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, the Tieranatomisches Theater invites audiences to join local choirs and voice practitioners for a shared nocturnal singing gathering and collective listening session in its historic lecture hall. Beneath Bernhard Rode’s frescoes, painted in 1790, veterinary medicine appears as an act of care, but also of vigilance and control. Can voice heal this tension? Sing along, rest, or help accompany the building into sleep.

In this inward-turning room where every breath carries acoustically, the Good Night Assembly asks what it means to keep watch over another living being through the night, echoing the relationships of closeness, labor, and rest depicted in the dome above.

What to expect

The musical dramaturgy follows the slow transition from evening into night. Participating groups bring together Renaissance madrigals, lullabies and polyphonic songs from diverse traditions to form a shared, living soundscape.

A Space as Instrument: The remarkable acoustics and the creaking linden-wood benches transform the lecture hall itself into a resonant body.

A Collective Vocal Fresco: Guided by artist and holistic voice practitioner Agnieszka Bulacik, the evening unfolds through moments of silence, breathing patterns, and collective listening, gradually building a temporary sonic installation beneath the dome.

Sonic Companionship: We invite you to experience sounds that calm, gather, guide, or protect—exploring lullabies, hummed structures, and nocturnal songs that bridge human and more-than-human worlds.

Duration: 135 minutes (15 minutes introduction, 120 minutes singing)

Presented in German & English language. Singing in any language.

The Performers

The evening features the Kammerchor Sono97 and Bibliotheca Musica  c/o Verein der Freunde der Staatsbibliothek  (conducted by Sergi Gili Solé), the choir Todas las Voces (conducted by Byron Carrasco), and Johanne Braun with a vocal ensemble specially assembled for this occasion, bringing together participants from her summer workshop and singers from the Berlin women’s choir Akazien-Grazien. Joined by voice practitioners Mina Djordjevic and Anna Grodecki, these diverse languages, musical traditions, and voices merge into a single composition. Developed by TA T curator of public programmes & Outreach Paz Ponce in collaboration with Agnieszka Bulacik.

Note: The participating choirs and vocal groups were selected via an open call. This event is also part of the participatory audioguide project “The Listening Theater” and will be documented through audio and video recordings.

How to join our event

Get your Tickets via Lange Nacht der Museen website

or directly at the Tieranatomisches Theater on Saturday 29th.

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Read the Open Call Text (closed)

Extended description of the historic dome frescoes at Tieranatomisches Theater

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.

How to join the Good Night Assembly