Good Night Assembly

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A song always leans forward to reach a listening ear in some future somewhere — John Berger 

For this year’s Long Night of Museums, we invite local choirs, vocal ensembles, and community singing groups to meet beneath the dome of the Tieranatomisches Theater for a shared nocturnal singing gathering. Beneath the frescoes painted by Bernhard Rode in 1790, veterinary medicine appears as an act of care, but also of vigilance and control. Can voice heal this tension?

Extended description of the historic dome frescoes at Tieranatomisches Theater

Spatial & Aesthetic Landscape

Around the circular lecture hall of the Veterinary Anatomy Theater, a dome rises upward in concentric painted geometries, resembling architectural structures that dissolve into illusion. The patterns cross one another like a woven structure opening toward the skylight above. Between the windows below the dome, human and animal figures move through uncertain scenes of closeness.

A dog rises toward the face of a seated figure and licks its nose. Another sleeps curled at the feet of an archer — or is he a hunter? Bodies lean against one another beneath hanging garlands of leaves and fruit, as if preparing a ceremony or remaining after it has ended. 
A muscular figure carries a ram across his shoulders. 
Some figures appear to keep watch, while others rest. 
Some bodies seem exhausted, reflective, mourning, or already drifting toward sleep. 
It is difficult to tell whether something is about to begin or whether it has already passed.

Beneath the dome, wooden benches descend in concentric circles toward the center of the room, like a small theater turned inward. Every body gathered here shares the same field of attention. Sound travels easily through the space. The linden wood creaks with even the slightest movement. A shift of weight, a whisper, a breath can carry beneath the dome. 

In this room, nobody remains acoustically unnoticed.

Historical Echoes: Care and Control

Painted in the late eighteenth century by Bernhard Rode, these frescoes formed part of a larger allegory for veterinary science as a newly emerging discipline of care. They placed human and animal life within the same visual and ethical field: relations of healing, guidance, labour, dependence, companionship, contagion and control.

Yet the Tieranatomisches Theater also carries another history: observation, classification, dissection, and the instrumentalization of animal life in the name of knowledge. A place dedicated to animal medicine and collective learning, where care and control remain entangled within the architecture itself. 
The figures above us remain suspended within these contradictions.

For this year’s Lange Nacht der Museen (Saturday 29.08.2026), we invite choirs, vocal ensembles, community singing groups and collective voice practitioners to gather beneath the dome and resonate with these frescoes through a shared nocturnal singing gathering.

For one night, we invite you to help put the building 

— and the creatures inhabiting its dome — to sleep.

As Jonathan Crary reminds us, “sleep is one of the few remaining experiences where, knowingly or not, we abandon ourselves to the care of others.”
A lullaby accompanies that threshold: the moment when vigilance softens, breathing slows, and one body entrusts itself to another nearby presence.

We are interested in the sounds through which bodies accompany one another into rest, sleep and states of transition: lullabies, laments, humming structures, breathing patterns, whistles, drones, whispers, repeated vocal gestures, shepherd calls, nocturnal songs and more-than-human vocal practices.

Songs for those who keep wake. 
Songs for those who may not wake.

What sounds accompany bodies into rest?
What voices remain awake while others sleep?
What does it mean to keep watch over another creature through the night? 
And, is this going to be a long night?

What does companionship sound like?
What sounds do we make to calm, gather, guide, follow or protect one another?
How do we call bodies closer?

We invite participating groups to bring a fragment of closeness capable of inhabiting the building acoustically.

Throughout the evening, artist, facilitator and holistic voice practitioner Agnieszka Bulacik will guide transitions and collective listening moments, gradually weaving together a temporary vocal fresco beneath the dome.

How to join the Good Night Assembly