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Dokumentation: Bundesweite Artist Labs 2023

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Lab #1 – Lab #10

  • Allianzen einer nachhaltigen Kunstpraxis

    Kollektiv nachhaltige Kultur

    In the course of its laboratory, the Sustainable Culture Collective (KNK) has documented experiences from various transdisciplinary art projects carried out during the covid pandemic. KNK researches ways in which leaving behind traditional modes of art production has created new relationships between art and society, and how this practice has contributed to the present transformation. Allowing for new synergies and alliances in a sustainable artistic practice.

  • Auswege aus patriarchalen Männlichkeiten – eine Zielgruppenforschung

    onlinetheater.live

    The artist lab evaluates to what extent advertising on social media can be used as an artistic interventionist tool to reach specifically defined audiences. It explicitly deals with echo chambers of the so-called manosphere and looks for possibilities to show young men ways out of patriarchal cycles of violence and loneliness and to interrupt masculinist radicalization.

  • Barrierefreiheit und Performances per Post und im öffentlichen Raum

    Zwoisy Mears-Clarke

    For the artists and cultural workers of the project, barriers to sharing their love for performance began long before and continue beyond the lockdowns of 2020/21. This artist lab focuses on the specific barriers faced by visually impaired and blind people and people with chronic illness, when attending outdoor performances and performances by mail.

  • Beyond Boundaries

    Yousef Iskandar

    Opening theaters to marginalized groups and allowing the inclusion of talented non-academic artists, will lead to a significant rise in attention and engagement from underrepresented communities, addressing their exclusion from the performance art scene will promote stronger connections in the future.

  • BEZIEHUNGSWEISE MAKER SPACE

    pulk fiktion

    As the host group, pulk fiktion knows that meeting on eye level is fake. But relationship is not. At FFT Düsseldorf pulk fiktion, young people and theatre-makers for young audiences come together for three days. Together they will test tools for artistic encounters. How does an joint aesthetic transformation of creative content develop through encounters between theatre-makers and young people?

  • Bits and Bytes

    Laura Tontsch & Marion Kleine-Onnebrink

    "Bits and Bytes" is an interactive and integrative pop-up project in Lüneburg city center. At six stations, people get the chance to engage with digital technologies free of charge. They can try them out, and practice them playfully, so digitalized areas of life become accessible and the feeling of having missed the boat is actively counteracted.

  • Brücken schaffen: Ein transdisziplinäres Evaluationslabor

    Hajusom e.V.

    Hajusom's Artist Lab follows an inclusive art practice and is open to all young people, but especially to those with refugee and migrant backgrounds and/or experiences of racism. They develop strategies, support creative formats, and connect with partners to boost participatory social engagement and equal opportunities through the independent performative arts, with a focus on the principle of care.

  • Club- vs. Hochkultur

    Jesseline Preach

    With more and more performance art integrated in nightclub contexts, our artist lab examines the following questions: Is it possible to attract party goers to the theater? What insights can theater institutions gain from club culture? What potentials arise, when performing artists step outside the confines of traditional theater establishments? How can theaters adopt audience engagement strategies from club culture?

  • Community Arts Lab Augsburg (CALA)

    J. Warner, V. Maurer, A.D. Yakaboylu, L. Immler, S. Wallner, Studierende der HfG Karlsruhe

    For whom and with whom are the symbolic goods produced in the field of art? These two questions form the leitmotif of CALA (Community Arts Lab, Augsburg). In four subprojects, students of the HfG Karlsruhe are experimenting with various interventions, processes and connections in response to these questions together with residents of the Augsburg-Oberhausen district.

  • Die Stadt als leere Kulisse

    Franziska Rattay und Landesverband freie Theater Sachsen-Anhalt

    The role of theater in urban development is being discussed: How do changes in city centers affect the theater audience? What theater formats promote active participation in social life? How can artists respond to these changes? The connection between urban development and performing arts is also being examined. The goal is to create cultural participation and discover new audience groups.

Lab #11 – Lab #20

  • Digital Nomads

    Wheels e.V.

