Impulse Theater Festival

Cologne, Düsseldorf, Mülheim an der Ruhr

4-14 June 2020

ACADEMY #1 – MAKING HISTORY

A performative archive of the independent theatre
Led by: Kolja Burgschuld Language: German

With artworks by: Michael Annoff and Nuray Demir, Interrobang, Christina Irrgang, notfoundyet, Lucie Strecker, Otmar Wagner and students from the Ruhr University Bochum and Dresden University of Fine Arts

Since Impulse was founded, independent theatre has undergone major changes: aesthetically, thematically and structurally. What traces have these left in 30 years of festival history, what remnants are left? What statements do they allow us to make about the past? And what might an archive look like that not only conserves the past but contemporises it? In 2013 the Impulse Theater Festival developed the idea of an archive of independent theatre in association with other partners. To mark its anniversary, the Impulse Academy now establishes this on a temporary basis: a living archive of 30 years of festival history is now created in a former archive for insurance files.

Inspired by the model of ancient archives that were also the archivists’ living quarters, nine artists and groups will now undertake residencies in Düsseldorf. Here they will examine statistics, objects, photos and audio-visual media, published programmes, press texts and eye witness accounts. They will search for, gather, arrange and deconstruct the material. In doing so they will search for dominant narratives and utopias and enquire about what is invisible, marginalised and excluded.

Visitors to the archive may explore the artists’ workrooms independently or on guided tours and participate in their research processes. In daily Lunch Lectures the artists will discuss their visions for a living archive with experts in other fields, such as forensic scientists, archaeologists and futurologists and also with members of the public. The archive itself will be focussed on “The law of what can be said” (Foucault). The Impulse ACADEMY is both an archive of art and the art of archiving at the same time.

ACADEMY #1 – MAKING HISTORY is held in co-operation with the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theates e.V.  Its closing event ‘What Lasts? — The case for independent archives’ on 09.06. is held in co-operation with the NRW State Office for the Independent Performing Arts, the Federal Association of the Independent Performing Arts and the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theates e.V.  

Opening hours
05.—08.06. 10:00—17:00
09.06. 14:00—21:00

Entry to all events is free of charge, lunch 7 €
Shuttle bus to the SHOWCASE performances in Cologne: 05.—08.06. 17:00 (you must register at shuttle@impulsefestival.de, cost: 5 €)

Extras
05.—08.06.

11:00—12:00 Eye witnesses in conversation Christina Irrgang
12:30—14:00 Lunch Lectures
14:15—15:00 Chucking out, rearranging and remembering with Michael Annoff and Nuray Demir
15:00—16:30 Guided tours with the artists

09.06. 18:00
What lasts? — The case for independent archives

© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke

Residencies

Within ACADEMY #1 nine artists and groups present their works and research. Visitors may participate in these research processes and take an active role as accomplices.

Michael Annoff and Nuray Demir: KEIN SCHÖNER ARCHIV SPECIAL: MICHAEL AND NURAY CLEAR UP!

Germany’s history is inextricably linked with migration. Since autumn 2018 Kein schöner Archiv has been documenting the non-material legacy of our post-migrant society – living culture that can’t simply be shut away in a glass case but that lives from being repeated and passed on. This is why the cultural anthropologist and cultural worker Michael Annoff and the artist and curator Nuray Demir have together developed the form of a performative archive. They collect stories, traditions and practices that would otherwise be forgotten and celebrate themwith guests and an audience. At the Impulse ACADEMY Michael and Nuray will clear up: in a special edition Kein schöner Archiv will rearrange 30 years of festival history. They will treat clearing up as a set of cultural practices that is not dissimilar to the battles over interpretation in commemorative culture.

Interrobang: DEEP FAKE IMPULSE — AN INTERACTIVE LABORATORY OF THE FUTURE

It is the year 2035: for the first time artificial intelligence will curate the Impulse Theater Festival and introduce a machine quota: 50 per cent of all the pieces invited are of mechanical origin. – Deep Fake Impulse imagines the (currently) impossible. Interrobang builds utopian scenarios of the future from the leftovers and remains of previous editions of the festival. To do so the artists dig deep in the acoustic archive of 30 years of festival history: excerpts of performances, media features and interviews are subjected to maximally invasive original sound manipulation and re-assembled in an interactive audio installation until only snippets remain of what was originally said and entirely new meanings are generated. The future archive that will grow each day over the course of the ACADEMY can be heard, experimented with and manipulated by the public at any time.

