SONDER is an amoebic undertaking operating at the intersection of art and architecture. Founded in 2009 by Peter Behrbohm and Anton Steenbock, SONDER has specialized in conflict refinement, the implementation of errors and orders, and the search for new collective futures.
We try to avoid the framing of art and consider reality both venue and medium of our works. We intervene in public spaces, routines and discourses with obstacles and counter-narratives, aiming to expose questionable developments hiding within normality. Our projects are fused dychotomies, made up of chaos and order, security and danger, past and future or east and west. We’re interested in supposed opposites that are brought to reaction in large-scale installations and interventions.
The group’s projects have been exhibited in prominent settings, including Broken Machines and Wild Imaginings and the residency AI Anarchies at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2022–23), the Current Festival in Stuttgart (2023), and the main exhibition of the 48 Stunden Neukölln Art Festival in Berlin (2017 & 2024). In 2021, SONDER won the public art competition for Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee. They were fellows of the Forecast Forum (2019) and have been selected for the European LINA Fellowship Program (2024–25).
Peter Behrbohm is a Berlin-based artist, designer, architect, and filmmaker. His practice explores future conflicts and utopian societies through collaborative, site-specific research. Behrbohm’s interventions often reveal the constructed nature of reality, proposing alternative, collective ways of living. His awards include the MAK Schindler Scholarship Los Angeles (2019), the BDA-SARP Award from the Association of German Architects, the Initial Grant from the Akademie der Künste Berlin (2023), and the Elsa Neumann Scholarship (2016).
Beyond SONDER, Behrbohm co-founded the artist group PARA. His projects consistently challenge conventions, making precise and critical interventions into public routines and spaces.
https://peterbehrbohm.net/
Anton Steenbock’s work investigates capitalism as a shaping force, analyzing how its intricate structures increasingly impact nature and society. Through subversive interventions, he critiques ambitious architectural and urban projects, corporate appropriation of public spaces (e.g., Google Street View, Uber, Airbnb), and commodified landscapes.
His solo exhibitions include the MAC Museum of Contemporary Art in Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural São Paulo, the SUR Biennial in Argentina, the Frestas Triennial in São Paulo, Frise Hamburg, and the Historical Museum of Frankfurt am Main. Group exhibitions include the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and museums in Brazil and Germany.
Steenbock was a fellow of the BPA – Berlin Program for Artists (2019–21) and recipient of both the Berlin Senate Research Grant and VG Bild Work Grant (2021). He co-won the Berlin Senate’s public art competition (2020) with Behrbohm, realizing the Neustartkultur Modul C project. His work was also shortlisted for the PIPA Prize in Brazil (2017).
https://www.antonsteenbock.net/
Kontakt: info [at] s-o-n-d-e-r.com