Two or three things to unlearn: Encounters with A.I. via media art, Workshop performance at the conference "AI in Art Education", University of Koblenz, March 2025

It is difficult to keep track of the effects of one's own use of AI or machine learning. With regard to art education, the question also arises as to what constitutes the creative and critical aspects of learning with and about these technologies.
In the workshop performance, I presented artistic and scientific positions that focus on the discriminatory and exploitative effects of concrete applications, whether in cultural institutions or asylum policy. As part of the workshop performance, the conference participants had the opportunity to choose from a series of puzzling quotes about what they wanted to learn more about: whether through idiosyncratic studies by digital humanities scholars or through playful scenarios in which media artists test hybrid spaces of possibility. These insights into artistic and scientific perspectives convey approaches to agency that offer important impetus for teachers and students alike. Following the short inputs, her task was to formulate references to the living environment of students and to her own art lessons in exchange with other participants.

Garbage as Material: Global Cycles, Art, and Critique,
Training for educators with Tarfa Bachan, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, October 3, 2024

How do people deal with waste? What stories does waste tell about consumption, appreciation and sustainability? In the workshop "Garbage as Material: Global Cycles, Art and Critique" we reflected together on how garbage can be understood not only as a problem, but also as a creative tool. We investigated the cultural, social and environmental implications of waste and asked how waste shapes and mirrors different societies.

In doing so, we looked at garbage as a resource in art, and how artists around the world use garbage as a material to draw attention to ecological and social grievances. Through practical exercises and discussions, art pedagogical methods were tested during the workshop in order to deal differently with garbage/material in the classroom. Based on pieces of garbage we had brought with us, we developed an exhibition that dealt with the production, recycling and disposal of different materials. The aim of the workshop was to provide participants with new perspectives and tools to creatively and critically convey the handling of material resources and their multiple dependencies in the classroom. The training was part of the cooperation between HKW and UdK Berlin within the framework of Schools of Sustainability. Agency instead of powerlessness (2023–24).

Doing Diversity in the Arts (Institution),
Workshop with Wiebke Trunk as part of "Arts in Action: Doing Diversity", University of Agder, Kristiansand/NOR, June 13/14, 2024

In a pluralized society, academic teachers and learners are faced with the question of how diversity-reflecting, artistic and scientific teaching-learning contexts can be designed. Therefore, with this workshop, we wanted to address questions about social and cultural differences and diversity from an individual and institutional perspective. It is important to us not to understand diversity as a dazzling fantasy concept or an innocent, auspicious practice, but also to deal with more uncomfortable issues such as privilege, discrimination and equality.

At the same time, a serious examination of diverse and pleasurable methods such as montage, performance, installation and materials from art, music and theatre was linked. In this complex environment, our goal was to communicate across differences and to speculate together in artistic form about our own role and practice in the institution.

"Hej, what is so funny about it?" – Humour and Aesthetic Education
Difference-Reflective Teaching Workshop with Ömer Bayram, Haus Bastian, Centre for Cultural Education, Berlin, April 27, 2024

Based on our own experiences and examples, we looked at the common misunderstandings and conflicts associated with humor in school. These irritations have partly to do with the meeting of different generations, which is why this training focuses on adultism, among other things. Adultism stands for the power imbalance between the generations, which decisively shapes the structures of educational institutions, for example.

However, conceptions of humor also arise from various other social perspectives, through which different ideas of humor and its limits can emerge. In addition to reflecting on one's own humor and an understanding of student humor, theater pedagogical exercises and art pedagogical approaches for transfer into the classroom were tested.

How to communicate the weather to children and young people? From dealing with environmental facts and climate feelings
Training for educators House of World Cultures, Berlin, February 14, 2024

What's so political about the weather? What artistic tactics can support the treatment of the climate crisis in the classroom and the development of visions of the future? This training first addressed the individual relationship of the participants to climate issues. With the help of performative exercises, they talked about their own knowledge and emotions in the face of the climate crisis. In addition, art and theatre pedagogical methods were tested to convey perspectives for action. The aim was to start a conversation based on artistic productions, to become active and to develop possible applications for their own lessons.

The training was designed in the seminar "Conveying climate change in a strengthening way" under the direction of Nanna Lüth and was led by students. It is part of the cooperation between HKW and the UdK Berlin within the framework of Schools of Sustainability. Power to act instead of powerlessness (2023–24).

Art / Education in National Socialism. Retrospect, continuities, perspectives
Presentation of results Working Group on Culture, Politics and Education, Haus Bastian, Centre for Cultural Education, Berlin, January 24, 2024

Two series for teacher student at the UdK Berlin in the summer 2023 addressed "Art/Education in [and after] National Socialism" and thus continuities of fascist ideologies, personalities or aesthetic practices, gaps in knowledge and post-Nazi perspectives on the school subject of art in Berlin. One reason for this was that there has been no systematic research on the predecessor institution of the Berlin University of the Arts, where it was possible to study art education in the Nazi era. Another impetus was the lack of reappraisal of the Nazi era in art education. In order to encounter both, guests were invited to present their artistic or scientific research. At the same time, students went to the archive of the art academy and researched original documents and followed individual research questions.
Six months later, three of the resulting term papers were presented to the Working Group on Culture, Politics and Education. In this context, Nanna Lüth, Greta Wildhage, Anna-Maria Podlacha and Michelle Marx provided insights into the processes and results of research-based teaching. They talked about (1) the overall concept of the research module, (2) questions of documenting violence and persecution in the context of the exhibition Flashes of Memory. Photography in the Holocaust, (3) Serious research gaps regarding the institutional history of universities during the Nazi era and (4) Prevention of right-wing extremism through aesthetic education.