    Theatre Ensemble WHEELS – an international ensemble of artists working across disciplines – is asking the following question together with the “Studio für unendliche Möglichkeiten” (Studio for Infinite Possibilities): Can performances in VR help to maintain a relationship with an audience, even if, as war refugees, they are in part no longer able to work and perform in the same physical location?

  • „ES BRAUCHT DAS GANZE DORF…!“ Labor über glokale PUBLIKA für ein ARTISTS VILLAGE OF THE MANY

    kainkollektiv GbR / suite42

    With a network of artists created at tak Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg, the lab wants to evaluate what translocal accessibility, participation and community-building can be in local and global artistic processes between neighborhood work and digital formats. Who are the audiences for a glocal artists' village at Moritzplatz? Who is (not) visible? IT TAKES THE WHOLE VILLAGE!

  • Expanded Listening - New Spaces (On Air)

    Sarah Israel and Oscar Atanga: Co-Lead and Curators Sarah Zeryab: Curatorial Collaborator

    "Expanded Listening – New Spaces (On Air)" is the realisation of three experimental artistic labs. Together, practitioners from alternative radio stations and the (independent) performing arts will address 'practices of listening' and question the extent to which 'listening' – as a conscious activity and an artistic practice – can make present voices, themes and sounds that have been underrepresented in the cultural landscape and society in general.

  • Experiences of public aggression, media scandals and de-escalation strategies

    Alfredo Zinola + Micaela Kühn Jara

    A lab that gathers artists, representatives of theaters and communication experts around the questions: How do we deal with aggressive public reactions? What strategies and tools do they have as artists to deal with harmful fake news and populist rhetoric? How can they respond to the rise of violence and radicalized opinions?

  • Exploring Nachbarschaft(en)

    Netzwerk Freier Theater

    With "Exploring Nachbarschaft(en)" the NFT takes a closer look at six local areas. In artistic explorations, their network theaters in Munich, Frankfurt, Halle, Leipzig, Bremen and Flensburg examine how the relationships between theaters, artists and audiences have changed since the pandemic. These local positions come together at the B.A.L.L. to form a nationwide perspective.

  • FESTE FEIERN

    Sandra Bringer / Carola Lehmann

    After three years of the pandemic, people in rural areas are again meeting at festivals and public events. Right-wing populists have been proactive in making their presence felt in the heart of the community. How can they as performance artists draw attention to this phenomenon and, where possible, subvert it? This artist lab combines community outreach with performance art.

  • GamesArtistLab: Playing with the Audience

    Laura Pföhler, Hannes Siebert, Sarah &/&* (*undoderund) Fartuun Heinze, Felix Heimbach

    The "GamesArtistLab: Playing with The Audience" wants to be a room, in which artists of all divisions can focus on "People formerly known as Audience", exploring, questioning & playing. In a game and encounter space – a GameJam – hybrid forms between games and theater are at the center of the investigation.

  • Gefordert, gefördert getan – Überlegungen zur postpandemischen Weiterentwicklung neuer Formate

    Figurenspieler*innen des VDP

    Thanks to various NEUSTART KULTUR grants, the puppet theater sector has experienced an enormous upswing. Now it is threatened with collapse. Six members from the puppet theater community meet in Bad Segeberg to identify its needs and to discuss and propose appropriate means of financial support. To this end, information from the community was collected in advance and digitally bundled.

  • Get labelled: Parents in Theaters!

    Ag Tanz und Elternschaft, ZTB e.V.

    How can parents and carers in the midst of their daily chaos participate as an audience at dance events? The artists are developing family-friendly conditions and evaluating formats that emerged during the pandemic. In a series of experimental labs and in exchange with international networks and three Berlin venues, they are developing a "kids and carers" – a friendly event label and a rider.

  • Gib Mir Ein Kleines Bisschen Sicherheit (GM1KB5)

    Vierte Welt

    Theater is a space of contracts and representation. But WHY ARE WE HERE? What do we find beyond these relations? What if an invitation to indeterminacy shaped our sociality? Up for discussion are: Tickets, service, exchange of goods (money/theater), spectators, representation, the arts and the artists, me and the I, and much more. We offer: A Play.