Christina Irrgang: CHORUS

Christina Irrgang collects the voices of eye-witnesses from 30 years of festival history: not only well-known figures such as directors and artists share their memories but also staff and audience members — people whose views are less often heard. Open conversations and interviews based on a system of index cards form the basis for a polyphonic archive of subjectively experienced history which offers visitors the chance to enter into contact with the eye-witnesses: in direct conversation or by reading, listening, watching and making notes. An oral history, that aims not least to allow us to understand where the independent theatre now stands in aesthetic, political and economic terms.

notfoundyet: OBJET TROUVÉ

Theatre history you can touch! Have you always wanted to hold the manuscript of the speech opening the first festival in 1990 in your hands? A pubic hair from She She Pop’s ‘50 Grades of Shame’ (2016)? Or Heidi’s cowboy hat from Pollesch’s ‘Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr’ (2000)? The staff of notfoundyet will supply your requirements. For the first time in 30 years objects from three decades are publicly accessible along with props, stage designs and costumes. Browse through the specially produced catalogues, borrow archived objects and talk to notfoundyet about the stories behind these objects. This artist duo plays with the archive’s aura and promise of authenticity as well as its eternal dilemma of having to let what is present speak for what is absent.

You can order in advance! Send us an order through archiv-vorbestellung[a]impulsefestival.de to source an object that you have always wanted to hold in your hands. There are no limits on what you are allowed to think of. You can then take delivery of the object you have ordered during the archive’s opening hours.

Lucie Strecker: L'AIR DE LA SCÈNE

No other sense is capable of arousing memories as directly as the sense of smell: information about space and time are linked by a nerve connecting two areas of the brain with an impression of smell. Lucie Strecker will reconstruct the smells of past productions for the ACADEMY. She will seek out artists and props and harvest microbes that live on human skin and on objects which can multiply smells. Its composition also includes memories from company members. In conversations and olfactory experiments, Strecker attempts to reveal feelings associated with memories of specific smells. In her laboratory visitors can follow the different steps of the process leading to a perfume, can examine records and documents of the creative process and allow themselves to be caught up in the scent of past Impulse festivals.

Otmar Wagner: ARCHIVE OF DIGRESSIONS

In Otmar Wagner’s section of the archive, the principle of shared folders returns back to the analogue world from the cloud. Wagner, assisted by Lars Moritz (dramaturgy and research), uses document folders to collect all the material and information he finds interesting from the 30 year history of the festival: supplemented by a great deal of meta-material, texts, objects, links, contemporary and personal associations. Together with the visitors he will bring this filing system back to life, grabbing hold of material in both a planned and random manner, trying to establish links and working out instructions both for himself and the visitors: there will be singing, re-enactments, reading, making and performing. These turn into essayistic expeditions that start from the question of what archives can be and where they can be located in the oscillation between remembering and forgetting.

Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V.: ARCHIVE PRACTICE

The discussion around founding an archive for the independent theatre started in 2013 at the invitation of the Impulse Theater Festival. Since then the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters has worked on model projects for digital and analogue infrastructures to promote archiving throughout Germany — together with artists, festivals and theatres, universities and funding bodies. Within the ACADEMY experts from the Initiative will be available continuously to talk about the current state of the archive’s development and offer practical suggestions.

Biographies

Michael Annoff a cultural anthropologist and cultural worker. He was involved as a research assistant in setting up the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts Berlin, where he also teaches on the General Studies course. Since 2016 he has worked at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in the area of Culture and Communication. He is interested primarily in collaborative research processes at the boundaries of the performative arts, empirical cultural sciences and activism. Alongside this he also campaigns against discrimination and for developing diversity in cultural institutions and (arts) universities. Since 2018 he has been one part of ‘Kein schöner Archiv’

Kolja Burgschuld studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Vienna University. From 2011 to 2013 he was Managing Director of ASSITEJ Austria, the umbrella organisation for the performing arts for young audiences in Austria. He ran the STELLA Festival in St. Pölten, Bregenz and Graz and was a member of the leading team at Dschungel Vienna. He has also worked for festivals in Austria, Germany, Croatia, Romania, Sweden, Denmark and Japan. Since 2016 his main occupation has been as a member of the city of Vienna’s advisory committee on Theatre, Dance and Performance. He was also an expert adviser to the city of Chemnitz’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2025. This is the second time he has run the Impulse ACADEMY, having also done so in 2018.

