Open registration for summer courses

Get inspired at the Berlin Summer University of the Arts 2023: Starting in June, the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) presents an international workshop programme aimed at artists, advanced students and graduates from all artistic disciplines. Thirty workshops in Fine Arts, Design, Music, Sound Arts and Performing Arts, as well as transdisciplinary courses, provide an excellent opportunity to nurture your artistic practice and make lasting connections. Registration is now open.

This year’s focus on “Translational Acts” reflects the engaged dialogue between the disciplines at UdK Berlin. Artistic practice unfolds in the face of major social, political and technological transformation processes: questions of climate justice and sustainability, collectivity and diversity or digitization are aesthetically translated in manifold ways. Crossing, transgressing, transcribing, rewriting borders and limits represent central dynamics of the Berlin Summer University of the Arts and we invite you to take part.

You can find a fine selection of our workshops below. Discover all courses here.

In June, Poshak: Understanding Diversity through “Bollywood” Costumes with film maker Pradipta Ray scrutinizes Indian popular aesthetics through the lense of diversity, collaborating with the UdK constume department and capturing cultural and political narratives. Storyteller Ragnhild A. Mørch teaches her art in two introductory courses on Oral Storytelling—Part I and Part II.

“Unlearning to Write” is the motto of one of our July workshops. In Floating Texts, participants are invited to transgress the visual and performative boundaries that shape our understanding of text, type, books etc. Modes of ethnographic translation—as well as their affordances and risks—will be explored in Visual Ethnography. This workshop provides participants with the theoretical framework and practical skillset to produce ethnographic short films. Our Public Intervention with Sound workshop intervenes in public space with a focus on the specificity of Berlin Central Station, where the participants’ artworks will be exhibited.

In August, a Berlin Poster workshop focusses on image making in experiments and on risography. The fine arts course Transitions—Drawing and Space explores transition spaces of (not only) urban Berlin and experiments with drawing in an open and interpretive manner.

Finally, in September, the transcultural practice of Bilingual Co-Telling will be the focal point of a new workshop focussing oral storytelling in tandem.