Lab #21 – Lab #30

  • GLOBAL VILLAGE DREAMS - Nachhaltiges Audience Development immersiver Hybridformate für Stadt & Land

    denialofservice.fail

    "Global Village Dreams" comprises the evaluation and further development of participatory, immersive hybrid formats with regard to audience generation in urban/rural/digital spaces. In dialogue with theater scholars, digitally competent young adults in rural areas, and immersion experts, dos.fail reflect on the state of our art and refine strategies for sustainable audience development.

  • Hearing Voices Ceremonies

    Social Pleasure Center

    "Hearing Voices" is an audio collection of testimonies of participants, community hosts, institutions in dialogue (‘audiences’), who find belonging and affinity with Social Pleasure Center. SPC asks a large community of queers and artists, how can the performing art field inform an anticolonial cultural shift with its somatic wisdom? What are structural necessities to sustain embodied change?

  • HOF LABOR

    LOKSTOFF! Theater im öffentlichen Raum

    In "HOF LABOR", together with artists, experts, citizens and above all our audience, the artists go in search of urban and rural cultural heritage and ask their selves how they can preserve it despite social, economic and climatic change. They come into exchange – at weekly markets, on the farm and at our rehearsals!

  • Kreative Allianzen schmieden: Marginalisierte Widerstandsfähigkeit außerhalb der Bubble

    Migrantpolitan

    In the lab of Migrantpolitan, various artist collectives from different subcultural contexts analyse common experiences with the German bourgeois public. What conditions are needed to open safe spaces for marginalised artists to share with a german burgeoise audience? Do we need a Code of Conduct for the audience?

  • Labor für das „Intenational Center for Artistic Representation and United Society“ (ICARUS)

    RomaTrial e.V.

    The International Center for Artistic Representation and United Society explores how theater can orient itself toward current sociopolitical discourse and examines how post-pandemic methods can be used to attract new, diverse audiences.

  • Let's Get Intersectional

    Katharina Wisotzki, Olivia Hotz & Sri Hartini Santo

    As society changes, theater has to change with it. Katharina Wisotzki, Sri Hartini Santo and Olivia Hotz examine intersectional festival work during the pandemic. In collaboration with the #strongertogether network, they go for walks, enjoy a coffee and discuss the shifting dynamic between audience, artist and organiser – after all, the future is intersectional!

  • MicelArtistLab. Lateinamerikanische Darstellende Künstler*innen in Deutschland

    Leicy Valenzuela

    MicelArtistLab is a knowledge exchange network for Latin American artists living in Germany. With this lab, they intend to strengthen strategies to identify, generate and attract their cultural audience. At the same time, they want to draw attention to the fact that they want to be perceived as part of the independent performing arts community in Germany.

  • Moving audience – moving artists?! – Ein Mobility-Check im Flächenland Thüringen

    PHOENIX_KANNAWURF_stellwerk weimar_AVANT ART

    Thuringia's independent performing arts must explore uncharted paths in order to retain their existing audience or to tap into entirely new ones. Anyone who makes theater here has to be mobile. The artist lab's "Mobility-Check" sends four structures of the independent performing arts on a joint workshop tour through the state, trying out new formats and meeting different audiences.

  • Mutating Kinship Lab 2023

    Mutating Kinship Lab

    In 2023, Mutating Kinship Lab (MKL), a platform for Asian diaspora initiatives, focused on the post-pandemic audience ship by exploring Anti-Fragility and Brave Spaces, which promote critical discourse with white audiences. How can diasporic communities survive & thrive amidst adversity? How do they create an environment that supports the exploration of topics such as racism, tokenism, and more?

  • neustart:publikum

    flausen+

    How do independent theaters retain and grow their audiences in a changing society? And: Is the way they think about audiences creative, or is it the problem itself? The artist's aim was to ask and not to know. They asked experts in research, marketing, digital, inclusion and community work. And themselves: What do we love about independent theater? And how do we talk about it?

Lab #31 – Lab #40

  • New Audience Formation through Queer Cross-Genre Performances

    Shlomi Moto Wagner & Heinrich Horwitz with The House of Mazeltov and Friends

    How does cross-genre queer performing arts and the nature of the temporal spaces that queer arts rely on to survive, can redefine and diversify audiences. Can they queerify an audience? Or how could they indiscipline the audience? Making temporal availability of audience participation in genres one wouldn't imagine they have interest or access to.

