Workshop BODY AS AN ARTISTIC MEDIUM: Working With(In) Limits & Expanding Possibilities by Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu
General Course Description
The workshop focuses on limits as a starting point for performance practice. Limits—whether physical, emotional, social, or political—are usually seen as constraints, but they can also open new ways of being in the world and in the performance art context: working with the body. Through somatic exercises, journaling, and performative scores engaging with (dis)comfort, restriction, repetition, and support, participants will explore how thresholds can generate presence, transformation, and new forms of relation. The sessions combine practical exercises, individual explorations, and group discussions to consider how the body negotiates boundaries and how limitation itself can become a method in performance art.
Accessibility note:
After the presentation, the workshop will take place in silence. Short instructions will be given in English, using simple language. Participants are welcome to take a break or step out at any time. There will be water and warm herbal tea in the space. Please bring a pen and a notebook/papers for journaling. Come with comfortable clothes and open hearts <3
The workshop is open to anyone regardless of previous movement experiences. Artists, working with the body or not, can integrate the instructions into their ongoing research.
Duration: Coming soon
Hours: Each day from 10 AM – 12:30 PM
Seats: Max. 12 |
Language: English
Fees: The participation fee is €95 per person including material (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).
Learning outcomes
In this workshop, participants will:
- Work with their body’s current state as a material in performance
- Create movement scores that explore personal limits
- Make an embodied research for support strategies
- Reflect on how performance interacts with social, political, and historical constraints
Program Structure with Daily Lesson Plan
Day 1
10.00 – 10.20 am: Opening Circle & Introduction — Limits, Boundaries & Potential
After a short opening circle, presentation and discussion on the role of limits in performance art. We will briefly look at selected works by artists with the guiding question of how physical, emotional, social, and political restrictions shape the body and how they can be translated into performative methodologies.
10.20 – 12.00 am: Practical Session I — Thresholds of the Body
Guided warm-up and somatic mindfulness exercises designed to bring attention to the body’s current state and limits. Participants will engage in tasks of stillness, slowness, repetition, and controlled restriction to sense where thresholds emerge. The focus will be on presence, persistence, and the potential of minimal gestures.
12:00 – 12:15 pm: Journaling
12.15 – 12.30 pm: Reflection & Exchange
Group discussion on discoveries from the morning session. Participants share observations and wrap up the first session.
Day 2
10.00 – 11.00 am: Practical Session II — Limits as a Material
We will begin with exercises in sustained duration—holding gestures, repeating actions, and testing how time transforms the body’s relationship to movement and presence.
11.00 am – 12.00 pm: Development of Movement Scores
Participants will create their individual scores, integrating their personal research on limits and strategies to support oneself. This session emphasizes the balance between tension and recovery, challenge and support.
12:00 – 12:15 pm: Journaling
12.15 – 12.30 pm: Group Feedback & Reflection
Participants share the outcomes of their explorations to close the workshop.
Your Workshop Instructor
Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu is a multidisciplinary artist working with long-durational performance, video, installation, and public intervention. Their practice explores chronopolitics, necropolitics, with a focus on vulnerability and resilience of marginalized, especially queer bodies. Leman holds an MFA in Live Art Forms from AdBK Nuremberg with distinction (DAAD Prize 2024). They’ve shown work at Pickle Bar Berlin, Door Foundation Amsterdam, Ornamenta24, Baerenzwinger Berlin, ICA London, Europride23 Valetta, SALT Istanbul, Schwules Museum Berlin, among others. A Gwaetler Stiftung fellow for 2025, Leman has received multiple awards and grants for their research-based artistic work.
More information on the Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu Instagram account.
