ReflektorTV: 48 Hours of Art, Aliens, and Live Broadcasting in Berlin
Could we stream live for 48 hours straight? We weren’t sure, but we were determined to try.
At 7 pm on June 27th, 2025, at the opening of the legendary 48 Stunden Neukölln festival, ReflektorTV went on air. What followed was a 48-hour non-stop broadcast of community journalism, surreal news, artist interviews, satire, and spontaneous performance — all from our little atelier in the Schillerkiez neighbourhood of the city.
But while the ReflektorTV channel ran for 48 hours, it was the weeks of preparation and community work beforehand that brought it to life.
The spark: rebooting a long-running joke
The idea for ReflektorTV had been brewing for years. Back in 2018, my good friends — Michal Zak, Edyta Rogowska Zak, Thomas Avenhaus and I — took part as contributing artists at the Bramat Theatre Festival in Goleniów, Poland. During our week in this unique little city, we created an absurdist news show, “What the Fact”. We interviewed artists and festival-goers, then transformed their stories into spoof news segments that were screened each night of the festival.
It was a project that all of us have looked back on with fondness and have thought about reviving ever since. So when this year’s 48 Stunden Neukölln festival announced its theme — “What the Fact?” — it felt like fate. Michal, Edyta and I teamed up with members of our art association Reflektor Neukölln and my theatre-making partner Caro Seidl, the other half of our collective COP5000, to bring the idea back to life.
But this time, we wanted to go deeper. We didn’t just want to make people laugh — we wanted to weave in real journalism and invite the wider community to engage with us in a meaningful way. To respond to the festival’s theme, “What the Fact - Between Truth and Perception”, we set out to create a mix of real stories and fabricated ones. We’re living in a time where the world seems to have been turned upside down, where we have to question the truth behind the stories we read constantly, and this year’s theme gave us a perfect framework to explore that instability.
Building the broadcast
Before anything went live, there was a lot of groundwork to lay.
We got the green light for the project in mid-February and held our first kickoff meeting in March. From the start, we had big ambitions: to create content with and for the local community, to produce segments ourselves in advance, to stream the show throughout the neighbourhood, and to keep the satirical news format alive as a theatrical installation throughout the festival weekend. Oh, and to stream for 48 hours straight.
As part of our effort to encourage community participation, we organised a public workshop weekend in May and opened it up to anyone interested. The sessions combined body-based practices with community journalism, storytelling, local media, and DIY video-making, led by me, Michal, Edyta, Caro, and journalist Rachel Loxton. That weekend was a real highlight for me: an amazing group of people came together, and we all learned from each other. We only wish we’d had more time to go through the full process as a group. Still, we were delighted that some participants went on to produce their own content afterwards, which we included in the final stream.
Picture: Me, Rachel, Edyta and some of the workshop participants
Local connections
A big part of our preparation involved connecting with the local neighbourhood. We didn’t just want to stream into Neukölln — we wanted people to be part of the stream itself.
We aimed to involve local artists and venues across the district by screening ReflektorTV in multiple spaces and inviting them to contribute content or take part in live segments during the festival.
In the lead-up to the festival, we reached out to a range of artists and collectives taking part in 48 Stunden Neukölln. I interviewed several of them – Renata Faccenda from Aviatrix, Sara Reichelt – ahead of time and put together a short documentary-style segment that became part of the stream. Though time and manpower were major constraints, we still managed to get a few other venues on board to stream the broadcast. During the festival weekend, we also visited other artists and spaces to stream live on location, bringing their contributions directly into the broadcast.
Picture: Part of the RelektorTV Team during the pre-prodcuction weekend
Do we have enough content?
One thing we realised early on: streaming for 48 hours means a lot of content. To avoid relying solely on the unpredictable energy of the live weekend, we decided to pre-produce as much as we could, giving ourselves a buffer and ensuring there was always something ready to go.
We dedicated another full weekend to filming: improvised comedy sketches, artistic performances, and spontaneous street interviews in Neukölln.
At the same time, I began pre-producing What the Fact?! News — our alien-led news show, fronted by intergalactic CEO Quasar de Helmet – later to become one of the recurring centrepieces of the broadcast.
