Erato Tzavara is a video artist/performer and educator specialising in video design for theatre, moving image techniques for live performance, and embodiment in relation to digital media. With a background in Psychology (BA, Panteion University, GR) and Media (Ma in Image and Communication, Goldsmiths College, UK), she has been working with digital image composition and media dramaturgy in dialogue with the moving/acting body in physical space, within a vibrant international network of collaborations in theatre, dance, music and fine art. Her research, between liveness and the digital, the tacit and the virtual, the human and non-human, utilises participatory practices, somatics techniques and multimedia performance iterations that place the body as the primary sensing-recording-relating apparatus. The research aim is to formulate an understanding of how the digital and the visual is subjectively experienced and how collective narratives / imaginaries are co-performed and embodied within the current networked communication landscape. Website: www.erato-t.com 

Till Wittwer is an artist, writer and researcher. He creates research-based narratives exploring the ways in which “reality” is constructed. These narratives come in the form of lectures, performances, essays, publications, video, and—occasionally—games. His background is in Theater Studies (at Freie Universität Berlin) and Fine Arts (at UdK Berlin). Till is also interested in forms of education and the subjects they create. Website: https://till-wittwer.net 

İrem Aydın (she/they) is an author and theater director from Turkey, currently based in Berlin. In their practice, they explore the intersections of queerness, migration, and futurism with a focus on speculative storytelling. They aim to deconstruct dominant narratives within speculative futures, particularly amplifying voices often sidelined in mainstream discourse. They actively explore the emancipatory potential inherent in reimagining storytelling across diverse mediums, employing poetry, fluidity, and sensory experiences. Website: www.irmaydin.com 

Leopold Helbich Frey is a filmmaker, researcher, and storyteller who works at the intersection of artistic practice and scientific research in the fields of film, performance, theater, and immersive media. Frey grew up in Germany and Mexico. After graduating from Rainer Werner Fassbinder FOS in design, he studied theater, art & media theory, modern European philosophy, and film directing in Zurich, London, and Geneva.

PEERS 2023/24

Li Chen is a filmmaker and photographic artist from China who studied Film and Screen Media at Queensland College of Art and Film Curating at the London Consortium. She is interested in the complex relationship between history, memory, and feeling; and how they express themselves under censorship. Her research explores the photo-filmic approach and oral history method as an integral part of artistic practice.

Piibe Kolka is an artist, filmmaker and filmworker with a background in anthropology. She is working with video, sound, and performance and drawn to artistic research and artists’ moving image as a personal practice with room for experimentation and enquiry into the audiovisual, temporal and rhythmic aspects of social realities. By alternating between questions of what is happening? and how does it feel? she explores the intensities of presence in films and movement practices. Most recently she has developed an interest in the spatial and experiential aspects of expanded cinema. Kolka has previously worked as a cinematographer and editor of documentaries, narrative features, and artists’ films. She studied anthropology at Tallinn University in Estonia and documentary and experimental film at The New School in New York.

Lea Letzel is a performance artist, director and pyrotechnician. In her artistic practice she concentrates on the development of interdiscplinary scenic and performative work at the intersection of sound and music, media arts, dance and space. Lea  is especially interested in the concert format and questions around the conditions and conventions of performance situations. The examination of the relationship between art and music is also thematized spatially as her works are produced and performed in different forums between the white cube, black box and in the context of new music. Her visual and acoustic material is equally versatile and indeterminate, moving between pyrotechnical elements and the soundscape of a skate hall. Lea´s research project is dedicated to the performative relationship of fireworks and music. 

Mamadou Soma is a director, actor, dancer, and performer from Burkina Faso. He has created numerous shows and participated in many artistic projects. He is continuously questioning what form of theatre could correspond to a population with different languages and traditions—as is the case in his home country and elsewhere in Africa—and how to decolonize theatre in Africa, which is strongly influenced by the classical form inherited through colonisation. In his artistic practice and research, he is perpetually in search of communion between the actor, the audience, and the stage in an exorcism of magic, movement, gestures, objects, sounds, unusual landscapes, and lighting combined with rituals to form a poetic language superior to words—an inclusive form of theatre that puts the local population at the centre of its action and can be used to subvert thought, the logic of artistic practice, and the way the world works.