  • NEXT STEPS. Ein hybrides Barcamp zur postpandemischen Zukunft des Audiowalks.

    SBAE GmbH

    "NEXT STEPS" is a bar camp for audio walk producers. Let’s explore potentials and exchange experiences. Topics include the integration of live data, interactive storytelling, participatory projects, location-based podcasting, embodiment, gamification and friction. How can they develop the format together and reach new audiences?

  • Open Spaces!

    Gob Squad

    Gob Squad present "Open Spaces!" A lab, that asks: Why do many feel that their local theater is not a place for them? What is in the way of all social groups to become part of the richness of culture that their local art spaces offer? "Open Spaces!" brings different perspectives together to exchange and explore strategies to make cultural spaces more open, to make everyone feel welcome and included.

  • Organizing Cultural Commons

    Staub zu Glitzer

    'Theater Commoning' should a be bottom-up process, not top-down. Audiences and theater professionals merge to form a creative community of ccommonizers. But who are the people that organize Commoning? What specific experiences and methods do they bring with them? What problems do they face? A lab on theater organizing for the radical democratization and opening of theaters.

  • OVAH Hannover Lab

    OVAH Hannover

    OVAH is an empowering lab for Hannover's growing ballroom community. National and international representatives of the scene will be invited to bring the culture of QTIBIPOC* (Queer, Trans, Inter*, Black, Indigenous, People(s) of Color*) from us/for us/by us.

  • performing for peers – publika (post)pandemischer berufseinsteiger*innen

    Nora Tormann & Lonnie Jasper

    In the lab "performing for peers – audiences of (post)pandemic emerging professionals", artists who started their careers between 2019 – 2022 will evaluate whether throughout the pandemic, they’ve predominantly produced work with/for each other. Artists will investigate how to solidify safer space amongst peers into support structures, and how to make them more inclusive beyond artistic bubbles.

  • PLAYFUL HAUS

    Mable Preach

    Artists working in the field of children and youth theater, parents, educators, and teenagers develop strategies and content for theater productions in dealing with topics such as colonial history, colonial continuity, and discriminatory power structures that are essential for social interaction as well as the individual, self-empowered personal development of young people.

  • Prefiguring a Choreographic Milieu

    Sabine Zahn, Alice Chauchat & Daniel Belasco Rogers

    "Prefiguring a Choreographic Milieu" is a lab conceived to assess which structures can adequately support the artistic development and the profile of choreographic practices in urban space when they center on the shaping of somatic experience rather than the production of image. What is 'the audience' here, how can it be understood and described when starting from the point of view of the effects of the work and not from the number of tickets sold?

  • Producing Future Audiences

    LEAD Productions / Producers Academy #6

    The lab of producers created a space for exchange and discourse to reflect on their role as a link between artists and audiences. How can artistic work processes be shared with audiences beyond the performance? How can insights from digital formats flow into work in the future? What does the future of accessibility and diversification of audiences look like?

  • Public Opera

    Michael von zur Mühlen

    "Public Opera" addresses various issues – aesthetic, sociological and institutional – with a focus firmly on the audience. To what extent have the artistic formats specifically developed to cope with the pandemic opened up new ways of making musical theatre more accessible? And what are the institutional framework conditions that are needed in order to take decisive steps towards achieving greater diversity in the makeup of audiences?

Lab #41 – Lab #50

  • Publika-Kartographie: von der Zielgruppe zum Rhizom

    Vanessa Stern und Team

    The film redefines the possible radicality of our theater work by Vanessa Stern and team, no longer referring to the individual root, lat. 'Radix', but addresses the audience as a rhizome (root network). The audience appears, but not as a 'target group' as market logic would have it, but due to a variety of effective relationships to which theater is based.

  • Publikum der Zukunft

    Paradiesvogel e.V.

    Paradiesvogel e.V. dealt with imagining an "Audience of the Future". The goal was to work on ideas for a "Frankfurt Model", in which formats and performances emerge for young audiences from the independent scene. The artists reflected on their questions in a three-day lab that, among other things, foregrounded the multiplicity of perspectives during a visit to the zoo and in interview formats.

