Tools for Science Fiction Performance

The (Art-)School of Provisional. Artistic Practice in times of Crises

"Necessity is the mother of invention", which means art, creativity and catastrophe share the same origin, and improvisation also plays an important role. But what mechanisms are at play? How can we turn them into artistic practices in times of crises?

Crafting Beyond Utopia: Bio-Materials and Poetic Futures

This course combines hands-on work with bio-materials like bio-plastics, and theoretical discussions on repair, healing and imagination. Participants engage in hands-on projects, challenge Western ideals and create "poetic futures" that celebrate transformative practices and aesthetics beyond perfection.

Utopian Relationships: Autoethnographies of Naturecultures

The course explores the entanglement of nature and culture through embodied somatic knowledge production. By investigating the concept of naturecultures, participants will engage in multi-sensory, creative, ethnographic and critical practices.

Aesthetic Transformation Processes: Inspiration across Disciplinary Boundaries

A focus lies on idea-generating and cross-disciplinary processes and combines it with fieldtrips within Berlin. How does inspiration come about? How do we find ideas? How can we creatively work together with various disciplinary backgrounds?

Towards a Future that is Accessible

A 3-day workshop, led by Dramaturge/ Research Associate Luke Pell and Producer/ Artistic Associate Nadja Dias (Choreography, Dance & Disability Arts Team at HZT Berlin) aimed at those that want to center anti-ableist working methods in their practice, those who want to consider and embed access as part of their creative practice, and those who identify as disabled, neurodivergent, living with chronic health and/or long-term health conditions or share other underrepresented experience and practices.

Material Fictions: Haptic Narratives of (Un)Spaces

In our globalized and digitalized lives, we navigate a constant vacillation between the ecstasy of the virtual and the longing for the tangible. We are fascinated by the unreal—hoaxes, simulations, and digital illusions—while simultaneously craving something tactual, concrete, and crafted. This tension between the digital and physical realms forms the foundation of the course, which focuses on transitioning between abstract or/and fictional concepts and touchable realities, and vice versa.

Some Practical City Magic: Physical and Imaginative Practices for a Future City

The seminar proposes a practical exploration of cities as a physical space for living together using various locations in Berlin as its model. Through bodywork and imaginative practices, participants explore instructions to take back to their own cities and contexts and forward in their own creative work.

Fragments of the Future

Carbon, the basis of life, becomes our artistic focus. In this workshop we will work with charcoal, explore its artistic and sustainable potential and create utopian visions through drawings, books and installations that blend past, present and future visions.

The Space between Voice and Gesture

In "The Space Between Voice and Gesture" workshop participants will work on extended vocal techniques, sound, listening, graphic scores and performance, fostering new creative perspectives through interdisciplinary methods.

Drawing (On) Insects

The workshop offers an intensive study of insects through drawing-based artistic research. You will work in Berlin's Natural History Museum, in the Microscopy Center of Humboldt University and go on a field trip with environmental scientists.

Drawing as a Way of Knowing Plants. A Journey into the World of Plants

The workshop's participants will study historical plant samples, explore the Botanical Garden and discover structures with the microscope. The gathered knowledge they will develop into a graphical interpretation of the plant world.

Utopias on Tracks: Art and Train.

The City never Sleeps

NO UTOPIA: Artivism and Collective Action Today

This proposed course “NO UTOPIA: Artivism and collective action today” looks for the meanings and territories of current socio political issues, urban struggles with a focus of artistic interventions. We will focus on visiting and exchanging dialogues with different artivist groups in Berlin as well as planning small interventions within the possible urban spaces in the city.

Improbable Blossom

Paradise NOW! On Artificial Wilderness and Botanical Enclosures in Painting

This five day intensive workshop explores the possibilities of developing pictorial spaces within the medium of painting by taking Berlins Botanic Garden as a starting point for eutopian and dystopian ideas of a contemporary paradise.

Waters in Venus ~ Flowers in Mars: Risograph Zine for Uncommon Utopias

Risograph-printed-zine workshop thinking utopia through decolonial, non-anthropocentric positionalities. Using creative exercises walks, readings, videos, visits and sketching participants delve into sensorial world-buildings, fostering futures beyond human-centered narratives.

‘Fake it till you make it!’

How to navigate the thin border between truth and fiction in times of AI generated illusions? To find answers, we will create hyper-realistic cake-sculptures, which will be exhibited at Solaris in Berlin for a participatory tasting group show.

Visualising Urban Resilience through Film

Through flânerie the workshop sensitises participants to utopian cadavers and transformative places in Berlin. Participants will then create short videos that experiment along these interstices of urban resilience, utopian imaginaries and space.

Overwriting Berlin: Utopian Futures

Explore Berlin’s future and create an immersive audio walk set in 2525. This hands-on workshop blends sci-fi and social theory, reimagining the city through themes like AI, climate crisis and utopian vs. dystopian futures.

Theatre for Social & Ecological Change

Discover how the tools of theatre and activism in art can be used to enact change. Together, we will investigate theories of change making through art and begin working on your own activist performance for the physical & digital realm.

Berlin Modular Music Culture - Aesthetic and Social Potentials

Artistic and scientific perspectives on modular synthesizers are combined in this workshop. The focus is not only on the aesthetic potential of using the devices, but also on the social dimensions of Berlin's synthesizer culture and its utopian, dystopian and heterotopian aspects.

My Personal Retrotopia: Working with Memory in a 4-Day Photo Workshop

This workshop is designed for anyone interested in combining photography with themes of memory, identity, history, and time. A variety of assignments will guide you in discovering and telling your personal stories through photography, and create your own photo series.

Pendulum - An Interactive Sound Installation

Referring to Steve Reich's feedback idea of Pendulum Music (1968) Pyras and Weise transfer the possibilities of movement and sound to space. We work with the interplay of body and object in space, the rhythmic shifts and the in-betweenness of expectation and silence.

‚Yes, and…‘ Co- Creativity and Applied Improvisation

We will playfully find out about the rules of improvisation, most importantly the first rule of saying ‚yes, and…‘. To spontaniously overcome the inner urge of judging what we perceive, and focus on how to co- create and explore situational places.

Utopian Institutions - Inventing and Performing Collective Imagination

How do public (art) institutions function? Which are their internal contradictions? What have been their historical founding ideals? What are they good for today? Mutually we’ll imagine a new (art) institution the participants would love to build.

Cloudpaths - Drawing and Space

This workshop invites participants to explore the medium of drawing to its boundaries. It encourages you to use drawing as a starting point to discover urban voids and transform them into projection surfaces for new mental and drawn visions.

Let`s get circular

The circular economy is a smart approach to extending the life of resources. We are developing artistic models in which an existing material will go through exactly this process! Looking for the possibility of the perfect cycle.

Upcycling Utopia

In a both discursive and practical exploration, we aim to create a positive and engaged fashion utopia, using upcycling techniques to decouple the joys of engaging with fashion from the exploitation of material resources.

World Order of Our Hearts

In the workshop we explore visions of living together: How can we create worlds from the perspective of love, care and interconnectedness in times of antagonism? And how can satire, humor and visualisations of other worlds lift our spirits?

Fast Forward 2050 - Inventing Interactive Performing Scenarios

In the Fast Forward 2050 seminar, we will invent and test future scenarios together. These scenarios are based on collective simulation games that are tested performatively and further developed using various artistic media.