June 03 – 04, 2025, 10 am – 12:30 pm

Many thanks to the curator, writer and art critic An Paenhuysen for her workshop introducing our participants to CREATIVE STRATEGIES: The Art of Talking during the basic course within the Studio Program at BAI | Berlin Artist Residency, Art School, Arts Incubator, and Live Online Courses & Classes.

“Thought is made in the mouth”
Tristan Tzara

In this workshop we focus on speech acts and forms of discourse as tools to make art. The talking can happen in many ways, during a studio visit, in an interview, an artist talk, a performance lecture. It can be as simple as the art of conversation. “Working definition of a conversion,” critic Monika Szewczyk says, “is that a conversation produces something that is creative.” According to philosopher Arthur Koestler, the gradual construction of thought happens during speech: “Ideas come while talking.” And then there is the collaborative talking, for instance, with Paul McCartney and John Lennon writing songs together: “Jojo left his home in…” “Hey John, is Tucson in Arizona?” “Not sure. I think so.” “Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona…”.

Inspired by case-studies of talkers such as Anne Carson, bell hooks, Robert Filliou, Laurie Anderson, we explore creative ways of talking and its potential to make thinking move between people in a room. From an intimate coffee talk to a public speech, from writing texts to be read out loud to spontaneous and improvised talking. (Text by courtesy of An Paenhuysen)

An Paenhuysen is an independent curator, writer and art critic based in Berlin. From 2019 to 2022 she was the director of ‘The House of The Deadly Doris’, where she organised events to activate its 1980s punk archive. Recently, A curated ‘Hotel Belgrade’, the main venue for Belgrade Art Week 2021 and  in 2022 ‘Sign and Arts. Deaf Culture / Hearing Culture’ at Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. An wrote her PhD about the cultural criticism of the Belgian artistic avant-garde. She was a post-doc researcher at UC Berkeley, Columbia University New York and Humboldt University Berlin. An has published her writing in Spike Magazine, Contemporary And, Sotheby’s, Berlin Art Link, etc. She also writes poetry: Silly Poems (Arthur Cravan Foundation) and Island Life (Quince Ediciones). In 2020 she founded the publishing project AAAAA PPPPP Publishing for short format art writing.

More information on the An Paenhuysen Website.