Master Class STAGING EVIL: Folk Devils, Social Dramaturgy, Performance and Object Making by Steven Warwick
General Course Description
“What is evil? Have you ever wondered why you/ we use the term? Evil is something unimaginable, how would you represent it? Have you ever wanted to stage it? This course is a five day intensive course which will be held at Berlin Art Institute from February 16 to 20, 2026. A class like this seldom occurs, and is for the curious. Warwick’s own practice is wildly diverse and crosses many accepted boundaries and preexisting notions of what it is to make art. Using his book length essay Notes of Evil (Floating Opera Press, 2022) in which he argues that ‘evil’ doesn’t even exist, or at least in the way we currently frame it. It serves as a point of departure to provide a cutting edge discursive framework, you will learn both how to make work and also how to be able to theorise and articulate your unique perspective in this world.
The Staging Evil masterclass focuses on connecting disparate strands of queer, cinematic and critical contemporary theory alongside praxes such as experimental electronic music, theatrical performance, creative writing, video, sculpture and installation art to take you on a journey which will help you question your own preconceptions and enrich and expand your ongoing artistic vocabulary. There is a focus in this class of being present in a space, together, learning something in real time, and allowing yourself and the class to unfold in the present moment. By coming to the BAI classroom context, Warwick will present something not available online and so esoteric, a singular thinker who seamlessly bridges artmaking, theatrical, musical and writing fields, you will be uniquely enriched by this experiential and experimental learning programme.
In Warwick’s own practice, he stages a performative situation, using writing as the point of departure and works across various media, including video, sound, performance, sculpture and installation in various formats of exhibition making, theatre, performance, concerts, book length essays, criticism and cinema. He has released albums on the PAN label, lectured at Cal Arts, CSM London Vienna Art Academy, and exhibited at the ICA London, Quai Branly Museum Paris, SMK Denmark, Issue Project Room NYC ,KW Institute for Art Berlin. He has also co-authored Fear Indexing The X Files w Nora Khan ( Primary Information, 2017) and the experimental writing performance duo Elevator to Mezzanine with DeForrest Brown Jr. He is also a regular guest and contributor to the New Models podcast.” (Text by courtesy of Steven Warwick)
Learning Outcomes
This five day course focuses on connecting different islands of possibility. Through a combined rigorous theoretical framework and fluid approaches to praxes, you will facilitate your own approach to how we stage ‘evil’, garner an understanding of why we even still use the phrase, how you create meaning and articulate a narrative convincing for the public stage of appearances and representation. Bridging research and artistic practice, critical discussion, rethinking queer, technological, linguistic and art history, each session will build upon the former with the goal of dismantling preconceived ideas about socio-political taxonomies, binaries, and systems. Collaboration and group discussion are also integral parts of the course. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with fellow artists and share areas of knowledge. This exchange of ideas and experiences can further enhance the learning experience for all involved by manifesting desires and goals which you are yearning to realise. By being exposed to previously unknown approaches, artists can refine their skills and open up new techniques into their work.
The course will incorporate readings from sources such as Uncanny Horror, shadow self, activist rhetoric, media theorists, film, television, theatre, music, installation and performance.
General Guidelines
This course is designed for artists of all disciplines and for those interested in learning about understandings of evil and how we as a human collective, stand to articulate that which we cannot understand or seek to articulate and parse through storytelling and narrative as well as extra sensory affective environmental presentations.. The course will incorporate mythologies and theories, symbols, and ideas. No prior knowledge of the subject is necessary to participate in the course. However, participants should have an open and engaged attitude towards the subject matter and be willing to experiment.
Benefits
- Participants will learn, adapt and form their own ideas and approaches to staging evil.
- Participants will learn new approaches and connecting strands of theory and praxis which are both esoteric, disparate and universal to create new tools for meaning making.
- After the class, participants will be comfortable workshopping their own projects and be open to developing their work with a performative aspect in their practice.
- Participants will have the opportunity to create new visual artworks using experimental writing, sketching and performance techniques
- Participants will also have developed a set of building blocks to devise new project and artist performances as their practice evolves
Methods and Topics of Teaching
- Lectures and presentations with visual and audio components
- Guided group discussion
- Individual and group instruction
- Assignments and in-class exercises
- Group and individual critiques/feedback
Steven Warwick will present cathedral grotesques, literature, film, activism,electronic music, the artist’s own oeuvre, to look at how we as a society try to stage and represent ‘evil’, aka an unimaginable source of horror, which by definition defies explanation or understanding. Individual and group attempts at trying to locate this evil or perceived problem and how this plays out in society at large. The group will be led by the artist via practical exercises, group discussions, writing methods, workshops. By the end of the course, you’ll leave with practical tools and the ability to produce and build on your work that reflects your unique perspective and voice.
Program Structure with Daily Course Description
Monday
9:30 AM Reception at the BAI
Imps of the Perverse: Grotesques, Rhetoric and Defying Articulation – An Introduction to Staging Evil
10 AM – 1 PM Morning Session:
GROUP INTRODUCTIONS
To begin with, the class will introduce themselves and we will begin with a discussion of evil. What do we understand by the term? Afterwards we will do a short exercise regarding improvisation. There will be a short lecture ‘What is (staging) evil. Steven will read excerpts from his book and give an introduction to the text. Discussing points such as
- The Gothic Cathedral and Grotesque as metaphor for staging evil, power and representation.
- Victor Hugo’s staging Evil in Notre Dame
- Edgar Allen Poe – The Imp of the Perverse
- The Lincoln Imp
2 PM – 4 PM Afternoon Session: Introduction to Mask Work: Cenobite and Creating the Mask
Steven will introduce his Pinhead character performing the short piece Consolatio and give a short background introduction to the character. There will follow with an introduction to Mask work. Steven will discuss the use of masks in Hellraiser, the performance art project Breadwoman, Kubrick films, and in his own practice. Participants will start making their own mask for the rest of the afternoon.
