Workshop CREATIVE STRATEGIES: Participatory Performance and the Aesthetics of Citizenship by Ren Mauney
General Course Description
In this workshop we will experiment with different participatory performance methods, using the group as a laboratory for interactive and embodied art making. The short lecture will introduce artists who utilize public participation as a key component of their practice, as well as a brief summary of Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship.
Following the lecture, we will dive into a short physical warm up to begin addressing our body, each other, and the space. We will then divide into two groups and each group will be given a series of tasks to develop together, derived directly from the examples in the lecture, but amenable to each group’s interests and experiences. As the aim of participatory art is often to replicate or interrogate the aesthetics of democracy, citizenship, and public bodies, these themes will inform the nature of these tasks. Over the course of our two days together, the groups will develop a short participatory proposal which will be enacted with the other group at the end of our time together.
Duration: April 08 – 09, 2026
Hours: Each day from 10 AM – 12:30 PM
Seats: Max. 20
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
My interest in participatory performance and the subsequent development of my own practice emerged from my experiences as a political activist. In sharing this practice, I don’t wish to inform participants how to regurgitate my urgencies, but instead to be better informed by their own. Participatory work forces the artist to consider the public, who they might be, why they might come, how might they react. The participatory artist cannot make in isolation, the creative process occurs simultaneously to the performance, exhibition, or interactive experience.
One of the primary learning outcomes from this workshop is to make the connection between real life and art and to avoid abstract concepts that won’t translate to a wider public. On one hand, the workshop will give the participant more strategies for performance making, but on the other, it might also give them more creative tools for engaging in public life at a time when that seems to be more fragmented than ever.
Program Structure with Daily Lesson Plan
Day 1
10.00 – 10.20:
Introduction and Short Lecture on Contemporary Participatory Performance
10.20 – 10.40:
Physical warm up, connecting with others and space
10.40 – 10.45:
5 minute break
10.45 – 11.15:
Dividing into two groups and working on 1st task: Devising a Body
11.15 – 11.45:
Working on 2nd task: Devising a Public
11.45 – 12.15:
Working on 3rd task: Simulating Reality
12.15 – 12.30:
Reflections on the day’s process, questions, discussion
Day 2
10.00 – 10.20:
Physical warm up
10.20 – 10.40:
Review of previous day’s tasks with group
10.40 – 10.45:
Short break
10.45 – 11.15:
Working on 4th task: The Citizen’s Gestures
11.15 – 11.35:
1st group shares participatory experiment with others
11.35 – 11.55:
2nd group shares participatory experiment with others
11.55 – 12.05:
Automatic writing exercise to personally reflect on process
12.05 – 12.30:
Final discussion, reflections, and questions
Your Workshop Instructor
Ren Mauney is a performance artist, writer, and activist based between Berlin and London. She is also a PhD Politics candidate at Goldsmiths University of London and is currently researching the utility of participatory performance as a psychic intervention in embodied nationalism. Ren recently premiered the participatory work MISTRIAL in the rural US south with the support of The Map Fund, Culture Mill NC, and The Fruit. Last year, she was also part of the artistic intervention “The Embassy of Fugitivity” in collaboration with fellow Goldsmiths student activists at Carnegie Library Hub. Her work has been presented across Germany, the UK, the US, and Portugal over the last decade and she considers it urgent to bring political performance to spaces where it normally does not exist and to engage publics outside the nucleus of art and academia.
More information on the Ren Mauney Website and Instagram account.