Nuray Demir is an artist and curator in the field of the visual and performing arts. her practice is characterised by an investigative and radically transdisciplinary approach. For her projects she collaborates with persons from varying disciplines with whom she forms temporary ensembles. She has realised projects at various institutions including Kampnagel in Hamburg, Sophiensæle in Berlin, HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and the Wiener Festwochen. She currently belongs to the artistic leading team at District* Schule ohne Zentrum in Berlin. Since 2018 she has been one part of ‘Kein schöner Archiv’.

Interrobang are Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug, Lajos Talamonti and guests – e.g. the composer, lyricist, producer, performer and singer-songwriter Friedrich Greiling. Interrobang devises new forms of theatre to engage with current social phenomena and questions. In installative theatre spaces and participatory play settings the audience is able to experience, test and reflect on new models of scenic communication. Playing with the theatrical community turns into playing with current and potential future forms of society and value systems. Interrobang performs at German-speaking theatres and international festivals (Heidelberger Stückemarkt, Impulse Theater Festival, Akcent Festival Prague and many more).

Christina Irrgang is an academic, freelance author and musician in the band BAR (Band am Rhein). She lives and works in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf. She completed her doctorate in 2018 at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design with a work of media analysis on the photographer and businessman Heinrich Hoffmann, which focussed on the political image strategies in the illustrated propaganda books Hoffmann edited as a constituent part of Nazi political imagery (to be published in 2020 by transcript). In her work as an author devising conceptual interview formats she has focussed on techniques of conversation.

Lars Moritz is a performance artist and experimental urban researcher. In 2010 he founded the Institute of Everyday Research, a platform for artistic research and direct action in everyday urban life. His work focuses on beauty and politics in everyday urban life and the production of artistic knowledge as subversive infotainment. He makes participatory and interventionist web series as part of the collektive irreality.tv

notfoundyet was founded in 2007 by the artists Thomas Kasebacher and Laia Fabre. Since then works have been created based on material that the pair find in observations of everyday life and pop culture and heighten thematically. They work intensively with the presence of a live audience that is an elementary part of their performances, dance pieces and installations. They take a playful approach to social codes and the question of fact and fiction, using (pseudo-)documentary materials such as texts, photos and objects. Here notfoundyet frequently collaborates with visual artists, musicians, dancers and performers and has presented works in recent years at venues including brut Vienna, WUK in Vienna and Schauspiel Leipzig.

Lucie Strecker undertakes artistic research in the field of hybrid performative art. She currently leads the FWF-Elise Richter-PEEK project ‘Zur Performativität des Biofakts’ at the University of the Applied Arts Vienna. Since 2014 she has been a Fellow of the University of the Arts Berlin. In 2015 she was given an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica for her collaboration with Klaus Spiess. Together they exhibited at venues including the BEALL Center for Art + Technology, Art|Sci Center, Los Angeles, the Onassis Center, Athens and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. For her performances Strecker has co-operated with the Muffathalle in Munich, the Vienna Biennale, Vienna Design Week, the Click Festival Helsingør, brut Vienna and the Vienna Tanzquartier.

Otmar Wagner works as a performance artist and a utopian researcher. His works are centred around essay-performances (a term he has coined for his delirious associative trips) and multimedia concert performances. In addition he also produces audio dramas, scenic installations and cabinets of curiosities. In 2017/18 he created the four-part performance cycle ‘WOUND WORLD’, in 2019 the concert performance ‘SICK IN EUROPE’ and on 2020 together with Florian Feigl ‘Hyperobjects? … Metal and Fabric I–VII’ (Sophiensæle Berlin / WUK Vienna). He has collaborated with Lars Moritz since 2013, on projects such as ‘Clear Up! – Four Evenings About Work’ (2013) and ‘CURRENT ACTION – a performative live news journal’ (2014–2016).

