as a site-specific performance in Halle am Berghain. Within the cavernous space of Berlin’s former power station, the live performance reconstructs a ritual to the ancient Iranian solar deity Mithra from over four thousand years ago, not as a historical narrative to be reconstructed with certainty, but as a fragmented field of traces.

Working with a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, the artists revoiced the lost Proto-Indo-Iranian language as a chanting choir of ghostly priestesses. This effort to sound an ancient world extends from language to ritual instruments: invited into the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, the artists recast 3,000-year-old Bronze Age bells so their tones could be heard once again beyond the museum’s vaults.

These unique artifacts and other metallic percussion instruments form part of a drone composition originally created for the film A Shroud Woven of Solar Threads, currently a solo exhibition by the artists at Halle am Berghain (October 3–18). The performance will use the exhibition’s custom 10-channel sound system for an immersive concert.

Charles Stankievech is an artist and composer whose award-winning work has been presented at institutions and exhibitions such as HKW, Berlin; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; National Gallery of Canada; dOCUMENTA (13); Berlin Biennale; and Venice Biennale. He was mentored by composers R. Murray Schafer and Alvin Lucier, and premiered his work with Philip Glass’s MATA Foundation.

His recent performances of The Glass Key were presented in geological and architectural spaces, including Lanzarote’s volcanic tubes, Hamburg’s planetarium, Prague’s philharmonic, and various cathedrals. He is currently a Professor at the University of Toronto and was previously a researcher at the University of Tokyo.

Ala Roushan is an Iranian artist and scholar exploring artificial environments at the intersection of art, architecture, and technology. Her current work examines technological interventions in natural systems, tracing humanity’s longstanding relationship to the Sun and a speculative prehistory of geoengineering.

A Shadow Takes No Room in Space

Wednesday, 14.10.2026 | Doors 19:30 | Starts 20:00 CET
Halle am Berghain | Am Wriezener Bahnhof in 10243 Berlin

The exhibition will take place from 3–18 October.

A Shroud Woven of Solar Threads is presented by HOUSE in partnership with Autotelic Foundation and is curated by Juliet Kothe and Nadim Samman.