Li Lorian (Jerusalem/Gießen) works across theater, video, visual arts, and performance. In her artistic practice, she investigates visual language and new performance techniques. She is particularly interested in political contexts and in how documentary elements can be transformed into poetic means.

Mattin (Bilbao/Berlin) engages with the social and economic conditions of experimental music through his live performances, recordings, and writings. He examines improvisation in terms of its individual parameters—such as the idea of freedom—to challenge and test the conventions of the genre.

In this hands-on workshop, selected works by the media-theater group machina eX will be analyzed and participants will independently build exemplary game-theater prototypes. The focus is on the frequently discussed analog-digital interface, exploring formats that use various digital communication tools during performance. We will examine remote-control modalities and learn strategies and tools for integrating game design into theater.

Yves Regenass (dramaturgy, performance, directing) studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim and is a founding member of the media-theater group machina eX, with which he has realized numerous productions in and outside Europe. From 2013 to 2017, he worked as program dramaturg at ROXY Birsfelden (CH), supporting a wide range of theater, performance, and dance productions. He has taught on the topic of games in theater at institutions including the Federal Academy for Cultural Education Wolfenbüttel, the Bern University of the Arts, and many others. With machina eX, Yves Regenass won the Georg Tabori Prize, and his projects have been invited to festivals such as Impulse Festival, Theater der Welt, and the Swiss Theater Meeting.

Christine Chu is a choreographer, dancer, and performer. She studied Modern Dance at the Folkwang University of the Arts and worked for many years with Carlotta Ikeda’s women’s Butoh ensemble Ariadone. She has also performed as a contemporary dancer with Ingo Reulecke, Kim van der Boon, Rubato, and others, and from 2000 to 2003 collaborated with the Companhia Paulo Ribeiro in Portugal.

Her artistic and pedagogical work focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration between dance, theater, and other media. The body, its materiality, and its sublimation are central to her practice. Her projects have received multiple awards, including the Stuttgart Theater Prize twice. From 2006 to 2016, she taught in the Intermedial Design program at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.

Von 2018-2021 war Judith Siegmund Professorin für Gegenwartsästhetik an der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. Vorhergegangen waren 2011–2018 eine Juniorprofessur für Theorie der Gestaltung/Ästhetische Theorie mit einer Teildenomination Gendertheorie an der Universität der Künste Berlin; 2015/16 eine Vertretung des Fachgebiet »Geschichte der Philosophie« am Institut für Philosophie der Freien Universität Berlin sowie wissenschaftliche Anstellungen, Lehr- und Forschungsaufträge an verschiedenen Universitäten und Kunsthochschulen. 

Thomas Maos moves between popular and experimental, composed and freely improvised music. For over 20 years, he has collaborated with musicians, actors, theaters, lighting artists, and dancers in interdisciplinary projects. His CAMP Festival, founded in 1999, has toured internationally (Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Portugal) and was invited to the Venice Biennale in 2013.

For the multiple-award-winning guitarist (grants from Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, and the 2017 Baden-Württemberg Theater Prize), the focus is always on working with sound. His passion lies in electro-acoustic music and in expanding the sonic spectrum of both acoustic and electric guitar. Thomas Maos regularly composes and releases recordings that move between song and sound art. Together with musician Fried Dähn, he organizes the interdisciplinary concert series SONIC VISIONS at the Kulturzentrum FranzK in Reutlingen. His latest CD is titled glühen.

Sybille Neumeyer is an interdependent artist and researcher based in Berlin. Through her artworks and participatory workshops she investigates environmental issues and relationships between humans and non-humans. Her research draws from various fields such as biology, history of science, anthropology, medicine, geology and science fiction – often in collaboration and exchange with scientists – and opens post-disciplinary perspectives for her work. Through polyphonic narration, cartographies, installations, walks, performative lectures and video essays she is examining the intersections of biodiversity loss, climate crisis, bio-politics and multi-species health. Recent projects are »souvenirs entomologiques« for »Critical Zones – Observatories for Earthly Politics«; ZKM Karlsruhe and »voicing encounters – a narrative cartography of virus« as part of »Contagious Cities: KOEXISTENZ« at and around the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

This practice has sprung up in response to the fact that the digital networks have made possible a radical expansion of access beyond geographic and economic divides, and yet the public libraries were denied from providing that access as a consequence of the limitations of copyright and the economic barriers in the economically uneven world of research and learning. Users digitizing, freeing, and sharing books and articles have stepped up to supplement what public libraries were not able to do. We will also highlight practices of pirate care that go along with digitizing, sharing, creating collections, and maintaining infrastructures of shadow libraries that we have called the custodianship.

