For the first time the Hamburg International Summer Festival is this year in conjunction with the University of Hamburg (Chair for Theatre and Performance Studies) and supported by the Körber Foundation staging an International Summer Academy.
18.-28. August 2010
International Summer Academy Hamburg
Performing Politics
New: Take a look at the lectures and artist talks of the academy! You will find them here.
Update: The lectures of Ulrike Haß and André Eiermann exchanged their dates. This change only concerns the announcement in the official festival programm. Ulrike Haß speaks on Wednesday, 25.8, André Eiermann on Friday, 27.8.
For 10 days artists of six productions shown during the festival will together with seven theorists hold workshops with selected students.
The primary aim of the academy is to promote the rigorous exchange between theory and practice through collective research and development with theorists and festival artists and to allow this work to emanate into town and festival.
As far as subject matter is concerned the Summer Academy will closely follow the theme(s) outlined by the Festival in the shows, installations and accompanying events taking place.
We will be collectively exploring how it might be possible to associate the political and philosophical questions posed by the social sciences with the actual work of artists and practitioners without reducing either the artistic demands or the complexity of the questions to (a kind of) ethical kitsch or indeed ending in a school classroom or at a misplaced demonstration.
The public programme consists of open talks with artists and lectures before larger audiences in which the artists showing work at the festival and invited theorists will outline their positions as to central questions in the performing arts regarding the conflicting ideas of political intervention, effective aims and aesthetic demands.
Internally the Summer Academy offers 30 future artists and intermediate students of arts based subjects with the goal of working in theatre, performance, dance or fine art the opportunity to interexchange with artists and theorists.
Artists showing work at the festival will together with theorists hold three-day workshops in which the work of the artists and the basic approaches of the theorists are considered and examined. The participants of the workshops – following their intensive work with the artist and theorists as well as the confrontation with artistic strategies and theoretical interrogation will then be given the chance to create their own projects within 10 days of collective practical work.