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 June 30 to July 04, 2025. 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, 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 Stanley Kubrick, the futuristic electro of Dopplereffekt, Uncanny Horror, 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
Grotesques, Rhetoric and Defying Articulation – An Introduction to Staging Evil
Morning Session:
GROUP INTRODUCTIONS
To begin the class, Steven will introduce his art practice including a presentation on his sonic, performance, filmic and sculpture methods, research and ideas. The group will also have an opportunity to introduce themselves, their practices and their interest in the course subject. After there will be a short lecture ‘What is (staging) evil. Steven will read excerpts from his book and give an overview of the text. Discussing main points such as
- The Gothic Cathedral and Grotesque as metaphor for staging evil, power and representation.
- Victor Hugo’s staging Evil in Notre Dame
- Activism slogans to reframe reality and society
- Gerard Donald and The Cold Scientist
- Kubrick & Inarticulating Horror
There will be a discussion after about the topics with the group and how that resonates with everyone.
Afternoon Session:
Exercise ‘Consolatio and the Introduction to Cenobite’
Steven will introduce the character of Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise, and give a short background introduction to the film. Afterwards he will give a performance of his Consolatio piece which incorporates this character for today. Consolatio as a space of convalescence even in a hellscape.
We will then work on workshopping the piece in groups of 2, on how the participant would stage this evil. There will be a short performance with the group in costume to perform it. Participants will begin to journal and sketch out their ideas for a scene they would like to stage. Something of their imagination, how would they stage something unimaginable or difficult to represent? The focus here will be on how not to represent something. How can a symbol become a placeholder for something more nefarious or sinister? If evil is something that defies categorisation, it must reside in the imagination. How does one manifest that in the physical realm? As a final exercise of the day, participants will make a miniature clay model of the Lincoln Imp, a folk devil from England which resides in Lincoln Cathedral. This will be fired over the 5 day period and made available at the end of the week.
Tuesday
Gerard Donald and Sonic Fictions – Electronic Evils
Morning Session:
The second class will start with a playback of the music of Dopplereffekt. Warwick will discuss the work of Gerald Donald and how he stages evil through his cold scientist persona. The short talk will go on to include ideas of nationalism and national identity. Kraftwerk will be used as a counter to Donald’s persona and incorporate Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Diasporic, as referenced in his Black Atlantic book.
Afternoon Session:
After a short break, we will discuss this topics and then Warwick will further expand how he incorporates these notions into his work such as his play Berlin Belongs To Us (2019) about the mascot of the Berlin bear, how Hitler sought to repurpose this cute mascot to take about the slavic origins of the name Berlin, and Romus & Remus, suckled by a wolf, going on to founding Rome. Finally Warwick will discuss 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.
Participants will be invited to present any recorded works they have and there will be group feedback to think about how their work responds in these frameworks. Participants will present their sketches as is and workshop them for the remainder of the afternoon.
Wednesday
Narrative & Media – how do we create meaning?
Morning Session:
Steven will introduce media theorists such as Edward Bernays Propaganda and Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation. He will compare and contrast this with the current ‘vibeification’ of culture as discussed by Caroline Busta in her recent article in Document Journal, in which memes and neural learning has altered in both how the human mind processes information and ‘content’ as well as vibefication in films such as Spring Breakers by Harmony Korine and the rabbit hole of meaning in Jacques Rivette’s magnum opus Out 1. In turn Warwick will discuss the influence of gaming in this narrative shift, as referenced in Korine’s latest movie Aggro Drift and the proto LARPing of Mike Kelley’s Day is Done artwork.
Participants are invited to consider fairytales as story telling 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? Anna Uddenberg’s Premium Economy work and it’s subsequent viral takeover in tiktok and social media will be discussed. Steven will show excerpts from his play ‘Urban Renewal’ (2019) which was performed at the Klosterruine Berlin on Easter Day 2022 and also from his film installation ‘ The Anti Social Poodle’ (2023)
Afternoon Session:
Participants will be in a round circle and be invited to discuss the idea presented and workshop and work on their sketches of a scene. These can be drawn, recorded as a audio play or journalled in a notebook.
Thursday
Cinematic evils Kubrick, video nasty Scum
Morning Session:
Participants will be shown short clips from films by Stanley Kubrick from The Shining and A Clockwork Orange and Alan Clarke’s prison film Scum. Warwick will read an excerpt from his Kubrick chapter and there will be a class discussion about the topic and Jung’s idea of the Shadow Self. He will also discuss clips from the documentaries Feels Good Man and The Antisocial Network and excerpts from the X Files tv franchise. Steven will conclude reading a short chapter from his Fear Indexing the X Files book.
Afternoon Session:
In the afternoon, participants will be given a camera and invited to film a scene of their writing that they have been working on as documentation. The classroom will become an de facto film set with lighting to perform a scene.
Friday
Staging Evil
Morning Session:
Participants will be invited to stage a scene of evil. Bearing in mind the ‘evil’ is that which cannot be articulated or explained. The scene will be about trying to avoid definition and explanation. Yet at the same time, students will be invited to articulate or stage that which they struggle to articulate. Afterwards we will watch back the recordings from the previous day and discuss how participants find watching the live and then the mediated versions of scenography. Feedback and group crits will take place.
Afternoon Session:
Presentation of group material. A scene is performed amongst the group. Feedback after and participants will be asked how they thought it went. We will conclude the day with a final performance of Consolatio which will be performed as a group and filmed. Afterwards participants will receive a copy of the documentation and can also pick up their Lincoln Imp.
General Information
Duration: June 30 – July 04, 2025
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 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; Cleopatra’s, New York; Beach Office, Berlin; and Balice Hertling, New York. 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, Frieze, and Urbanomic. 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, recently published by Floating Opera Press.
More information on the Steven Warwick Website.