Tuesday
10 AM – 1 PM Morning Session: Interior Evils
The class will begin painting their masks. The class will then continue in the seminar room with two practical improvising exercises
This Morning, Warwick will present his piece HOUSE. The piece incorporates a short story narrated by the artist. Afterwards students will be given an exercise to write their own short story, maximum one side of A4. The text can be an instant response to the piece HOUSE or an idea that the person has brought with them which they wish to work on. The focus is on responding and improvising and unlocking the imagination and use of narrative storytelling.
Afterwards, each participant will take turns reading out their piece. There will be a group crit before the lunch break.
2 PM – 4 PM Afternoon Session: Narrativizing Evil
There will be a group exercise of working in groups of two or three. The participants will have to edit and workshop their stories together to create a new piece. They will be asked how they would like to present their work, and can, if they feel ready, also present the new piece.
Wednesday
Storytelling, Fairytale & Conspiracy, Shadow Self
10 AM – 1 PM Morning Session: Down the Rabbit Hole & Shadow Self
Participants are invited to consider fairytales as storytelling for meaning-making in childhood development, with a clear good and evil moralistic narrative. How does this change in adulthood and current narrativization of life? What about when boundaries are blurred and one is tempted to fill in the blanks for answers?
He will present the use of fairytale and myth in his work, discussing works such as Berlin Belongs to Us, The Riddle of the Imp on the Mezzanine, Saint Pancras (My Journey). Warwick will discuss the desire of conspiracy, to make sense of an unclear world. There will be a conversation about conspiracy in Jacques Rivette’s epic Out1 episodic film, Kubrick’s The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, The Anti Social Network; Memes to Mayhem.
A further presentation will be about revisiting the Imp of the Perverse, Jung’s notion of the Shadow Self and the differences between Freud’s Doppelgänger & Jung’s Shadow.
2 PM – 4 PM Afternoon Session: Inhabiting the Mask
There will be a follow up session to the mask introduction.
There will be a series of practical exercises with the mask.
There will be an introduction to a further neutral mask.
Thursday
Cinematic evils and video nasties; Scum, Elephants and Antisocial Poodles
10 AM – 1 PM Morning Session:
Participants will be shown short clips from films by Alan Clarke’s prison film Scum and Elephant, as well as Gus Van Sant’s Elephant as well as the TV series Adolescence. Warwick will read an excerpt from his video nasty chapter and there will be a class discussion about the topic.
Warwick will discuss his film installation The Antisocial Poodle (2023) and his last album Moi (2019) released on PAN showing how he adapted and incorporated different elements of his recorded output to be staged as a theatrical performance and reformatted across different media, and to parse contemporary hellscapes.
2 PM – 4 PM Afternoon Session:
Canute, Editing Evil
Steven will play one of his compositions and each participant will workshop and improvise mimeing to the piece. Steven will make an improvising exercise filming a short scene with each group improvising a dialogue around a short set of instructions and cues. Participants will write a further short text/story. They will work in new groups and further workshop the text, incorporating their masks.
Friday
Staging Evil – Paradise regained
10 AM – 1 PM Morning Session:
Participants will give a short introduction to their own work and practice. Afterwards, they will workshop with both a neutral mask and their own mask.
2 PM – 4 PM Afternoon Session:
Final presentations of work in 2 larger groups. Feedback and crits.
General Information
Duration: February 16 – 20, 2026
Hours: Each day from 10 AM – 4 PM (including several breaks & lunchtime)
Seats: Min: 6 | Max: 20 | Language: English
Fees: There is a one-off registration fee of €50. The participation fee is €850 per person (without accommodation).
The fee is VAT-exempt by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery Higher Education and Research pursuant to Paragraph 4 No. (21) (a)(bb) UStG (German Value Added Tax Act).
Your Master Class Instructor
Steven Warwick is an artist, writer, and musician living and working in Berlin. His practice is paradigmatic of an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses theatre-making, sculptural installation, film making, social dramaturgy and composition. His work is disseminated on a multitude of platforms including records, galleries, nightclubs, publications and the Internet. Across these contexts, Warwick creates assemblages of performance, image, sound and language that speak to the ways in which ideologies construct and inhabit spaces, online and offline – from co-working spaces to clubs, television shows and online chat rooms.In its pluralistic live forms, Warwick’s work redefines the expectations and conventions that accompany events such as performance and public exhibitions.
His visual and performance work has been exhibited at KW Berlin; Schinkel Pavillon, Volksbühne Berlin, Klosterruine Berlin, Reading International, Zürich Moves! Festival, Art Night London, SMK, Copenhagen; The Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Hot Wheels Athens/ London; Cleopatra’s, New York; Beach Office, Berlin; As a musician working under his own name and, previously, as ‘Heatsick’, he produces and performs a hybrid live/ DJ set, releasing recordings with the club/experimental label PAN and has played at Berghain, Berlin; London Contemporary Music Festival; Trouw, Amsterdam; Bergen Konsthall; LAMPO/ Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago; Issue Project Room, New York; and the Mutek and Unsound Festivals. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, BOMB, Spike Magazine, Frieze, and Urbanomic and been published by Kunsthaus Glarus and Hartwig Art Foundation. He is also a co-author of ‘Fear Indexing the X- Files’, an audiovisual performance-lecture series issued as a book by Primary Information and Notes on Evil published on Floating Opera Press.
More information on the Steven Warwick Website.