We will show how creating a collection can be a political intervention by showing some examples of collections we have created and demonstrate hands-on how one can easily do it.

Marcell Mars is a research associate at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University (UK). Mars is one of the founders of Multimedia Institute/MAMA in Zagreb. His research Ruling Class Studies, started at the Jan van Eyck Academy (2011), examines state-of-the-art digital innovation, adaptation, and intelligence created by corporations such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and eBay. He is a doctoral student at Digital Cultures Research Lab at Leuphana University, writing a thesis on Foreshadowed Libraries. Together with Tomislav Medak he founded Memory of the World/Public Library, for which he develops and maintains software infrastructure.

Tomislav Medak is a doctoral student at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University. Medak is a member of the theory and publishing team of the Multimedia Institute/MAMA in Zagreb, as well as an amateur librarian for the Memory of the World/Public Library project. His research focuses on technologies, capitalist development, and postcapitalist transition, particularly on economies of intellectual property and unevenness of technoscience. Together with Marcell Mars he coedited Public Library and Guerrilla Open Access.

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Hass is a theater scholar, dramaturg, and author. Until autumn 2016, she taught theater studies at Ruhr University Bochum, founded the Jahrbuch für das Theater im Ruhrgebiet (2001–2011), and initiated the master’s program Szenische Forschung. She has held guest professorships in, among other places, Paris and Frankfurt am Main. Her most recent publication is Kraftfeld Chor. Aischylos Sophokles Kleist Beckett Jelinek (Berlin, 2020).

Laura Strack studied theater studies and literary translation. In 2020, she earned her doctorate at the International Graduate College European Cultural Studies of the Universities of Palermo and Düsseldorf with her dissertation Farsi comune. Topographies of Precarious Theater Spaces in Contemporary Europe. As a translator, she works on theoretical and literary texts from French and Italian.

Shusha Niederberger researches and teaches in the field of art, culture, and digitality. She studied fine and digital arts in Zurich and Vienna, directed art mediation at the HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel from 2014 to 2021, and teaches contemporary network culture at the F+F School of Art and Design in Zurich. She was part of the research project Creating Commons (2017–2019, IFCAR, ZHDK), which examined digital artistic practices as commoning. She is currently writing her PhD on user data practices as part of the research project Latent Spaces – Performing the Ambiguity of Data (IFCAR, ZHDK).

Balafon player Aly Keïta was born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Coming from a family of balafon players—his father was also a balafonist—he began performing at a young age, bringing his »music to the market.« In the Keïta family, the balafon is serious business. Aly Keïta has been building and playing his own instruments since childhood and has reached the ranks of the world’s finest musicians, collaborating with artists such as Rhoda Scott, Omar Sosa, Joe Zawinul, Pharoah Sanders, Paolo Fresu, Étienne M’Bappé, Paco Séry, Trilok Gurtu, Jan Garbarek, and many others. He currently lives in Berlin.

These artists establish organizations and institutions—not as a means to an end, but as their primary artistic work. The institution becomes art, and art becomes the institution. Action spaces and possibilities for influence are expanded, as are aesthetic potentials when symbolic practice intersects with structural effect.

The lecture will present a wide range of artist-led organizations: from Marina Naprushkina’s Büro für Antipropaganda to the Russian group Chto Delat’s School of Engaged Art, Tania Bruguera’s Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR), Renzo Martens’ Institute for Human Activities (IHA), Yael Bartana’s Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), as well as the Silent University and the Vienna-based Wochenklausur.

Florian Malzacher is an independent curator, dramaturg, and author. From 2012 to 2017, he served as Artistic Director of the Impulse Theater Festival and, prior to that, spent seven years as Chief Dramaturg/Curator of the festival steirischer herbst. As a dramaturg, he has worked with Rimini Protokoll, Lola Arias (ARG), Mariano Pensotti (ARG), and regularly with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma (USA). His publications include Not Just a Mirror. Looking for the Political Theatre of Today (2015) and Empty Stages, Crowded Flats. Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (with Joanna Warsza, 2017). In 2020, his book Gesellschaftsspiele. Politisches Theater heute (Social Games: Political Theatre Today) was published. Since early 2021, he has hosted the lecture series The Art of Assembly. Florian Malzacher lives in Berlin.