University co-operations

Within ACADEMY #1 students of Scenic Research, Stage and Costume Design and Theatre Studies will explore the history and present of the festival and will evaluate their results in public.

RAISING DUST (Ruhr University Bochum)

Students of the Institute of Theatre Studies
Led by: Valeska Klug, Advisor: Henning Fülle

What happened over three decades of the festival thematically or in terms of programming, artistically and aesthetically, and in terms of structure and personnel? Theatre Studies students at the Ruhr University work as archaeologists and archivists searching through boxes and hard drives, printed programmes, performance recordings, correspondence, press articles, essays and everything else the Impulse archive has to offer. They will familiarise themselves with the material, examine it, arrange it and make collages from it. As part of the Impulse ACADEMY they will each present the findings of their research in their own personal form.

COLLECTION 2020 (Ruhr University Bochum)

Students of the Institute of Theatre Studies
Led by: Marlin de Haan

Instead of looking to the past, the Students of Theatre Studies and Scenic Research attempt open heart surgery: in a seemingly impossible undertaking they archive this year’s festival while it is ongoing. Every day they will transport the material they have found and collected from the hands of the artists and audience alike from the SHOWCASE in Cologne to the archive in Düsseldorf. What should be kept? What can be thrown away? Together with the visitors to the Impulse ACADEMY they will select objects, moments and processes, take notes, collect things and discard others. How can the before, during and after of a festival be captured? What is selected and what isn’t – and how can these choices be justified?

GAPS IN THE ARCHIVE (Dresden University of Fine Arts)

Diana Berndt, Wiebke Breitenfeld, Sophia Haller, Antonia Krull, Andrea Künemund, Myriam Müller, Claudine Walter, Lea Weinert, Hans Werner, Hanna Zeyer (students of Stage and Costume Design)
Led by: Kattrin Michel and Stefanie Wenner

Archives are collections of what is considered worthy of preservation according to the current cultural regime. Archives therefore embody an insoluble bond between the law and memory. In which case: how can an archive of independent theatre be established? Is something like an “archive of the ephemeral” even possible? The students have researched both historic and contemporary archives as well as the former archive where the ACADEMY is being held and devised a spatial configuration of the building. The ephemeral architecture that this generates will change constantly during the course of the ACADEMY, thus simultaneously reflecting the necessity of some form of order and the repeated pleasure of destroying it.

Biographies

Henning Fülle studied History, Politics and Education in Marburg. Until 1996 he worked in adult education, from 1997 to 2001 he was a dramaturg at Kampnagel in Hamburg; since then he has worked freelance and since 2007 as a high school teacher. In 2015 he was awarded his doctorate by Hildesheim University for the thesis ‘Independent Theatre. Modernising the German theatrical landscape (1960–2010)’. Seit 2014 He has been working on the Independent Theatre Archive project since 2014 and together with Christine Henniger and Wolfgang Schneider he is the editor of the publication ‘Performing the Archive. A study of the development of an independent theatre archive.’ He is currently researching the outcome of artistic modernisation initiatives in the theatrical landscape of the GDR.

Marlin de Haan is a director and sculptor who directs theatre plays, performances and films, creates stage designs, produces exhibitions and interactions in public spaces, on stage and in art galleries. Her work has been presented at venues including FFT Düsseldorf, Schauspielhaus Bochum, theaterimballsaal Bonn and Bomontiada Alt in Istanbul, awarded prizes and scholarships (e.g. City of Düsseldorf Young Artist’s Award, Kunststiftung NRW Artist-in-Residence Programme), invited to a series of festivals including Favoriten, Freischwimmer and WildWest eingeladen and exhibited at Manifesta 9 in Genk/Belgium, in the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein in Schwerte.

Valeska Klug studied Theatre Studies, Media Studies and European Culture and Economics in Bochum and Dunkerque (France). She regularly teaches as a visiting lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum and together with the Theatre Studies students will survey three decades of Impulse. Even outside this seminar she frequently visits archives, where she is researching her doctoral thesis on concepts of independent stage arts and artists and how these have been proposed and propagated since the 1970s through debates on cultural policy and funding. In addition to her academic work she is also actively engaged in realising installation and stage projects and festivals.

