This semester, we are once again offering the studio "Do What You Want". With this format, we aim to promote experimental ideas and working methods, encourage students to develop confidence in their research abilities, and strengthen their own creative and critical thinking. Each person should develop their own radical idea, which we will then work out together.

In times of multiple crises, we understand coming together as a political act. Perhaps we prepare ourselves for the future by spending time with one another – not as an escape into concrete utopias or fixed goals, but as a practice of remembering our connectedness and our collective power.¹

Without space, there is no politics, because politics means the possibility of coming together. The agora is both the circle of assembled bodies and the space that contains them.² We understand the studio as such a space – a place where silence is transformed into language and action:³ While the political shift to the right threatens democratic values such as freedom of speech and spaces everywhere in the world, we want to offer something in opposition, not freeze and fall silent out of fear, but open doors to spaces where we learn to create productive unrest while simultaneously creating quiet places of reconstruction.⁴

"Do What You Want" is both radically individualistic and rooted in collaboration and solidarity. Everyone plays a role in shaping the dynamics of the course. Each studio day, we dedicate ourselves to colloquium-style meetings, quick pin-ups, and detailed presentations. Discursive dinners and other forms of hospitality are an integral part of our course. The overlapping efforts of the three student groups – space group, documentation group, communication group – help us build relationships beyond individual design tasks.

ART RESIDENCY 3-7.11:

During the excursion week, we will spend 5 days together at the Blaue Pferd (Blue Horse). This time is conceived as an art residency. Just as in recent years at PAF – Performing Arts Forum near Paris or at PFHAU in Greiffenberg, we will work intensively on our projects during this time, exchange ideas, cook together, and organize a situated presentation of our interim progress on the last day. Working in a different place enables us to focus on our work, be creative, and detach ourselves from everyday routines for a limited time.

The Blaue Pferd is a listed four-sided farmstead located on the edge of the Schorfheide Biosphere Reserve, not far from the lake district of Zehdenick. The residential experiment began in May 2024 as an art project. Sustainable thinking and action, as well as an exchange between city and countryside that promotes culture and democracy, are the central values of the Blaue Pferd. https://www.das-blaue-pferd.de/menu

Costs:
25€ per night per person (100€ for the excursion) plus the costs for the wood and briquettes we use (6 euros per wood basket / briquette package)

Travel:
Zehdenick (Mark) train station is 5 km away. The regional express RE 12 from Berlin Ostkreuz via Zehdenick to Templin runs hourly. A bus runs from Zehdenick station to the farm three times a day. Otherwise, you can also cycle or walk from the station. From Berlin, it is possible to take the S-Bahn to Oranienburg and then cycle 40 km along the Havel on the Berlin-Copenhagen cycle path to the farm.
 

Dates:
First meeting: Wednesday 15.10 – 5:00 pm – Room 401
Studio day is Wednesday (all day)
Participation is limited to 10 students.
Registration in Moodle

Footnotes:

¹ Samara Hersch, in: WHAT CAN THEATRE DO, https://www.spielart.org/ueber-uns/editorial

² Fatima Ouassak, Per un'ecologia pirata, 2024

³ Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action", Sister Outsider, 1984

⁴ Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016