Join us or a live performance by artist Ivana Dama, who activates her installation Breathing Alarms, now on view in the East German guardhouse in the Wende Museum garden.

At the center of Breathing Alarms is a custom air-raid siren powered not by machinery but by human breath. Visitors’ inhalations and exhalations generate the siren’s sound and set in motion an animation of birds inside an aluminum zoetrope. The work transforms a device built for monitoring and protection into a responsive instrument, one that only sounds through shared physical presence.

For this performance, Dama brings the installation to life in real time, followed by a conversation between the artist and Chief Curator Joes Segal exploring the connections between breath, alarm signals, and the histories embedded in the museum’s collection.

Born and raised in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, and now based in New York, Dama investigates alarm signals across social and natural systems, from the absence of birdsong as a warning sign to the role of sirens in marking ecological, political, and social concerns.

Breathing Alarms is on view through October 11, 2026. The installation is made possible by the generous support of the David Bermant Foundation, and developed in collaboration with the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.