Interview with Sven Sauer, artist, curator & co-founder of Lost Art Festival, The Dark Rooms Exhibition and Himmel unter Berlin
Dark, unrepeatable, somewhere in berlin
Whether through the Lost Art Festival, which transforms almost forgotten places into immersive art spaces, or through the exhibition series The Dark Rooms Exhibitions, which takes place entirely in pitch darkness: with their unusual concepts, the four Berlin-based exhibition makers Clara and Sven Sauer, Jan Oertzen and Jan Häusler set their own rules. Most recently, 14 empty halls across 19,000 square meters were transformed into a multi-layered sensory experience of pulsating light and sound installations, performances and culinary surprises.
For over a decade, Sven Sauer and his team have been developing formats that rethink the relationship between art and space. That strikes a nerve in our time: in a world where everything is available at any moment, experiences that exist only in the here and now become the exception.
In our conversation, Sven talks about what it means to bring digital art into spaces that were previously inaccessible, why every artwork begins with a story, and how he sees the future of festivals.
How did formats like The Dark Rooms and the Lost Art Festival come to life? What idea is behind them?
The first format actually came out of an impulse. We were at a major art event in Berlin and realized that people were no longer interested in the art at all. They walked into galleries, did a quick round, and started taking selfies. It annoyed us so much that we said: let’s create a format where that simply isn’t possible. That’s how The Dark Rooms came about. We had no expectations whatsoever. Two months later, suddenly 2,500 people were standing outside the door. We had expected around 150. Logistically, it completely overwhelmed us, but at the same time it showed us: there are a lot of people in Berlin who are interested in concepts like this.
A second defining moment was the activation of an old brewery in Prenzlauer Berg. It was about opening the site one last time before it was due to be demolished. We activated it for the final 48 hours before the bulldozers arrived. To visualize that sense of finiteness, we installed a huge clock. Everybody knew: when the hands hit zero, it would be over. It had an incredible emotional impact. People suddenly realized: this is not a place you’ll come back to at some point. This is happening right now. Step by step, that evolved into the Lost Art Festival. We realized that the interplay between art and space, especially in vacant buildings or spaces in transitio, triggered something that simply didn’t exist in that form at the time. That became the festival’s core principle: it is not repeatable. If you want to see it, you have to go now. Otherwise, it’s gone.
You work with digital and immersive formats, but you also consciously include physical, analogue elements. What is missing when art remains purely digital?
For our exhibits, an analogue component is absolutely essential. That is simply a conceptual decision on our part, because people need something they can orient themselves around. We would never show art that is purely digitally projected or displayed on screens. What is missing there is that analogue element that creates a bridge to the viewer. We’ve simply learned through experience that this is essential if people are to build an emotional connection to the works and their content.
The Lost Art Festival brings together large-scale installations, performances, live music, art talks and food. Most recently, you brought 19,000 square meters of space back to life. How do you curate such a multi-layered program?
The key is actually quite simple. The longer someone engages with an artwork, the stronger the emotional bond becomes. So we asked ourselves: how do we get people not to just walk through and leave again, but to stop of their own accord and willingly invest time? From that came the idea of connecting different layers. For example, we asked ourselves: how would I perceive an installation if I spent two hours in a club in between? Or if I had dinner there? We brought in Michelin-starred chefs because we didn’t want conventional festival food. That part, too, was meant to be an experience in its own right.
At the same time, some things simply do not combine well. With music acts, you need lots of people in a confined space for the atmosphere to build. With art, it’s more the opposite: people want to have that experience for themselves. It’s difficult to make both of those things work on the same site at the same time. We only really understood that through practice.
In 2025, the Lost Art Festival took place in Luxwerk, a more than one-hundred-year-old light bulb factory in Siemensstadt. What criteria do you use when choosing the next location?
It’s not a linear process. It’s not as if we do one exhibition and then start looking for the next location. We work on eight or nine sites in parallel, and after a year and a half, maybe one or two remain. In the case of Luxwerk, three years of negotiations preceded it. In general, it really takes a long time. A large part of the work is research: first you have to find out who owns the building. That is often not so easy, because many owners are based abroad and have very little interest in communicating. Then the real process begins. You have to build trust, ease concerns, and keep explaining what it is that we actually do. We always tell owners that it is an art exhibition with a very well-behaved audience. Our average age is 35, which is relatively high for formats like this. We are not planning a rave. Then come the financial negotiations. Once you reach an agreement there, the authorities come knocking next. Then it is all about safety, fire protection concepts, and that can take another six months. Even if everything fits, there is no guarantee. Sometimes capacities are simply lacking or communication breaks down beforehand. It is frustrating, but it’s part of the process.
The Lost Art Festival stands for being unrepeatable. What does that attitude specifically mean for the selection of works?
The basic idea was to show people: you really have to go out and see it on site. If you miss it, it’s gone. In recent years, a certain event fatigue has developed. You can see that with cinemas and theaters as well. We wanted to set something against that and say: you cannot follow all of this digitally from your computer. With works like these, you have to feel the space. You have to feel the scale. You simply cannot grasp that physical component digitally. Through this sense of finiteness, we are asking visitors to actually make a decision.
That naturally has an impact on the selection of works. Many things are prototypes or are developed specifically for the space. That means that even if individual works are shown somewhere else later on, it is never the same experience. A great deal only works in exactly that context, and that is precisely what defines it in the end.
The location stays secret
What would visitors never guess when they step onto the festival grounds?
