The memory of an old cinema often doesn't start with film scenes. Instead, it begins with smells and that very specific gut feeling when pushing open heavy doors as a child. Inside – the air warm and a little dusty. A mix of popcorn, old carpet, and that indefinable scent of projector heat. It smelled of stories, even if you wouldn't have called it that back then – that's just how cinemas smell.

You'd sit there on those wonderful, slightly too soft cushioned seats, knees perhaps a little too close to the seat in front, and wait. This waiting was a feeling all its own…
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…and then the lights slowly dimmed. You'd sit there, feeling both small and incredibly alert. This memory isn't just a memory. It's physical. Everyone knows it. Yet, hardly anyone has ever seen a large part of this cinema building. There's still a world behind the auditoriums. Beyond them, something like a second architecture begins.

Hidden transport corridors. A labyrinth of tunnels and dark chambers. An entire system of passages connecting the auditoriums. The cinema was never just a place for films. It was always a building with an interior. Like a giant concrete anthill. And that's exactly where the exhibition THE DARK ROOMS VEINS begins – in the hidden layers of the cinema.

In this darkness, 10 international light and sound artists build their installations. THE DARK ROOMS VEINS – an immersive art exhibition in Berlin, from July 10 to 26, 2026.

An old cinema is always also a promise that for a few hours, anything is possible. That the world expands as soon as the lights go out.
And that somewhere in this building, a little magic still awaits.​