Winnie Huang is a Chinese-Australian violinist, violist, gestural performance artist and composer currently based between Belgium and France. An active performer of new music, Winnie is a founding member and solo violinist of Paris based new music ensemble soundinitiative and co-founder and member of performative duo LOOKOUT. As part of the Contemporary Leaders, Winnie is also currently co-curating the Lucerne Festival Forward.
She continually works with emerging and established composers, such as Jessie Marino, Bernhard Lang, Sivan Cohen Elias, Chris Swithinbank, Clara Iannotta, Michelle Agnes Magalhaes, Joanna Bailie, Charlie Sdraulig, Alexander Schubert, Carolyn Chen, Mauro Lanza and Peter Ablinger and regularly performs with international ensembles such as Nadar Ensemble (BE), lovemusic (FR), Down the Rabbit Hole (BE), Ensemble Linea (FR), Lucilin Ensemble (LUX), MAM (DE), and Australian ensemble Argonaut. Winnie frequently performs at international festivals such as Ars Musica, Donaueschinger Musiktage Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Manifeste, Lucerne Festival, Klang Festival, Festival Royaumont, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Festival Automne, Ruhrtriennale, BIFEM, Brisbane Festival, Warsaw Autumn among others. 

Inspired by the recent innovations in the field of distributed ledger technologies and web 3.0 (or blockchain), The Sphereis a research-creation project funded by Creative Europe for the development of a digital infrastructure for the performing arts. It allows for different actors constituting the art ecosystem – artists, cultural professionals, audience, cultural organisations and a wide range of sympathisers and other potential stakeholders – to initiate creative collaborations and implement new funding strategies.

As a transdisciplinary research-creation endeavour, The Sphere is a place of mutually transformative exchanges between artistic processes (art flows) and funding practices (economic flows). It aims to pragmatically address one of the key challenges of our times: re-thinking sustainable value production and distribution in an age of deep cultural and ecological transformations.

Erik Bordeleau is a philosopher, writer and fugitive planner, recently hired as a researcher at Lisbon NOVA university in cinema and philosophy. He has published and co-edited several books and articles in different languages at the intersection of political philosophy, contemporary art, world cinema, blockchain cultures, finance and media theory. A German translation of his book on the commons, Das Common des Komunismus. Eine Kartographie, was published earlier this year at Büchner Verlag (2021). In collaboration with Saloranta & De Vylder, he is developing The Sphere, a web 3.0 infrastructure for self-organisation in the performing arts.

Olle Strandberg is a director and artist working with circus as a starting point. During the 2010’s he was a director for the company Cirkus Cirkör where his productions played over 600 times for a worldwide audience. In secret, he became increasingly interested in and involved in the crypto community where he has got lost somewhere near the forest edge of the dark forest. There Olle has become the founder and artistic co-worker at the company Saloranta & de Vylder as well as one of the initiators of The Sphere. Today he’s looking for something that can lead him back, or forward, or anywhere.

Tactical Tech is an international NGO that engages with citizens and civil-society organisations to explore and mitigate the impacts of technology on society.
Our vision is a world where digital technologies can contribute to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable society. To enable this change, we investigate how digital technologies impact society and individual autonomy, using our findings to create practical solutions for citizens and civil society actors.

Christopher Dell (Dr. phil. habil.) is an urban design and architecture theorist, composer, and musician. He has held professorships in urban design and urban theory at HafenCity University Hamburg, the Technical University of Munich, and the Universität der Künste Berlin. Dell is the director of ifit – Institut für Improvisationstechnologie in Berlin and, since 2021, a member of the design firm Integral Designers in Paris.

As a musician and composer, Christopher Dell works at the intersection of contemporary composed and improvised music. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has called him »the greatest vibraphone technician in the history of European jazz.«

School of Commons (SoC) is a community-based initiative dedicated to the study and development of decentered knowledge, located at the Zurich University of the Arts. Promoting a broad, integrative understanding of knowledge, we focus on matters of organization surrounding the production and mediation of knowledge. Founded in 2016 as a space for self-organized education and research, our aim is to build an open environment that enables an international community of artists, designers, musicians, scientists and educators to collaboratively innovate, scrutinize, and discuss knowledge practices under their own direction. 

