"Performing Pankow" was an extensive student research project and event offered within the framework of Bard College Berlin (BCB) Theater and Performance Professor Nina Tecklenburg’s course “Critical Acts: Introduction to Performance Studies“ in Spring 2021. The project started with an intensive study of and active engagement with everyday life performances by the Kiez residents and/or communities around the BCB campus (Kiez = neighborhood). Through a series of performance ethnographic field trips, students were asked to study daily routines, micro-rituals, and habits in relation to local buildings, landscapes, streets, pathways, and their historical underpinnings, which reveal a long-term coexistence of local and global spheres (a former German Democratic Republic (GDR) embassy district, a suburban residential neighborhood, and an international college campus). Student performances included participatory pieces, interventions, local storytelling, oral history events, movement-based works, performance art activism, and sound pieces. Each performance was documented by a campus videographer (student assistant). The project featured a walking tour of Pankow led by the writer and activist Annett Gröschner and a final event in which students presented some of their performative interventions and presented a video documentation of their neighborhood-based performances.

Project leader: Nina Tecklenburg, Bard College Berlin Professor of Theater and Performance

Guest walking tour leader: Annett Gröschner, writer and activist

Student works by: María José Sarmiento Isaac, Ezgi Karayel, Gracie Kuppenbender, Langston Stahler, Luiza Garcia Zanardi, Naama Simon, Wanda Alvesová