Johanna Ackva & Lotta Beckers
clairvoyants. walking towards the future with eyes closed
Intensive Workshop, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Saturdays/Sundays, 30./31.5., room 201 and 27./28.6., room 110, each 11-18 h, Hardenbergstr. 33

Registration on Moodle starts on 9.4.2026:https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=3045
Enrollment Key: eyes

What if there is no future in sight? What if we have no visions left for it? And what if these questions describe a sense of being that is spreading through our times, slowly but surely? Clairvoyants, people (allegedly) equipped with extraordinary sensorial capacity, have been attributed a special role in times of crisis. Asking them for their "vision" and advice meant asking them to tap into a kind of wisdom that was different. Other than the so-called objective knowledge, strongly associated to ocular vision, their ways of seeing were neither shared/sharable, nor representable. 

Oftentimes assigned female, sometimes reported to be Blind, clairvoyants also perceived their times from a place at the periphery. In this seminar, we will depart from the figure of the clairvoyant and use performative practices between movement, language / vocal improvisation and writing to activate and shift our "sensorial continuum" (Piet Devos) and create a density of present experience from which new images, sensations and narratives might arise. While observing correlations between the movements of our physical bodies and of our perceptions, thoughts and ideas, we ask questions like: Which futures have we lost? How can we start speaking from a place of not-knowing? How can we explore the power of speculation without ignoring its dangers? In which form will new futures be able to arise?

While these practices allow to observe correlations between the movement of our physical bodies and the movement of our perceptions, thoughts and ideas, they also invite to experiment with new ways of interweaving them. How does a discussion change when we keep changing our physical position and respectively our perspective? What does a conversation in the dark reveal about the role of our eyes, ears and sense of orientation? What can embodied forms of speaking reveal to us about processes of meaning-making? 

Together we will also read extracts from literature to theory, to dive into the discourse around speaking the truth/ telling the future. Against the occult weight of the term clairvoyance, in this seminar, we call for playfulness and embrace humor.

References, among ohers:
Bennett, Jane: The Enchantment of Modern Life, 2001 
Devos, Piet: Entering the Skinscapes of Blindness, Lecture Manuscript, 2019 
Foucault, Michel: Fearless Speech, [1983] 2001 
Kraus, Chris: Aliens and Anorexia, 2000 
Wolf, Christa: Störfall, 1987

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Active participation in exercises and discussions; creation of own proposals, individually or in small groups, interest in exploring movement, language and one’s own performative body in the frame of a group, willingness to read short extracts of text alone and/or together.

Johanna Ackva (she/they) is an artist, dance maker and performer who loves to sing and to move at the speed of a snail. With her work - be it performances, text and music publications or participatory formats - she aims at inviting the audience alongside her into an experience of heightened sensitivity towards self, another, space and time. With a background in anthropology, Johanna continues to use participatory observation, interviews and archival research as artistic tools alongside with body-based practices like aikido, dance improvisation and various vocal techniques. For many years, Johanna has researched death, loss, our relationship to the dead and performance as a practice of farewell - a research that has fed into publications and performance projects like aus dem was sprachfähig war (2020), CLOUDS ON CLEAR SKY (2021) and Grandmothers (2023). In the frame of the Tanzpraxis scholarship (granted by Berlin senate), in 2024/25, Johanna has investigated the role/use of the senses in dance, therefore keeping an artistic dialogue with Blind actress Pernille Sonne. Most recently, her works have been presented by the festival Current | Kunst und urbaner Raum (Stuttgart) and Fabrik Potsdam / explore dance network. Next to making her own work, Johanna entertains a close working relationship with choreographer Isabelle Schad. As one of the organizers of Denk-und Produktionsort Libken, she curates and hosts diverse formats like most recently the interdisciplinary residency "into the fields".

Lotta Beckers (she/they) works as an artist and dramaturge across performance, dance, and theatre. Studying Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen shaped her curiosity for theory as well as collaborative, interdisciplinary practices. As a dramaturge and co-author, she is involved in a long-term collaboration with theatre director Noam Brusilovsky and scenographer Magdalena Emmerig, with whom she develops research-based theatre works that question power structures and engage with the impossible in theatre. Their documentary piece Nicht Sehen about sexualized violence in Carinthia won the Nestroy Special Price in 2022. Moreover, Lotta regularly collaborates as a dramaturge and performer with choreographer Deva Schubert, who creates voice-based dance performances using the force of intimacy. The piece Glitch Choir was invited to renowned festivals such as Tanztage Berlin and ImpulsTanz Festival Vienna, where it won the Young Choreographer’s Award 2024. Lotta’s own artistic research explores the entanglements of desire, affect, and power through using archival research, movement, text, and sometimes sound and video. She is interested in the oscillation between the documentary and the poetic, as well as between the historical and the personal.

Together with Eliana Kirkcaldy, Lotta and Johanna form the collective footnotes, which is dedicated to researching ways of writing and speaking desire. In 2026, they are part of the School of Commons (ZHdK Zürich).