In the basis, Elsa M’Bala departs from what Eduard Glissant called creolization: the process of mixing different existing cultures in order to create a new hybrid culture. Each of the tracks that are addressed in this lecture exemplify her unique working method, which is marked by her use of sound samples, the activation of archives and the mixture of traditional and modern music styles. The different tracks feature traditional African instruments, rap, house music, an interview with Glissant and south African language, blend into a new hybrid mindset.

Kai Wiegandt is Professor of Literature at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. His research focuses on postcolonial literature and world literature, migration literature, early modern literature and culture, literary anthropology, and the intersections between philosophy and literature. In 2014, he was elected a member of the Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and in 2018 he was admitted to the Heisenberg Program by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

If negation is the correct category, it makes a significant difference whether something is not theater, not dance, not music, not sculpture, or not painting. Yet even these negations suggest too much unity—if not in terms of content, then at least in terms of method. In fact, the modes of distancing from each discipline are as diverse as what they set themselves apart from, and one would need to add deviation and dislocation to the notion of negation; moreover, the various movements by no means converge.

To work through this field, it is necessary to trace where a performative practice originates and where it takes place, making the categories of material and site central analytical tools.

This lecture will elaborate on these ideas both theoretically and historically and test them through selected examples.

From the back cover of Laaber Verlag:

»Helmut Lachenmann has long been one of the defining figures of contemporary music; his works are performed worldwide, and their significance is unquestioned. This monograph demonstrates, based on in-depth source and work analyses, that the composer’s path is on the one hand consistent, yet the works created over the course of 60 years are also marked by significant differences, processes of opening, and new approaches. Lachenmann’s oeuvre shows numerous resonances and reflections of other compositional approaches as well as various philosophical positions.«

Jörn Peter Hiekel: Helmut Lachenmann und seine Zeit (Große Komponisten und ihre Zeit), Laaber Verlag 2023, €46.80

On the occasion of the book’s release this spring, the author will discuss the creation and conception of the volume. Helmut Lachenmann himself will also participate in the subsequent roundtable.

The works of deufert&plischke are unwavering commitments to the participatory process. With their playful rule systems, open scores, and scores-as-instructions, they develop their very own form of social choreography. Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke, as an artistic duo over the past twenty years, have collaborated from the very beginning—both with each other and with others. Their performances and transdisciplinary works are always created in dialogue, questioning the hierarchy between artists and audience, and generating new spaces that leave room for the imagination of all participants.

The history of contemporary classical and electronic music, as taught at universities and art schools, is clearly biased and urgently in need of a comprehensive update. The concept of decolonization lies at the heart of the proposed solutions. Although there is documentation and research on these topics, it is important to note that access to and availability of this information can vary. Many studies, websites, and history books often focus on only a few countries or regions. Academic journals, music publications, and university research centers do publish studies on non-Western music, but coverage in the fields of contemporary classical and electronic music remains quite limited.

The rise of digital platforms and archives has made sharing recordings and information easier. For the most up-to-date and detailed knowledge, it is recommended to consult current scholarly publications, music journals, and online repositories, and to explore the work of scholars, institutions, and independent local researchers actively documenting and investigating non-Western electronic, electroacoustic, experimental, and contemporary classical music. However, for non-academics, these resources are not always easily accessible. How can we challenge academic circles to be more inclusive and share their knowledge more broadly?

Additionally, the presentation will address the integration of culturally relevant repertoires and the fostering of an inclusive learning environment. The goal is to empower students to explore and appreciate the diversity of musical traditions beyond the Western canon.

Cedrik Fermont is a Belgian/Congolese composer, musician, producer, author, and label owner who has been active in noise, electronic, and experimental music since 1989. His compositions and installations range from sound art and electroacoustic music to noise and more conventional dance music.

Building on the Aristotelian distinction between poiesis and praxis, Arendt further explicates the intersubjective enactment of praxis as an excess event that goes far beyond the possible intentions of the actor. This surplus occurs in the space of appearances, where actions are seen, judged, and narrated—i.e., understood—by others, and it is through this process that they truly qualify as »action« in Arendt’s emphatic sense.

Sophie Loidolt is Professor of Philosophy at TU Darmstadt. Her research focuses on phenomenology, political philosophy, legal philosophy and ethics, as well as transcendental philosophy and philosophy of mind.

