Beauty Salon. Practicing Care

BALKAN RADIKAL invites you to step into new routines that center mutual care and attentive gathering set in a communal beauty salon. Promoted routines of self-care, turning off social media, and retreating into private space might be at times restorative. But as a habit these approaches cultivate distances through prioritizing individual well-being over community-care. In times of crisis, turning toward one another and strengthening community bonds is more important than ever. Attention in today’s fast-paced climate is an underrecognized form of care. How can we practice being attentive to each other? How can we find and cultivate connection in the form of mutual care, sharing space, and time? And how can we preserve practices of ecological care?
We begin this journey by looking at the economic and ecological crises in the mining-town Majdanpek and how it collides with magical practices by dragon-hunters. Flotacija features a family whose destiny is entangled with both and does their best to ensure the survival of their traditions and their future generations.
In the following day, we move to practices of physical care by sharing beauty rituals with each other. Set in an eco cyber-nail salon, Petja Ivanova invites us to understand intimacy as infrastructure. Guiding through her research in Bulgarian caves, rivers, and water mythologies, fingernails become navigators of ecological and ancestral memory. The workshops offers a space to paint each others nails, linger around, chat, and exchange stories.
Bujrum is an open forum for discussion about diaspora, memory, and spirituality as forms of care and resistance. The daily practice of drinking coffee together plays an important part in many Balkan cultures. Through the shared practice of reading coffee grounds, moments of listening, storytelling, and sharing emerge. Between personal stories and collective experiences, a space opens up for
questions of belonging, loss, and memory. Dalila Daut guides us through attentive listening and open exchange, creating a space for reflection and connection.
As the program concludes, we want to eat and dance together with tunes by Eljesa Beka.
The program aims to foster existing relationships and weave new connections by putting care into literal practice. We understand caretaking as a relational bond that nurtures openness, vulnerability, and trust, prioritizing mutual care over one-way services or product consumption. By sharing responsibilities rather than buying into the individualistic beauty complex, we recharge collectively and reciprocally.

💄 PROGRAM
🥬 19.06.26 18:00 | Caring for Ecology and Magic Practices: Filmscreening of Flotacija + QA with filmmaker Zoë Aiano
💅 20.06.26 14:00 – 17:00 | Eco-Cybernails with Petja Ivanova
🔮 27.06.26 14:00 – 17:00 | Bujrum. Diaspora Spirituality as Care with Dalila Daut
💟 27.06.26 18:00 | Get-Together and Music by Eljesa 💟
Curated by BALKAN RADIKAL (Dafni Rüde, Nataša Vukajlović)
🏠 LOCATION
Vierte Welt, Galerie 1. OG, Adalbertstr. 96, 10999 Berlin
(Walk up to Café Kotti and turn to the right, passing the bridge you will reach the project space Vierte Welt)