Verena Steiner, a dancer, choreographer and musician, working in the context of expanded choreography, performance and contemporary dance. Her art practice involves the use of voice and sculptural elements and is influenced by interests in philosophy, sociopolitical and ecological transformation and healing techniques. In her research she focusses on „monstrous“ choreographies as a subversive practice.→ website

PEERS 2022/2023

Lawrence Agbetsise, a filmmaker, editor and a contemporary artist from Ghana. He is concerned with the exploration of transdisciplinary approach to expand the spectrum of dynamic storytelling as an alternative means of tackling existing challenges socially, culturally and politically through art. He has been invited to prestigious Film programmes and often works with stories in relation to Africa and the world to entertain, educate and promote social change.→ website

Sam Crane, a British actor known for his critically acclaimed performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in The West End and on Broadway. He is also a prolific screen actor and has appeared in many successful television shows. As his alter ego Rustic Mascara, he attracted over 50 thousand views to his radical attempts to perform Shakespeare inside GTA online and had his films shown at contemporary art and film festivals worldwide. Currently, he is making a BFI funded documentary about this work and has been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2022.

Meloe Gennai, a poet who grew up among Black women who were activists, artists, writers and scholars. Having had access to their thoughts and libraries at a very young age, Meloe built their mixed-race trans non-binary self with a strong sense of belonging and consciousness. They graduated in Law, Literature and History and worked as a legalist and activist; and it is through a combination of circumstances that Meloe has become an artist. Their art practice explores embodied narratives through poems, moving images and performance.→ website

Anouk Hoogendoorn, an artist and writer, who studied Fine Arts and Writing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam, with a practice that is theoretical, textual, and visual. Main interests include radical pedagogies from a process philosophical approach and the act of fabulative writing in the (visual) arts. The practice always has an important collaborative and experimental orientation to it.→ website

Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolau, a filmmaker with a background in literature, philosophy and sociology, working in the field of cinematic sensory ethnography. He experiments with new film formats and languages through practice and teaching, directing creative non-fiction films and teaching audiovisual research methods at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ). → website

Ginan Seidl, an artist and filmmaker who creates video installations, feature-length and short (hybrid) documentary and experimental films. Ginan studied fine arts in Halle (Saale), Berlin and Mexico City, she participated in the Professional Media Master Class and the Master Class Lab of Werkleitz e.V. in 2012 and 2016.  Also she is part of the film art collective FILZ.→ website

PEERS 2021/2022

Alexandre Achour, a choreographer and performer in the contemporary independent dance scene. With his research, Alxandre is interested in examining dance and its tremendous diversity and approach to public, with the aim to create a pluricultural landscape of local dance practices.
→ website

Andrew Champlin, a contemporary performer, choreographer, and ballet researcher based in Berlin. For his artistic research, Andrew seeks to create a compendium of ballet technique, which takes shape in a digitally interactive manual of critical pedagogy.
→ website

Setareh Fatehi, a Teheran and Amsterdam based choreographer, working with dance as a socialising practice and gaze as a choreographic tool. In her current research, Setareh works with Parallax as an ability to see two or more images at once, to provoke a feeling of absence or confusion in what is actually present.

Rahel Kesselring, a scenographer and cultural scientist working in various constellations in the context of performance, theatre and installation. Rahel’s research project is a search for the autonomy, self-efficacy, vulnerability and resilience of environments, landscapes and territories.
→ website

Hendrik Quast, a queer performance artist who works within different contexts of the performing and visual arts, and as author and director of radio plays. Hendrik‘s research-project is dedicated to chronic, invisible diseases and their relationship to humorous representations in contemporary performing arts and society.
→ website

Tabea Rothfuchs, a scenographer who has been creating media scenographies and interactive installations for dance, performance and musical theatre productions internationally for over ten years. Her artistic research focuses on the topic of chronic pain, based on an artistic residency in a pain clinic as well as conversations with chronic pain patients.
→ website

Our six 2021-PEERS in their summer residency at the Alpenhof in Appezell.
Hendrik, Tabea, Andrew and his dog, Rahel, Setareh (remote) and Alexandre as well as the head of the 3rd Cycle Yvonne Schmidt.