A satellite in orbital decay has lost the pull that kept it circling a centre. It falls back through the atmosphere it once escaped. Some bodies burn on the way down. Others survive re-entry changed, landing somewhere new within themselves. Orbital Decay, Act III of Tenants of Tender Armour at ACUD Galerie in Berlin, takes this image as its point of departure.
Curator Gabriela Matuszewska grounds the exhibition in two thinkers. The first is Nathan Brown and his concept of absolute alienation. Classical Marxism located alienation in the gap between workers and what they produce. Brown describes something wider: under late capitalism, separation has become structural and self-sustaining. The language of recognition and inclusion, once a tool against it, now keeps the machine running. Power spreads through finance, surveillance, precarious work and the management of bodies, making people visible and dispossessed at the same time. Brown's answer is disidentification. It means living inside the terms of one's alienation with a difference, and bending them into relations and meanings the system has yet to learn how to absorb.
The second is Édouard Glissant and his right to opacity. For Glissant, every person holds a density that exceeds translation, and that density is a form of dignity. Anyone made precarious by the demand for transparency keeps the right to stay opaque to the systems that would sort and use them.
Caroline Douville, Manuel Goetz, Samuel Guerrero, Julia Selin, Joshua Tarelle Reid and Zhiyuan Yang work within this tension. Their works look at ways of existing that exceed the legibility asked of a productive subject, and treat that excess as a political act. Here, alienation turns into ground for invention: new forms of presence, new ways of addressing one another, new relations outside the economy of recognition.
The opening night on 1 October closes with a solo performance by Kuba Stępień of Bastard Bath, the duo he forms with drummer Maja Gajewicz. Bastard Bath takes femme transgression apart and rebuilds it through grindcore and experimental metal, layering noise, abrasive guitars and blast-driven drums with fractured genre references, from trap rhythms to slow, grief-soaked lyrics. Their shows swing from collapse to catharsis and meet tenderness through extremity.
Orbital Decay
Act III of Tenants of Tender Armour
Curated by Gabriela Matuszewska
Artists: Caroline Douville, Manuel Goetz, Samuel Guerrero, Julia Selin, Joshua Tarelle Reid, Zhiyuan Yang
@erzu.lie @8zxkg @samuel_guerrero___ @juliaselindion @joshuatarelle @zyang_419 @apkvp. @acudgalerie @sztukamierna
Dates: 2 October to 6 December 2026
Opening: 1 October 2026, 18:00
Performance: 19:00, Bastard Bath solo by Kuba Stępień
Venue: ACUD Galerie, Berlin