SONDER is an amoebic untertaking intervening in public spaces and discourses. Founded in 2009 by Peter Behrbohm and Anton Steenbock, SONDER has specialised in conflict refinement, order implementation and the search for new collective futures.
In 2018 we introduced a security service clandestinely watching over the people of Jena, Thuringia from a monitoring station disguised as a pile of sand. In 2021, we unveiled an equestrian statue with bonfire on Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee. 2022-23 we created the divine socialist start-up TOTAL.EARTH, looking for a new collective afterlife based on long forgotten ideas from the beginning of the 20th century. In 2023, we found the cleaning service "Urban Cosmetics" in Stuttgart, which was the first to make simultaneous use of innovative fine cleaning measures as well as aggression-reducing vandalism replicas and recently expanded to Berlin.
We have participated in numerous exhibitions and programmes including the exhibition "Broken Machines and Wild Imaginings" and the residency "AI Anarchies" at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin (2022-23), the Current Festival Stuttgart (2023) or the main exhibition at 48h Neukölln Art Festival, Berlin (2017 & 2024). 2021 we won the competition for art in public space at Berlin's Karl-Marx Allee. In 2019 SONDER was fellow of the Forecast Forum while we were recently announced fellows of the European LINA programme 2024-25.
Peter Behrbohm is a Berlin based artist, designer, architect and film maker. He explores future conflicts and utopian societies through collaborative, site-specific and context-based research. Many of his works are surgical interventions in public spaces, routines and discourses, often aiming at revealing the constructedness of realities and demonstrating the possibilities of alternative, collaborative forms of coexistence. Among others, he received the “MAK Schindler Stipendium Los Angeles" (2019), the “BDA-SARP-AWARD" by the Association of German Architects, the "Initial Grant" by Berlin's Academy of the Arts (2023) and the "Elsa Neumann Stipendium" (2016). Besides SONDER he is co-founder of the artist group PARA.
https://peterbehrbohm.net/
Anton Steenbock’s work explores capitalism as a shaping force and examines how complex economic structures increasingly influence nature and society. His interventions play with megalomaniac architectural and urban development projects, commercial showrooms, and large-scale advertising campaigns to raise political awareness of urban and ecological changes. He also addresses the appropriation of public space by companies like Google Street View and sharing economy apps such as Uber, Coop, and Airbnb. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the MAC Museum of Contemporary Art in Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural São Paulo, the Biennale SUR in Argentina, Frestas Triennale in São Paulo, Frise Hamburg, and the Historical Museum of Frankfurt am Main. He has also contributed to group exhibitions at the Akademie der Künste Berlin in the Martin Gropius Bau, the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig, Kunst Werke KW Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art MAES in Brazil, and the Museum of Art MAR in Rio de Janeiro. Anton Steenbock was a recipient of the BPA – Berlin Program for Artists from 2019 to 2021, as well as the Research Grant from the Berlin Senate and the Work Grant from VG Bild in 2021. In 2020, together with Peter Behrbohm, he won the Berlin Senate’s competition for art in public space (KISR) and realized the Neustartkultur Module C project. His work was nominated for the Pipa Prize in Brazil in 2017, during which time he lived as a fellow of the Capacete Residency from 2012 to 2017.
https://www.antonsteenbock.net
Get in conctact: info [at] s-o-n-d-e-r.com