Kattrin Michel studied Scenography at Berlin Weißensee School of Art with Volker Pfüller and Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle. From 1993 to 2013 she worked as a stage and costume designer mainly in French-speaking theatre. In 2004/05 she was Artiste Associée at the Théâtre National de Bordeaux in Aquitaine and in 2006/07 she taught at Berlin Weißensee School of Art as a visiting professor. Since 2009 she has been Professor of Stage and Costume Design at Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Her exhibitions include ‘Distinction – Modelle des Strafvollzugs’, 2016, and ‘Madgermanes’, 2017 at the Kunstverein in Schwerin.

Stefanie Wenner, Professor of Applied Theatre Studies at Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2015, was awarded her doctorate after studying Philosophy, Sociology, General and Comparative Literature and Art History at the Free University Berlin in parallel to beginning her freelance dramaturgical and curatorial practice which led her to the HAU Hebbel am Ufer from 2007 to 2012. Since 2014 she has run apparatus with Thorsten Eibeler. In recent years their artistic research has focussed on addressing new materialism and its aesthetic consequences. Archives are a subject she considered with the Apparat ‘Dreck’ and as one of the co-founders of the Independent Theatre Archive at Impulse 2013.

Lunch Lectures & closing event

Visitors are able to engage in conversation with ACADEMY artists over a communal lunch. Against the background of the artists’ contributions they will be able to speak with experts in the fields of psychology, archaeology, futurology and criminology about the (in-)stability of memory, the power of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, criteria for evaluation and the utopian potential of the archive. Chaired by: Thomas Kaestle

05.06. 12:30—14:00: Archive & Memory

Subjective memory and its oral transfer are shaped by affects and emotions. The inadequacy of memory is both a weakness and a strength at the same time: facts are lost, fictions are gained. Memory means (re-)construction. What memories are accessible to us and what do we want to remember? How do individual voices turn into a collective memory?

With: Christina Irrgang, Lucie Strecker, Beate Daber (expert in forensic psychology), Almut Leh (researcher into oral history, Institute of History and Biography, FernUniversität in Hagen)

06.06. 12:30—14:00: Archive & Underground

To be included in archives means being recognised as being important and belonging. What doesn’t make it into the archive? Looking at the gaps and omissions in an archive and at those who are excluded and marginalised places a negative alongside the positive. A reversed image that makes a strong statement.

With: Michael Annoff and Nuray Demir, Mithu Sanyal (cultural researcher)

07.06. 12:30—14:00: Archive & Waste

A complete archive of the world is both a utopia and a nightmare at the same time. Archiving means choosing. But what happens when the archive accepts objects that the majority of people regard as rubbish? Values are questioned, become muddled and new values are created.

With: Marlin de Haan & students of the Master’s course in Scenic Research at the Ruhr University Bochum, Wolfgang Stöcker (art historian, founder of the International Dust Archive)

08.06. 12:30—14:00: Archive & Utopia

Every archive also contains a possible future. But which stories do we want to continue writing? What will be important tomorrow? Which documents will be able to be read and interpreted in the future? A conversation about cultural techniques, technologies and utopias.

With: Till Müller-Klug and Nina Tecklenburg (Interrobang), David Weigend (futurologist, Futurium), Gerd-Christian Weniger (archaeologist, former Director of the Neanderthal Museums)

09.06. 18:00 What remains? — The case for independent archives

In co-operation with the NRW Regional Office for Independent Performing Arts, the German Association of Independent Performing Arts and the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V.

On the last night we will set off on an interactive tour of the archive taking in all the artistic contributions. The artists will be joined by experts from the fields of academic research and cultural policy to discuss archiving strategies as well as the cultural and socio-political relevance of an archive of the independent performing arts. How can such a project be conceived in the future? In conclusion the artists will hand over the works produced in the last few days to the festival archive and thus present their own individual answers to the question: “What remains?”