Joanna Warsza is a curator of visual and performing arts as well as architecture. She studied dramaturgy at the Warsaw Theatre Academy and at the University of Paris 8. In 2007, she founded the Laura Palmer Foundation, a platform for independent art, performance, architecture, and theory projects, which she directed until 2011. Warsza primarily works in public space and explores social and political agendas through her curatorial projects, such as the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw, Israeli youth delegations in Poland, and the legacy of post-Soviet architecture in the Caucasus. She most recently served as head of the Public Program for Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg (2014), curated the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2013), and was associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2012). She currently teaches as a Senior Lecturer at CuratorLab at Konstfack in Stockholm and lives in Berlin and Warsaw.

Lydia Rilling is a curator and musicologist specializing in contemporary music and music theater. Since March 2022, she has been the Artistic Director of the Donaueschinger Musiktage. From 2016, she led the festival rainy days and served as chief dramaturg at the Philharmonie Luxembourg. In this role, she was also one of the initiators of the red bridge projectin 2017, which connects visual arts, music, dance, theater, and performance. As an author, moderator, and journalist, she worked for numerous institutions between 2005 and 2016, including SWR and the Berlin Festival. In 2015, she co-curated the Thinking Together program for the MaerzMusik festival. From 2011 to 2016, she taught and researched as a musicologist at the University of Potsdam and was previously a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York.

Florian Malzacher is a curator, author, and dramaturg, as well as the host of The Art of Assembly, a series of lectures and conversations on the potential of assemblies in art, activism, and politics (since 2021). His current projects include, among others, Training for the Future (with Jonas Staal, since 2018). He is co-editor of the series Postdramatisches Theater in Portraits published by Alexander Verlag Berlin. In 2020, his book Gesellschaftsspiele. Politisches Theater heute (Social Games: Political Theatre Today) was published. His writings have been translated into fifteen languages.

From 2013 to 2017, he was Artistic Director of the Impulse Theatre Festival (Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Mülheim/Ruhr). From 2006 to 2012, he served as Chief Dramaturg/Curator of the multidisciplinary festival steirischer herbst in Graz, Austria, and from 2018 to 2020 as curatorial advisor to the Ruhrtriennale. He has held visiting professorships, teaching appointments, and master classes at universities and art academies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Giessen, Helsinki, Leipzig, Oslo, Taipei, Vienna, Zagreb, and Zurich, among others.

Anne Lepper is a playwright. She studied philosophy, literature, and history in Wuppertal, Cologne, and Bonn. Her debut play, Sonst alles ist drinnen (Everything Else Is Included), was invited to the »Long Night of New Drama« in Munich in 2009, where it won both the Audience and Sponsorship Awards. In 2010, Lepper participated in the Forum of Young European Authors at the theater biennale New Plays from Europe in Wiesbaden and Mainz. This was followed by the plays Hund wohin gehen wir (Dog, Where Are We Going), which was invited to the tt Stückemarkt of the Berlin Theater Meeting in 2011, and Seymour oder ich bin nur aus Versehen hier(Seymour or I’m Here by Accident), which premiered in 2012 at Schauspiel Hannover under the direction of Claudia Bauer and had its Swiss premiere in Bern two years later. Both plays were also adapted as radio plays by Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Her play Käthe Hermann led to her first invitations to the Mülheimer Theatertage and the Author’s Theater Days at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 2012. In the critics’ poll of Theater heute, Lepper was named Emerging Playwright of the Year 2012.

With her play Mädchen in Not (Girl in Distress), she won the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis in 2017 and was named Playwright of the Year. The text was later adapted into an opera, which premiered in Dortmund in 2022. In 2021, her early play Hund wohin gehen wir was premiered at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. Lepper is a co-founder of PEN Berlin and currently writes commissioned works for the Staatstheater Stuttgart and Schauspiel Essen.

Ruth Sonderegger is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She received her doctorate from the Free University of Berlin and subsequently taught for several years at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.

Her current research areas include: the constitution and history of Western philosophical aesthetics (in the context of primitive accumulation), theories of practice, cultural studies, critical theories of racial capitalism, and resistance studies.

CAMPUS GEGENWART invites you to a presentation and joint discussion with Daniel Martin Feige, Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart; Maria Huber, Research Associate at CAMPUS GEGENWART and specialist in artistic research; and Christian Grüny, Professor of Contemporary Aesthetics at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts.

Lina Lapelytė will discuss her most recent works including The Mutes, what happens with a dead fish?, Currents and Study of Slope as well as previous works such as Sun and Sea (Marina), Ladies, Pirouette and Play for the Parallels. The artist talk will be followed by a sound walk with the artist. 