It was also a chance to take my theatre collective’s character, The Whore of Babylon, out into the streets of Neukölln to offer passersby lessons in “apocalypse training.”
Edyta produced an MTV-like music video segment called Tapes from the Kiez, featuring music videos by Neukölln-based artists.
Photos: Snapshots from the pre-production weekend
Inside the studio
Our atelier on Weisestraße became the heart of ReflektorTV during the 48 Stunden Neukölln weekend.
One of the great things about being part of an association like Reflektor is having so many talented hands involved. We were especially lucky to have Sandra Markgraf, a brilliant set designer, who painted our iconic central TV and pulled together the entire studio setup in just two hours.
She transformed the space into a hybrid environment — part studio, part living room — complete with a TV and sofa where visitors could sit, chat, and watch the stream unfold in real time. The back room, separated by a curtain, became mission control: home to Michal, the streaming setup, green screen and the headquarters of the What the Fact?! alien newsroom.
The technical stuff
I’m not going to pretend I fully understood how the stream worked, but what I do know is that Michal was the mastermind behind it all. On top of being the project’s graphic designer and chief video editor, he figured out the best technical solution for actually streaming the thing: a custom-built website streaming via Twitch, using software that could switch between live and pre-recorded content.
One essential part of the setup involved gathering a bunch of old TVs, distributing them around the neighbourhood — including in the front room of our atelier — and connecting them to the stream. That part, I did get to grips with. I can now proudly say: if you need someone to program an Android TV box, I’m your woman.
Beyond that, Michal ran the stream for the entire weekend, camped out behind a curtain in the bar room and kept the whole thing running like The Wizard of Oz.
Also tucked into that space was our green screen setup, which we used to stream live, usually late at night, once the important tasks were done. It became a moment to let our hair down. Michal truly let loose as his alter ego, Jacques Russell, DJing in various ridiculous costumes on top of an old broken stove.
Picture: Michal working in his back room studio.
Going LIVE!
One of the defining aspects of ReflektorTV was its live format. From the start, we didn’t just
want to create content — we wanted to create the feeling of being on air, in the moment, making it up as we went along.
We kicked off on Friday night with a live launch hosted by journalist Rachel Loxton, who stepped into the role of TV presenter. She interviewed us — the ReflektorTV team — followed by a surreal segment from our alien, What the Fact?! News crew. The evening also featured a live concert from local rapper Monsy, a Dada performance by Wolle, and set the tone for a weekend packed with live segments, streamed from both the studio and around Neukölln.
Each day, we wrote and produced a fresh news show just in time for our 6 pm broadcast. Scripts were often finished minutes before going live. Our presenter read them live from the studio while we cut between the desk and pre-recorded interviews with artists and festival-goers from earlier that day. Sometimes we had an audience in the room — people who drifted in and out, stayed for a while, or just watched from the doorway. It may not have been obvious to every visitor (especially those confused by the aliens and the general madness), but what we pulled off was no small feat.
Throughout the weekend, our mobile teams also roamed the district. We streamed from exhibitions, interviewed artists and collectives, and documented impromptu moments — from tarot readings at The Pool, to a performance by Sabrina Bartolozzi, an exhibition by
Corner Condition, to a philosophical chat with a tree at KI Werkstatt. Not to mention our rogue mobile correspondent live streaming a bike tour from around the district.
Even though we knew our online audience was small, the energy of going live gave the project momentum, urgency, and a kind of strange magic that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
Picture: Michal, Matthias, Caro, Me and Rachel during the live launch.
Lessons in chaos, creativity, and collaboration
We didn’t have a big production team. We had a very limited budget. But what we had was people who believed in the idea, and were willing to throw everything they had at it for a weekend. Our “headquarters” was a single room. Our schedule was insane. And yet somehow, by Sunday night, we had streamed for nearly 48 hours.
We’d love to build on what we’ve started: to develop a longer-term version of the community journalism workshop, to take the fake news concept to new festivals, and to make live streaming part of our regular ReflektorNeukölln programming. There’s huge potential in what we created—both for the art and for the connections it sparked.
But for now, we’re just proud that we pulled it off.