With: all the ACADEMY artists plus Jürgen Bacia (Archiv für alternatives Schrifttum), Frank M. Bischoff (State Archives North Rhine-Westphalia), Christian Esch (NRW KULTURsekretariat), Susanne Foellmer (Coventry University), Hildegard Kaluza und Bettina Milz (Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia), Wolfgang Schneider (Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V.), Eva-Maria Seng (Professor of Material and Non-Material Cultural Heritage, Paderborn University)

Chaired by: Christine Henninger (International Theatre Institute) and Harald Redmer (NRW Regional Office for Independent Performing Arts)

Biographies

Michael Annoff is a cultural anthropologist and cultural worker. He was involved as a research assistant in setting up the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts Berlin, where he also teaches on the General Studies course. Since 2016 he has worked at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in the area of Culture and Communication. He is interested primarily in collaborative research processes at the boundaries of the performative arts, empirical cultural sciences and activism. Alongside this he also campaigns against discrimination and for developing diversity in cultural institutions and (arts) universities. Since 2018 he has been one part of ‘Kein schöner Archiv’.

Jürgen Bacia studied Political Studies at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University Berlin where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the peace researcher Theodor Ebert. In 1985 he co-founded the ‘Archiv für alternatives Schrifttum’, of which he has been the Director since 1986. He has also worked for ‘Archive von unten’ since 2003. Since 2008 he has been the Head of the Association of German Archivists and co-founded the working group ‘Traditions of New Social Movements’. This published the policy paper ‘On the future of archives of protest, freedom and emancipation movements’ in 2016.

Frank M. Bischoff studied History, Evangelical Theology and Education at the universities of Mainz and Marburg, receiving his doctorate in 1993. After working at the State Archive in Detmold, the Archival Academy in Marburg and the State Archive in Münster, since 2009 he has worked for the Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, whose President he has been since 2013. He is the Chairperson of the Society for History of the Rhine, a member of the Historical Commission for Hesse and a corresponding member of the Historical Commission for Westphalia.

Beate Daber studied German and Philosophy at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and Psychology at the University of Cologne. Since 1991 she has worked for the court system and public prosecutors as an expert forensic psychologist, for whom her work includes assessing the credibility of the accused. She is a founder member of the association PsychFor and a member of the organising panel of the working group Psychology in Criminal Prosecutions. She also works as a supervisor and in training and advanced classes for a range of professions. She is a visiting lecturer in social and legal psychology at the University of Bonn’s Institute of Psychology and the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf’s Institute of Clinical Psychology.

Nuray Demir is an artist and curator in the field of the visual and performing arts. her practice is characterised by an investigative and radically transdisciplinary approach. For her projects she collaborates with persons from varying disciplines with whom she forms temporary ensembles. She has realised projects at various institutions including Kampnagel in Hamburg, Sophiensæle in Berlin, HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and the Wiener Festwochen. She currently belongs to the artistic leading team at District* Schule ohne Zentrum in Berlin. Since 2018 she has been one part of ‘Kein schöner Archiv’.

Marlin de Haan is a director and sculptor who directs theatre plays, performances and films, creates stage designs, produces exhibitions and interactions in public spaces, on stage and in art galleries. Her work has been presented at venues including FFT Düsseldorf, Schauspielhaus Bochum, theaterimballsaal Bonn and Bomontiada Alt in Istanbul, awarded prizes and scholarships (e.g. City of Düsseldorf Young Artist’s Award, Kunststiftung NRW Artist-in-Residence Programme), invited to a series of festivals including Favoriten, Freischwimmer and WildWest eingeladen and exhibited at Manifesta 9 in Genk/Belgium, in the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein in Schwerte.

Christian Esch is Director of the NRW KULTURsekretariat. He studied Musicology, German and Philosophy and wrote his doctoral thesis on the opera. For many years he published reviews and essays in newspapers, on the radio and in professional journals. He has worked as a dramaturg for music and spoken theatre in Frankfurt, Innsbruck and Munich and has been a producer and commissioning editor for Hessische Rundfunk. In addition to visiting lectureships at universities and publishing many books on art and culture, he is a member of the Goethe Institut’s music panel and several other juries. He advises the city of Duisburg on its plans for culture and is a winner of the Grimme Online Award.

