Interdisciplinary summer workshop program

Courses in Fine Arts, Music, Design, Performing Arts as well as transdisciplinary formats: the Berlin Summer University of the Arts unites all these elements. From June to September, over 30 workshops invite artists, advanced students and graduates from all artistic disciplines to develop their artistic practice further, connect with international artists, and create new spaces for artistic exchange together. We offer a discount of 100 Euros to all Summer University and UdK Berlin alumni, as well as a 50 Euro discount for multiple bookings.

This year’s course programme centres around the theme UTOPIA:

In times marked by instability and uncertainty, art plays a key role in processing experiences, challenging existing boundaries, and creating alternative spaces. It invites us to envision alternatives to the status quo, providing a platform to rethink the way we engage with the world around us. Throughout the summer, participants will have the opportunity to dive deep into these ideas, using their artistic practice as a means of expressing visions of a better world, and of exploring how we might navigate and reshape the present in order to build a future grounded in positive transformation.

You can find a small selection of workshops in various disciplines below. Discover all courses here.

Fine Arts
Aesthetic Transformation Processes: Inspiration across Disciplinary Boundaries (June 30–July 4) combines fieldtrips within Berlin with a cross-disciplinary creative practice, focusing on idea-generating processes. How can we inspire each other and collaborate with various disciplinary backgrounds?

Paradise NOW! On Artificial Wilderness and Botanical Enclosures in Painting (August 11–15) explores the possibilities of developing pictorial spaces within the medium of painting by taking Berlins Botanic Garden as a starting point for utopian and dystopian ideas of a contemporary paradise.

Performance
Tools for Science Fiction Performance (June 10–14) introduces tools and methods that allow you to identify and articulate utopian potentials within the artistic scenarios you are creating—ranging from game theory to salsa aerobic or instant costume design.

Towards a Future that is Accessible (July 31–August 2) proposes new antidotes to able-ism, and centers around the artistry, practicalities and aesthetics of access when planning, producing, and creating work.

Music
The Space between Voice and Gesture (July 21–24) explores the intersections between oral and written phenomena in sound, and experiments with new interdisciplinary methodologies in vocal performance art.

Berlin Modular Music Culture—Aesthetic and Social Potentials (August 25–30) combines artistic and scientific perspectives on modular synthesizers with practical research into the social dimensions of Berlin’s synthesizer culture and its utopian, dystopian and heterotopian aspects.

Design
Crafting Beyond Utopia: Bio-Materials and Poetic Futures (June 23–27) combines hands-on work with bio-materials like bio-plastics, and theoretical discussions on repair, healing and imagination in order to create “poetic futures” that celebrate transformative practices and aesthetics beyond perfection.

Material Fictions: Haptic Narratives of (Un)Spaces (July 7–11) investigates the multifaceted culture and exploratory nature of touch, unveiling the complex historical, cultural, and social interconnections embedded in textile, non-textile, and digital materials.

Artistic research
The (Art-)School of Provisional. Artistic Practice in times of Crises (June 23–27) experiments with improvisation as a tool to face crises through artistic work.

Utopian Relationships: Autoethnographies of Naturecultures (June 30–July 4) explores the entanglement of nature and culture through embodied somatic knowledge production. Participants will engage in multi-sensory, creative, ethnographic and critical practices.

Visit here for detailed information on our program and its workshops, as well as online application. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us: summer-courses [​at​] udk-berlin.de.