Panel Discussion with:

» Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Seng, Rector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart

« Dr. Barbara Eggert, Rector of the Merz Akademie Stuttgart

» Axel Köhler, Rector of the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts

« Marc Gegenfurtner, Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of Stuttgart

» Prof. Britta Wirthmüller, Professor of Performance at CAMPUS GEGENWART, Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts

« Prof. Dr. Christian Grüny, Professor of Contemporary Aesthetics & Philosophy at CAMPUS GEGENWART, Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts

Viktoriia Vitrenko is a versatile Ukrainian soprano, conductor, and artistic director. Her debut album Szenen (2019, AUDITE), featuring chamber music by György Kurtág, was awarded the Supersonic Pizzicato Award and received nominations for the German Record Critics’ Award (PdSK 2019) and the International Contemporary Music Award 2020 (ICMA 2020). As an independent artist, she was Artist-in-Residence at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris (2021) and at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (2023/24). She is an alumna of the German Music Council’s InSzene Vokalproject for contemporary music and was awarded the Michiko Hirayama Prize by the Scelsi Foundation in Italy in 2023. Vitrenko is also co-founder and current co-curator of the InterAKT initiative, an independent collective of interdisciplinary artists in Stuttgart.

In cooperation with the Studio Neue Musik

As part of the werk_statt_festival in the winter semester 2024/25, the Studio Neue Musik welcomes Chaya Czernowin on November 29 with her work The Fabrication of Light. In this context, the U.S.-American composer will be a guest in the Campus Gegenwart lecture series. In her lecture »What is Maintained and What is Changing: How Growth Happens,«she provides insights into her work and aesthetic approaches.

Jee-Ae Lim (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer from South Korea, currently based in Berlin. She studied Korean dance in Seoul and earned an MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the HZT, University of the Arts Berlin. With her uniquely developed choreographic approach, she blends elements of contemporary and traditional dance. Her artistic interest focuses on the body as a repository of cultural experiences and memories, bringing together tradition and the present, individual and collective memory, mobility, and notions of home. Her work is inspired by her personal experience of diaspora, which she expresses physically through dance.

The digital archive of the independent performing arts has set out to make these materials visible, to collect, link, and present information and documents. Making the arts digitally visible is also the goal of tanz:digital. The platform connects dance and media history with contemporary artistic works and media objects in a digital archive. Michael Freundt, theatre scholar, author, and Managing Director of the Dachverband Tanz, speaks on the potential of these developments.

Maria Huber is a Research Associate at Campus Gegenwart. Her research focuses on digital performances, rehearsal ethnography, ideas from new materialism, as well as decolonial and queer theories. The lecture will be delivered in spoken English, followed by an open discussion in which specific terms and concepts can also be explained in German.

Drawing on contemporary installation and performance works (including Arthur Jafa’s AGHDRA, Isaac Julien’s Western Union: Small Boats, and Selina Thompson’s SALT), this lecture explores what it might mean to revisit this liquid site of subjugation and to consider the ocean as a fluid archive, carrying within it the traces of this violent history.

How do we connect – with our surroundings, with each other, and with the processes that move us? Connecting Through is an performative format that places the moment of exchange at its center – between bodies, materials, spaces, and time.

The students create a space where fluid and interdisciplinary works become visible. Processes leave traces, dialogues take shape, impulses shift – everything remains in motion. Throughout the day, a living cartography of artistic practices unfolds, continuously evolving through encounter, listening, sharing, and response.

Alexander Cameltoe is one of Germany‘s most prominent Drag Kings. His work ranges from performing at the Stuttgart Opera, writing and directing his own plays, hosting a monthly show in Berlin and touring internationally. He is known best for his theatrically gripping acts, and chameleon-like transformations.

Participants will be asked to prepare a mood-board of inspiration and a loose concept before beginning. For those interested in a deeper dive, Alexander will be teaching two Drag Makeup Workshops at the Weißenburg Queer Communiy Center in Stuttgart on the 10th and 11th (Masterclass and Beginner 101).

Shannon Jackson is the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of Arts & Humanities and Chair of Art History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration in visual, performing, and media arts, as well as the role of the arts in social institutions and societal change. She is the author of several books, including Back Stages (2022), and directs the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative at UC Berkeley. Jackson has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is actively involved in a variety of arts and academic organizations.