Susanne Foellmer is Associate Professor in Dance at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research. Her research focuses on contemporary dance and performance as well as the Weimar period, dance and the mediality, politicism and historicism of the performing arts. From 2014-2018 she directed the German Research Foundation project ‘On Remnants and Vestiges. Strategies of Remaining in the Performing Arts’. Her publications include: Performing Arts in Transition. Moving Between Media (editor, with M. K. Schmidt, C. Schmitz), Abingdon: Routledge, 2019; On Leftovers (editor, with R. Gough), Performance Research 22(8) 2017; ‘Das Archiv als situative Anordnung.’ In: P. Bexte, V. Bührer, S. Lauke, (eds.), An den Grenzen der Archive. Berlin: Kadmos, 2016.

Christine Henninger studies Philosophy and Linguistics at the HU Berlin. Since 2018 she has run the mediatheque for dance and theatre at the International Theatre Institute Germany. She has been responsible for the co-ordination and organisation of numerous digitalisation projects, including ‘Non-verbal Theatre in East Berlin’ (2019), ‘Meyerhold’s Biomechanics’ (2018), ‘The Theater der Welt Digital Archive’ (2018), in addition to research and archival projects such as ‘PASSAGE 23°E. Theatre and Theatricality from the Baltic to the Aegean’ (2016/18). She is active in the initiative for an Independent Theatre Archive and together with Wolfgang Schneider and Henning Fülle she edited ‘Performing the Archive. A study of the development of an independent theatre archive.’

Interrobang are Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug, Lajos Talamonti and guests – e.g. the composer, lyricist, producer, performer and singer-songwriter Friedrich Greiling. Interrobang devises new forms of theatre to engage with current social phenomena and questions. In installative theatre spaces and participatory play settings the audience is able to experience, test and reflect on new models of scenic communication. Playing with the theatrical community turns into playing with current and potential future forms of society and value systems. Interrobang performs at German-speaking theatres and international festivals (Heidelberger Stückemarkt, Impulse Theater Festival, Akcent Festival Prague and many more).

Christina Irrgang is an academic, freelance author and musician in the band BAR (Band am Rhein). She lives and works in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf. She completed her doctorate in 2018 at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design with a work of media analysis on the photographer and businessman Heinrich Hoffmann, which focussed on the political image strategies in the illustrated propaganda books Hoffmann edited as a constituent part of Nazi political imagery (to be published in 2020 by transcript). In her work as an author devising conceptual interview formats she has focussed on techniques of conversation.

Hildegard Kaluza has been Head of the Culture Department at the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2015. She had previously been in charge of numerous topics for the state government in NRW and the state administration of Bremen, including the family, civic engagement and labour market policy. This was punctuated by a period of freelance employment and a management role in the steel industry. Coming from a background as a student of economics, over the course of her entire career Hildegard Kaluza’s greatest interest has been in matters of social, socio-political and cultural policy.

As a cultural scientist Thomas Kaestle attaches particular value to interdisciplinary contexts. He is a member of the expert panel on art in public spaces for Hanover and the theatre jury of the Bremen Senator for Culture. As an advocate of the arts, he is responsible for Hanover Culture Department’s programme ‘Kunst umgehen’. He has taught courses in Design, Cultural Studies, Architecture and Town Planning in Dortmund, Hildesheim and Kassel. Thomas Kaestle has written as an academic, essayist and journalist on culture, the city and cultural policy, occasionally writes about academia for the Volkswagen Foundation and composed the current Yearbook of the Federal Association of the Independent Performing Arts.

Almut Leh is a historian and a research associate at the Institute of History and Biography of the FernUniversität in Hagen since 1994. Here she runs the ‘German Memory’ archive which concentrates on historical biographical research (oral history) as a field of work and investigation. She is the editor of ‘BIOS — a magazine of biographical research, oral history and life course analysis,’ a council member of the International Oral History Association and spokesperson for the research group ‘digital humanities: research in the digital space’ at the FernUniversität in Hagen.