How much work actually goes into a location like that. We spend more than 50 percent of our time simply finding and activating the right site. With large industrial halls like the one in Siemensstadt, you don’t see any of that in the end. You walk in, see a raw, dusty hall, and think: this can’t be that difficult. But in places like that, there is often no electricity, no water—or at least nothing that could actually be used for an event. For the last project, we laid 20 kilometers of cable. Afterwards, people told us that it looked like a fully equipped event venue, complete with emergency lights and everything. But before that, there was nothing there. That was a huge compliment.
Our core team consists of four people. During setup, maybe we are ten or twelve. In total, up to 800 people work on an exhibition like that. Communication with volunteers alone can take weeks. You write emails, get replies, coordinate schedules… and in the end, you are looking at a month and a half just for coordination.
Where does your fascination with dark, abandoned places actually come from?
Dark places have a very simple function: the viewer disappears. With The Dark Rooms Exhibitions, the location is always secret; you only receive the address shortly beforehand. On the way there, people often already meet others dressed in black on the subway or tram and automatically start talking to each other. There is also a very practical reason why people wear black. It’s not a homage to Berghain. Once you are inside the exhibition, you merge with the darkness.
We also show a maximum of one artwork per room so that nothing overlaps. No sound, no light, no other influences. At large events, it is often so crowded that all you really see are people. That is exactly what we wanted to dissolve. We want the art to work, and for all other distracting factors to disappear as much as possible. But that requires a great deal of space. And spaces like that are becoming increasingly rare and more expensive in Berlin.
You have grown incredibly fast. What is your secret to success?
We tried out and tested various things. I think the most important point is that we always thought from the visitor’s perspective. It quickly became clear to us that we did not want to be part of the traditional art market. Selling art was never interesting to us.
When you think that way, you automatically start asking how it feels for the visitor, what they experience, how they move through it. In classic museums or galleries, it is often different. There, the focus is on funders, financial backers, or selling artworks. All of that is legitimate, but they are different mechanisms. We don’t have to worry about whether something will sell or whether a work will fit somewhere. That probably makes us more provocative in terms of content and brings us closer to themes that are socially relevant.
To better understand what people were actually taking away from it, we started putting out guest books. At first, we tried speaking to people right after the exhibition, but they just kept walking. We realized they were so full of impressions that they didn’t really have the capacity to engage straight away. The guest books then became a kind of release valve. Many people write that what they saw was not always easy – but all the more important because of that.
How do you perceive your dual role as a participating artist and co-founder? What tensions arise from that?
At first, I was exclusively an artist. Back then, we realized that the exhibitions we wanted to create simply did not exist in Berlin. So we developed the formats ourselves as an artists’ collective, out of necessity. At some point, the whole thing grew so much that we had to restructure it. Suddenly, you have to insure different things, work with authorities, invest more money. Step by step, it became a limited company (GmbH).
But at its core, everything still comes from that artistic origin. You can still feel that today. In every decision, we think first from the artists’ perspective and not from a classic event-management logic. I think that makes a big difference in the staging.
Your installations are based on data, studies and social developments, making visible what often goes unnoticed in everyday life. How do you conceive a new artwork?
At the beginning, there is always a story, an idea, or rather a question that I find compelling. Often these are themes that cannot really be answered through texts or films. I don’t have a clear answer to them either. I try to feel my way toward something through the artwork. For me, it is about capturing a complexity, especially in social themes where you realize you can’t really move forward anymore. At that point, art has a justification for me. That is also why the form changes so much from work to work. There are artists who work with one fixed technical setup and keep developing it. For me, it’s more that the story comes first, and the technique then becomes a means of implementing it.
The process takes several years on average. But I work on several projects in parallel, all at different stages. At first, I often found it unsettling when an idea changed along the way. Now I rather like that. When I move into implementation, it is less intuitive than one might think. The creative work happens beforehand, in my head.
How do you currently organize your communications work?
Social media is an incredibly time-consuming field for us, which is why years ago we decided to focus on our email list. That was a good decision because it makes us somewhat independent. We promised our audience that they would receive a maximum of two emails per event: one announcement and one hidden ticket link. Nothing more. With two events a year, that amounts to four, maybe five emails in total. We consciously avoid classic newsletters because we do not want to overload anyone with advertising. At the same time, like many others, we struggle with spam filters. It happens that long-time visitors suddenly stop receiving our emails without us noticing. That is of course frustrating, especially because our tickets are often limited.
The future of festivals
Even if you can’t reveal the location yet: what is planned for the next edition of The Dark Rooms Exhibitions?
The next edition will take place in July 2026 in a decommissioned cinema. A cinema has a few major advantages: it is naturally dark and acoustically optimized. At the same time, the space changes completely once you strip it back. When the screen is removed and some of the seats are missing, these large stepped platforms remain. Part of our concept is that visitors are given a mat so they can lie beneath the works for as long as they want. Those steps are perfect for that.
Large cinema complexes are structurally almost like airports, full of hidden routes and spaces that you normally never see. Visitors will move exclusively through these dark, labyrinthine corridors. You completely lose your bearings, and then suddenly you emerge in a cinema auditorium, only to disappear into the next corridor right away. We even modeled the whole thing as a 3D structure to understand how the pathways would feel. One team member said it looked like an anthill. That is exactly what it will feel like.
How do you see the future of festivals?
I’m very positive. With the current rise of AI, you can feel that the changes are becoming real now, even in our immediate surroundings. It is no longer just being discussed that jobs are disappearing; it is already happening. At the same time, I am convinced that this is exactly why formats in which people physically come together will become all the more important. Digital and immersive exhibitions have increased massively in recent years. And it does not look as though the market is saturated. The demand is there. People’s willingness to experience exhibitions like these remains unbroken.
