Berlin Atonal

History

Berlin Atonal started in November 1982, staged in the divided, subsidized, culturally isolated West Berlin of the Cold War, where Dimitri Hegemann, later the founder of Tresor club and Tresor Records, built a platform for music that had nowhere else to play. Across five editions between 1982 and 1990, held mostly at the Kreuzberg venue SO36, Atonal booked the acts that West Germany's mainstream circuit had no interest in: Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria!, Test Dept, Laibach, Psychic TV, Die Haut and an early-era Depeche Mode all appeared, alongside industrial, no wave and experimental acts that were still years from any kind of commercial recognition. It was, by design, a festival for music that did not fit a genre.

The festival stopped after 1990. Hegemann has said the pause was deliberate: with the Wall down and Berlin's underground reorganizing itself around the emerging rave scene, his own attention shifted to opening Tresor, and the cult of the individual performer that Atonal had platformed felt out of step with techno's anonymous, collective energy. Atonal went dormant for 23 years.

Its home during that dormancy, and its home ever since relaunching, is Kraftwerk Berlin, a combined heat and power plant built between 1960 and 1964 on Köpenicker Straße to supply electricity and district heating to Alexanderplatz, the Charité hospital and the GDR's State Council building. The plant was decommissioned in 1997 when a newer facility took over its load, and it sat empty for years before Hegemann began reviving sections of the site in the mid-2000s, first as an extension of Tresor. The raw concrete halls, exposed pipework and turbine floors that make Kraftwerk one of Europe's most distinctive event spaces were never designed to be beautiful; they were built to move heat and power through East Berlin, which is part of why they still feel unlike any purpose-built concert venue.

Atonal returned in 2013, with Hegemann handing day-to-day direction to a younger team, Laurens von Oswald, Harry Glass and Paulo Reachi, who rebuilt the festival inside Kraftwerk's halls as a multi-day program of new commissions, audiovisual premieres and installations rather than a straightforward concert bill. Hegemann's own explanation for stepping back was pointed: he said the new organizers understood the festival's legacy well enough that handing it over was not really a risk. The relaunched festival has continued on a biennial schedule since, and by its 2025 edition, which ran five days across Kraftwerk's spaces with new work from artists including Bendik Giske, Amnesia Scanner, Mark Fell and Moin, it had become a formal member of the International Biennial Association, a marker of how far the festival has moved from its scrappy 1980s origins toward recognition as a serious institution for experimental sound and visual art.

That combination, a festival born out of Cold War West Berlin's cultural isolation, closed for 23 years, then rebuilt inside a decommissioned power station, gives Atonal a different identity from Berlin's club-centered techno festivals. It sits closer to the tradition of sound art biennials than to a standard techno lineup, even as techno and industrial music remain part of its programming.

FAQ

Does Berlin Atonal happen every year?

No. Since its 2013 relaunch, Atonal has run on a biennial schedule, typically in late August of odd-numbered years.

What kind of music and art does Berlin Atonal book?

The festival focuses on experimental sound, techno and industrial music alongside audiovisual installations and new commissioned works, closer in spirit to a sound art biennial than a conventional club festival lineup.

Is Berlin Atonal connected to Tresor?

Yes. Both trace back to Dimitri Hegemann and share the same building, Kraftwerk Berlin. Hegemann founded Atonal in 1982, later founded Tresor after Atonal's original run ended in 1990, and began reviving the Kraftwerk site as an extension of Tresor in the mid-2000s before Atonal itself relaunched there in 2013.