Bettina Milz studied Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and has worked as a dramaturg, curator, lecturer and author. After academic work supervised by Hans-Thies Lehmann at Frankfurt University and work as a dramaturg and in artistic production, she was Production Manager, Dramaturg and Managing Director of the Young Opera at Staatsoper Stuttgart from 1999 to 2003. She was in charge of artistic production for Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2006 and the FAVORITEN festival in 2008. From 2008 to 2013 she curated the international summer laboratory TANZLABOR_21 at the Mousonturm Frankfurt. Since 2009 Bettina Milz has been Head of the Theatre and Dance department for the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Harald Redmer can look back on a 30 year career as a freelance professional actor, director and producer. Since 2013 he has been the Managing Director of the NRW State Office for Independent Performing Arts in Dortmund and the Principal Manging Director of the oldest German independent festival Favoriten. He also represents the sector’s interests more widely as a board member of the Federal Association of Independent Performing Arts in Berlin, Kulturrat NRW and Regionalverband Ruhr. For the State Office he is responsible for various programmes to fund the sector working on a professional basis, particularly forms of funding that have been aimed at intercultural work since 2016 and in 2017 he initiated a new programme of qualifications for the independent performance scene.

Mithu M. Sanyal is an author, cultural researcher and journalist working on the themes of power, (post-)colonialism, racism, sex and gender. Her audio dramas and features (mostly on WDR) she has been awarded the Reading Foundation’s Dietrich Oppenberg Media Prize on three occasions. She wrote the ‘Mithulogie’ column in the taz until the end of 2019 and has since been a regular writer for the SPEX-Podcast ‘Word Cunt’. Her publications include the monograph ‘Vulva’, a cultural history of female genitals (2009), and the history ‘Rape. From Lucretia to #MeToo’ (2016), which was awarded the International Social Science Prize. She is currently working on a first novel, to be published by Hanser in spring 2021.

Wolfgang Schneider is founder Director of the Institute of Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim, a board member of the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V., a member of the International Theatre Institute, a member of the Deutsche Kulturrat’s council for performing arts and dance, an honorary member of ASSITEJ Germany and Switzerland and also Honorary President of the International Association of Theatres for Children and Young People. Since 2017 he has chaired the Fonds Darstellende Künste. He is the author of numerous publications on theatre policy and most recently, together with Henning Fülle and Christine Henniger, he is the editor of ‘Performing the Archive. A study of the development of an independent theatre archive’.

Eva-Maria Seng studied Art History, History and Empirical Cultural Studies/ European Ethnology in Tübingen and Munich. She was awarded her doctorate in1992 by the University of Tübingen and her post-doctoral qualification in 2000 by the University of Halle-Wittenberg. After research and teaching in Halle und Zürich, she was recruited by Paderborn University in 2006 where she holds the Chair in Material and Non-Material Cultural Heritage. Her interests include discussing and reflecting on the network of topics cultural inheritance, preservation of monuments, restoration and reconstruction as well as preservation and collecting. In 2009/10 she was the holder of the Chaire Alfred Grosser at Sciences Po, Paris.

David Weigend is Head of Education and Participation at the Futurium in Berlin. Here new interactive formats for engaging creatively with the future are developed together with partners from science, business and society. Weigend is a political economist, design thinker and futurologist. As a trainer and presenter he has taken part in numerous innovation and strategy processes. At the same time he has also worked as a games developer for many years. He is passionate about developing new formats for interaction and learning. The aim of his work has always been to make complex issues comprehensible, to generate enthusiasm for future topics and to facilitate new forms of debate.

Gerd-Christian Weniger studied Ancient and Early History, Biology and Ethnology in Münster and Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in 1981. Following his post-doctoral qualification in 1990 in Cologne, he was a DFG Heisenberg scholar and a supernumerary professor at the Institute of Ancient and Early History at the University of Cologne. From 1996 to 2018 he was Director of the Neanderthal Museum. Since 2019 he has been their Senior Researcher and Guest Curator. He can look back on a lengthy career of research and excavation in Germany, North America, South West Europe and North Africa and is the author and editor of numerous written works on the archaeology of the Stone Age, cultural anthropology and the role of museums in modern society.

Open Congress

05.06. 10:30—12:30: Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V.

The association is working on the development of a predominantly digital platform to index and record the archives of the independent performing arts, supported by, among others, the German Association of Independent Performing Arts (BFDK), Dachverband Tanz, NRW KULTURsekretariat and the International Theatre Institute (ITI). As part of the Impulse ACADEMY it will hold its official annual general meeting. Guests are welcome. Please register through info@theaterarchiv.org.
www.theaterarchiv.org