Dimensions of Loss

Loss first appears as an experience of lack: something has disappeared, been damaged, or is no longer available. A person, a place, a bodily state, a memory, a political certainty, an idea of the future. At the same time, loss is never merely private. It is socially organised, historically produced, and unequally distributed. What appears to some as progress, innovation, or development may mean, for others, the loss of habitats, belonging, work, language, bodily autonomy, or memory.

The seminar therefore does not approach loss as a sentimental motif, but as an aesthetic, political, and performative category. It asks how contemporary performance engages with what is missing, interrupted, disappearing, or no longer narratable. What does loss leave behind as form? What bodies, gestures, voices, images, and spaces emerge from an absence? And how can loss be addressed performatively without merely representing it or dissolving it into narrative?

The focus is not on illustrating a theme, but on developing artistic procedures. Drawing on works from performance, theatre, dance, and video art, we will examine how loss can be translated into scenic form. We are interested in how biographical, historical, political, or documentary material can be transformed into a performative proposition: as a solo, as a choreographic structure, or as a multimodal arrangement.

The seminar is conceived as a theory-practice seminar. The collective analysis of artistic works and theoretical texts alternates with practical sessions in which specific performance strategies are tested. Every second session is dedicated to artistic work. The starting point is not a finished concept, but the production of material: writing, speaking, moving, listening, reacting, condensing, discarding. The aim is to develop solos or group works of approximately ten minutes that engage with a self-selected dimension of loss. The resulting works will be publicly presented at FWT: Köln at the end of the semester.