Mischa Leinkauf, born in 1977, lives and works in Berlin. In his performative videos, installations, and photographs, he explores the hidden possibilities of urban environments and the various boundaries of space created by barriers, rules, and architecture. He has received numerous awards and exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Helsinki Art Museum, Moderna Museet Stockholm, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Manifesta 11.

Aljoscha Begrich, also born in 1977, is a dramaturg and curator based in Berlin. He develops complex performance works in collaboration with international artists and collectives such as Rimini Protokoll, raumlaborberlin, Lola Arias, Henrike Naumann, and Ersan Mondtag. He curated the Berlin Herbstsalon at Maxim Gorki Theater from 2015 to 2019, served as dramaturg for Ruhrtriennale from 2020 to 2022, and is one of the artistic directors of the festival OSTEN in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. In 2024, Aljoscha Begrich took over as director of the International Forum at the Berlin Theatertreffen together with Sima Djabar Zadegan.

Drawing from their own pasts in East Germany (GDR) and the Sakoku period in Japan, Leinkauf and Begrich question whether decent social behavior and responsibility can only be enforced through government pressure or if personal commitment is sufficient. Are we capable of learning from the past to abandon our wasteful lifestyles? Their work seeks an artistic approach to examine how we navigate rules, balancing between adherence and transgression.