Prof. Christiane Kühl & Prof. Chris Kondek
Performing Fakes
Intensive Workshop, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Saturdays/Sundays, 11-15 h (except 28.6.: 11-17 h)
30.5., 13.6./14.6., 20.6 (room 110), 27.6./28.6.2026, Hardenbergstr. 33, room 310

Registration on Moodle starts on 9.4.2026:https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=3042
Enrollment Key: fake

In a world increasingly shaped by digital tools and artificial intelligence, the boundary between the "real" and the "fake" starts to blur. This blur includes people. Deepfakes, Chatbots, autonomous AI agents make it increasingly hard to discern who – or what – we are dealing with. This workshop asks how our idea of what is real is evolving—and how faking has moved from forgery to a generative force, creating new identities, histories, and realities.

Through media analysis and hands-on practice, including discussing and developing AI models, participants will explore how fakes function and how artists can respond to and appropriate these strategies. Rather than condemning fakes, we seek to use their affective potential. Participants will create fake identities, contexts and narrative artifacts: From fake influencers and utopian newsreels to fake visas and non-existent subcultures. These creations will be the raw material for a performance we will develop together – a media performance about fakes using fakes. What futures do these fakes warn against, what do they hope for?

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: active and regular participation.

Christiane Kühl is a theater maker, author, editor, and curator of interdisciplinary symposia between art and theory. Since winter term 2023/24 Kühl is Guest Professor for Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice and Theory in Studium Generale at the University of the Arts Berlin. After studying Modern German Literature, Philosophy, and Spanish at the University of Hamburg, she worked as an arts editor for the newspaper taz, SPIEGEL magazine, and radio station radioeins/RBB. She has  freelanced for various media outlets, including Die Zeit, F.A.S., dummy, and Du (Switzerland). From 2006 to 2015, she collaborated with the steirischer herbst festival (Austria), and from 2011 to 2013, she served as deputy to the artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele. She is a co-founder of the performance group doublelucky productions, which has been creating theater pieces, lecture-performances, and video installations since 2005, in co-production with HAU Berlin, Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, Münchner Kammerspiele, among others. Their work has been critically acclaimed and tours internationally (www.doubleluckyproductions.org). Since 2018, she has been part of the team for "Weiter Schreiben. A Platform for Literature from War and Zones of Crisis," which has been awarded the Power of the Arts Prize in 2018, the PEN Centre Germany's Encouragement Award in 2022, and the BDI Cultural Promotion Prize in 2023. More information on www.christianekuehl.de.

Chris Kondek, born in Boston in 1962, started as a video designer for theater in 1990 working with the New York Theater company The Wooster Group. In 1995 he began a multi-year collaboration with performance artist Laurie Anderson; in the late 90's he made video for productions by Robert Wilson, The Builder's Association and Michael Nyman. After moving to Berlin in 1999 Kondek established himself in the German Theater world, working with directors Stefan Pucher, Falk Richter, Jossi Wieler, Armin Petras among many others, as well as with choreographer Meg Stuart. In 2007 Kondek created video for the first of many opera productions with Sebastian Baumgarten. With director Lydia Styer he worked on Stockhausen's “Donnerstag aus Licht”, which was named production of the year 2016 by Opernwelt magazine. For his video work in theater Kondek received the OPUS/Deutscher Bühne Prize in 2008 and the Faust Theater Prize in 2012. Since fall 2023, he and Prof. Christiane Kühl share the Professorship for Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice and Theory at Studium Generale at UdK Berlin.