  • Publikumversteher

    Tanzkomplizen SÜW & creation doors community

    Tanzkomplizen SÜW & creation doors community share experience/knowledge of their common focus collegial in the form of public online workshops and experimental spaces on: Acquire audience, dialogic/practical mediation formats, participation strategies, targeting, intercollegiate communication, collaboration and reciprocal/proactive networking.

  • QAA – Queer Affirmation Alliance

    vT corp.

    Together with queer theater practitioners, vT corp. addresses the question of what it means to work as a queer person in the performing arts.Is theater a safe space for queer performance, and to what extent is this decided by the composition of the audience? Can, or should, we have certain requirements for venues to protect us from discrimination?

  • Queer Audience Empowerment Bootcamp

    Queereeoké / CherrYO!kie

    Right and wrong. Us and Them. Apples and oranges. Performers and audiences. The laboratory is focusing on community building instead of generating audiences. The questions aren't: Who are 'they', and how do we reach 'them'? They’re: Who are 'we'? How do humans unlearn? Again and again. Together. Twelve artists of the Queereeoké/CherrYO!kie collective are introducing in their lab new practices of synergy. Let’s break the binary!

  • RE:VALUATION NOW**

    FORMATION NOW**

    "RE:VALUATION NOW**" explores the post-pandemic situation for artists of Color within independent performing arts. It explores how corona funding and the last three years have influenced their access to work and audience.

  • repräsenTANZ

    Pascal Schmidt – House of Brownies

    The lab takes a look at challenges of representation and explores issues around diversity and accessibility in the dance field. BIPoC dance practitioners were invited to engage in an open discourse about their audience and encouraged to exchange ideas.

  • She She Pop: Beziehungsarbeit. Labor für zukünftige Publika

    She She Pop

    Hospitality is a cultural program through which society responds to inequality. She She Pop explore different audience relations via the relationship between guest and host. In three salons, they will explore issues of participation in digital spaces, power structures, representation and transnational audiences. The experiences gained during the pandemic will be used to develop concepts for future audience relations.

  • ShiftingCommunities

    OutOfTheBox

    Audiences of (post)digital formats are being increasingly addressed as collaborators and co-creators in the artistic process. Community building is being reimagined through prototyping, play testing, and user experience design. "ShiftingCommunities" invited (post)digital artists to reflect on their practices in engaging with audiences and to design tools for in-creased visibility.

  • Social Choreographies in a Troubling Time and Place

    PSR Collective

    The six members of the PSR collective will gather with ten artists or community members with whom they have collaborated in the last years and/or with whom they want to work in the future. They will discuss various topics affecting queer, disabled and international communities in order to see what knowledge can be produced by this cross-pollination.

Lab #51 – Lab #60

  • Stadt Land Neu – Publikumsbetrachtungen im öffentlichen Raum

    Bundesverband Theater im Öffentlichen Raum (BUTIÖR)

    Public space as a place of artistic performance was one of the most important spaces for the audience during the pandemic. How can reflection on this lead to democratic and less discriminatory cultural participation for and by future audiences? Together with three ensembles, BUTIÖR examines its particular audiences in urban, rural and newly discovered public spaces.

  • The Words of the Arty Class

    Michael Annoff, Nuray Demir / Kein schöner Archiv

    "Independent Theater has always been in lockdown," claim the artists in the 2020 anthology "Lernen aus dem Lockdown" [Learning from Lockdown] by the Impulse Theater Festival. The artistic evaluation lab "The Words of the Arty Class" is an intersectional investigation of classism and racism in the field of Independent Theater. Forms of voicelessness in a society where criticism of injustice too often remains unheard constitute the basis of their lab’s analysis.

  • Theater der Entspannten

    democratic bootcamp / EUCREA e.V.

    In the "DEMOCRATIC BOOTCAMP", nine free performance groups with and without an inclusion background developed a game show about creating art as a collective. They are now continuing the examination of their working methods in the lab: How are decisions made on an equal footing? How can a process of reflection be as accessible as possible? Starting with their selves, they include the audience in their reflections.