9:30 Uhr
Performance Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion

10:00 Uhr
Introduction by Christian Grüny & Britta Wirthmüller

10:30 Uhr
Stephanie Schroedter: Research into Sound and Performative Movement–from Translations and Transformations to Participatory Sense Making

11:30 Uhr
Coffee break

12:00 Uhr
Litó Walkey: The Way Writing Moves and How Movement Writes–Instances of Language and Performance that Trace and Invite Affective Circulations of Sense and Self-drifting

13:00 Uhr
Lunch break

14:30 Uhr
Adrian Heathfield: Carrying Things Together/Gathering

15:30 Uhr
Eloain Lovis Hübner: Structuring Queering [?] the World. On Compositional Thinking in More-Than-Musical Contexts

16:30 Uhr
Coffee break

17:00 Uhr
Round table

Founded in 1827, the Württembergischer Kunstverein (WKV), located in the heart of Stuttgart directly on Schlossplatz, is one of the largest art associations in Germany. With around 2,500 members, more than 1,700 square meters of exhibition and event space, workshops, and an atelier building, it plays a significant role both locally and internationally.

Its program, oriented equally toward local and global perspectives, continually explores new and unconventional forms of presentation, mediation, and participation. The WKV’s work receives attention not only in Stuttgart but also on a broad international level.

In conversation, directors Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ provide insights into the work of the WKV and its positioning within the context of Stuttgart’s cultural scene.

The lecture »Place is the Space« examines the significance of place as a constitutive element of artistic practice. Drawing on—and at the same time reversing—Sun Ra’s dictum »Space is the Place,« the focus shifts from the utopian liberation through art to art’s embeddedness within its respective contexts. Rather than privileging the space of imagination, the lecture foregrounds the primacy of place—its social, historical, and institutional conditions.

Based on three specific missteps from my own artistic career, I demonstrate how errors can become productive when read as symptoms of structural tensions. In this sense, »Place is the Space« is conceived as a plea for a transdisciplinary practice that does not strive to transcend context, but instead understands it as the very site of thinking and acting.

Since 2004, Wagenhalle e.V. has developed a unique production site at Stuttgart’s Nordbahnhof (North Station). Following a comprehensive renovation and expansion of the Wagenhalle beginning in 2020, it has become permanently established as an art and cultural center in Stuttgart.

The former railcar maintenance hall from 1895, together with two studio buildings and a new extension, now houses 96 studios, ateliers, and workshops for 150 artists and cultural practitioners working in the visual and performing arts, music, photography, graphic and web design, arts and crafts, architecture, baubotany, curatorial practice, as well as film and media art.

KVWH and its members animate the project space with a diverse and open program, take an active role in the local neighborhood’s development, and aim to help shape the future of the vibrant Rosenstein district.

Franziska Stulle leads a tour through the Hülsewig House, offering comprehensive insight into the life and work of the artist Nana Hülsewig. The apartment becomes a total artistic installation: everyday artifacts, paintings, video works, and costume pieces are displayed throughout the rooms, bearing witness to Nana’s life and artistic practice.

The tour is followed by a conversation between Nana Hülsewig and Britta Wirthmüller.

Prof. Nikola Lutz is a saxophonist, composer, and co-founder of the Stuttgart Collective for Contemporary Music – S-K-A-M e.V. At Campus Gegenwart, she presents the network, which since 2015 has brought together Stuttgart’s independent scene for new, experimental, and improvised music. S-K-A-M sees itself as a platform for contemporary sound art in unusual locations and as a driving force for a vibrant, open musical landscape.

JOiN – Junge Oper im Nord–is the Staatsoper Stuttgart’s own venue dedicated to young audiences. Here, opera is reimagined as an open laboratory where people are invited to sing, explore, and actively participate. JOiN sees itself as an interface between grand opera and youth music theatre, between professionals and audiences, between watching and taking part. Keith Bernard Stonum and Martin Mutschler offer insights into the concept, history, and working methods of this unique space for new music theatre.

For 25 years, Melanie Mohren and Bernhard Herbordt have been developing interdisciplinary works at the intersection of the performing arts. They curate conferences and festivals and are active in the field of artistic research. In 2013, Herbordt/Mohren founded »Die Institution« as a widely branching art structure and have since been working on an expanded concept of theatre, exploring institutions and their actualization across various formats and media—between art and research, everyday life and stage.