  • THEATER im Ländlichen Raum: Macht Bock?

    Kulturrevier Harz e.V. / THEATERNATUR FESTIVAL

    The lab invites working with existing and potential audiences on a future of theater in rural areas. Pinned on the Theaternatur Festival in Benneckenstein/Harz the relations to the local public will be extended and formats developed together, which can contribute to a future-oriented handling in the context of the local situation.

  • What’s Love Got to Do with It? Über Queeres Nutzen

    Lena Kollender/Mateusz Szymanówka

    In times of increased conservative backlash and anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, the lab "What's Love Got to Do with It? On Queer Use" invites an international group of curators and artists with queer working practices to critically reflect on how theater and other (art) spaces are used for queer purposes and audiences, and to share strategies and experiences.

  • Wesen der Abwesenheit / Essence of Absence

    Aljoscha Begrich, Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius / raumlabor, Ella Ziegler

    Ten representatives for absence debate their transformational proposals for a culture of the performing arts. How can non-human life forms, the deceased, forces of nature, or people who can't find their way become part of the audience? How can we use absence as the starting point for a new presence?

  • Wi(e)der Setzen - Praktisch Forschen an Szenografien für die Publika von morgen

    BecklasJurado

    Eleven artists from multiple disciplines come together to explore and create scenographic for tomorrow's audiences: Participation, interaction, joint creation, intergenerational, egalitarian, inclusive. What are the potentials of scenography?

  • Widersprüche zusammendenken - wie geht intersektionale Kulturarbeit?

    fluxus² e.V

    The association fluxus² e.V. works on political art and artistic politics, seeks an aesthetic of understanding – and within this process mobilizes a highly political audience. But what happens when expectations contradict each other, when political goals are opposed? What does this mean for public relations, team communication and resource allocation in the context of events?

  • With Care: Action Lab zwischen Theater, Publika und Sorgearbeit

    Bühnenmütter e.V.

    Often, formerly regular audience members stay away from theater after they have children. Accessibility for parents and other people with care responsibilities is a future topic for cultural venues that must be anchored and lived in theater production and performance. How can this work? The lab has developed a toolkit as a building block for a diverse feminist future!

  • Witzigkeit kennt seine Grenzen – Klassismuserfahrung und Humor in den performativen Künsten

    Hendrik Quast, Alex Hennig (in Kooperation mit Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm)

    In this artist lab, born class clowns and other jokers from the performing arts share their aesthetic strategies for dealing with experiences of classism. The artists explore how class differences correspond with comic forms and how they can be made uninhibitedly experiential for the audience: Who has a good laugh when class shows itself, and who knows no pardon?

Lab #61 – Lab #64

  • WRITING BEYOND THE YESTER-MORROW

    Kollektiv lingsanling, MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik GbR

    "Writing beyond the Yester-Morrow" explores new collaborative formats between urbanism and experimental music of the (pan)Asian diaspora and their relationships to a new audience of transcultural communities.

  • Zur Zusammenarbeit von Künstler*innen und Kindern in performativen Forschungsprozessen

    Sibylle Peters; Szenisches Forschen GbR

    Research in theater for young audiences advocates for participation in research and invites people of all ages to experiment. The lab brings together children, artists and researchers for the WHO WHAT WHY Arena and the workshop "COPY THIS": What is on the agenda of intergenerational research today? And what happens to past research processes? Should they be copied and continued? Children decide!

  • ZUSAMMENFINDEN

    In Grund und Boden

    In "ZUSAMMENFINDEN" 13 artists from different cities, disciplines and perspectives met for five days to work together on the concept of a 'FLYING KULTURZENTRUM'. This coming together and the rituals and practices found generated a 'How to' guidance that the lab participants would hope every existing or yet-to-be-formed cultural and art institution could adopt.

  • ZWANGSMASSNAHMEN

    Oliver Zahn

    Based on the obsessive-compulsive disorder he developed during the Covid lockdowns, Oliver Zahn, in his artist lab "ZWANGSMASSNAHMEN", examines the psychic impact of the pandemic with regard to artists, audiences and communities in the artist lab in the form of four collaborative seminars.