Becoming Funny. Reflexivity of Difference and Humor in Teaching
Workshop at the Berlin Center for University Teaching (BZHL), October 20, 2023

Do I show my sense of humor in teaching? What reactions do I know, which are likely? What can humor with a difference-reflexive or inclusive claim look like? These are the kinds of questions that this seminar dealt with. This training consisted of the following modules: An exercise to reflect on one's own experiences with humor in teaching (see figure), an input on conceptual foundations and practical examples, a discussion of the strategies of selected comedians and artists, and a transfer phase to collect one's own differential humor projects for teaching. Becoming funny is used here ambiguously: it stands both for the development of one's own humor and - in the sense of becoming strange - for the practice of extraordinary, often minoritized perspectives.

A distinction can also be made between humour as an attitude or personality trait and comedy as an aesthetic or media form. The fact that comedy is often based on surprises shows parallels to artistic processes of shifting and irritating. It is therefore obvious that there is something to be learned for pedagogical practice in artistic projects that use comedy with an agenda critical of normality.

Question Higher Orders
Lecture and workshop on the exhibition Sigmar Polke: Music from an Unknown Source, Romanian-German Cultural Center Brasov in cooperation with the IFA - Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, December 2018

The exhibition opened with a lecture on Polke's biography and working methods.

In a subsequent workshop with pupils and adults, we approached the series Music from an Unknown Source (1996) by Sigmar Polke in jointly made-up stories. These were set to music and recorded in several voices. The focus was on the development and exchange of personal readings of this medially and visually versatile series.

The teamwork, the mutual listening, the speaking in front of an audience and the temporary addition to the hanging were perceived as extraordinary, especially by the participating young people.

Audiovisual Displacement of Sculptures
Workshop with Katja Böhme as part of the art education weekend for the Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, July 2017

This workshop was about approaching some works of the Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017 in a filmmaking way.
Katja Böhme and Nanna Lüth had framed the map of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017 with envelopes containing the official information about each work. Numerous works were located within walking distance; however, more remote works in the vicinity of Münster were also included in the map.
Students, art teachers and university lecturers participated in the workshop. We started with a short introduction about our own impressions, the map and the available video equipment. We were interested in the (in)accessibility of the works associated with the expansive exhibition format. The participants were invited to choose one work and to encounter this work with a video camera. It was agreed that we would meet one hour later at the Aegidiimarkt in order to project the resulting films there into the urban space with the help of a portable beamer. Thus, at this meeting point, a medially supported exchange about what had been experienced and recorded took place.

The Mural.
Learning German in the exhibition Claudia Kapp: YouYou. Media Art Education at the Edith Russ House for Media Art Oldenburg, together with Doris Mosbach, Jacobs University Bremen, and Jan Blum, January 2012

Learning a new language is facilitated when practiced in contexts experienced as meaningful. With this in mind, a visit by international students from Jacobs University Bremen as part of a week of immersive language learning was framed by a shared coffee and a walk through Oldenburg's city center.

Claudia Kapp's exhibition YouYou was guided by worksheets that linked the viewing of the media art productions with language learning steps. The combination was evaluated by the participants as very positive and supportive.

The Wild Western.
Performance and video project for children 8 and older and youth. Edith Russ House for Media Art in cooperation with the Hermannshof Osterscheps and the Institute for Music, University of Oldenburg, together with Stefanie Oberhoff and Ludwig Szebel, September 2011

At the Hermannshof in Osterscheps/Edewecht the artists Stefanie Oberhoff and Nanna Lüth realized the shooting of a "wild western" . "Wild" in this case meant that we wanted to take the Western genre apart and create extraordinary situations and images. With the help of beards, wigs, plastic weapons and matching clothes, the participants, aged 8 - 18 years, could slip into the roles of cowgirls and cowboys. Even the horses and dogs present were moved to perform in front of a large blue screen. The work namely was done with blue screen technology, which makes it easier to fade in other backgrounds during editing and thus transport the filmed action to another time.

In a second step, the video material was post-edited by students of the Carl-von- Ossietzky University under the guidance of video editor Ludwig Szebel. The freshly cut and dubbed wild western was presented and celebrated one week after the last day of shooting in the presence of many children, young people and adults involved.

Out-of-tune hero*ines.
Multimedia project and action for Prevention Day. Edith Russ House for Media Art in cooperation with the Institute for Material Culture-Textile - Media, University of Oldenburg and the Comenius School Oldenburg, March - June 2011

The linking of popular heroes with masculinity, strength and agency made them the starting point of this artistic-educational project. In the media project "Out of tune heroines" the untouchability of such heroic, in some cases also violent figures should be questioned by a 7th grade of the Comeniusschule Oldenburg, in a longer crossmedia process.

First, the students designed hero*ine profiles and each thought of a heroine pose in which they wanted to be photographed. Stereotypical and surprising sentences were put into the mouths of these heroines by means of speech bubbles. After that, the students started to dub existing heroine characters in films. The students viewed various film clips without soundtracks and selected their favorite ones. This resulted in small groups that wrote new dialogues corresponding to the lip movements, in which they brought out the vulnerable, silly or quarrelsome side of film heroines.

The results of these idiosyncratic dubbings were presented at the 16th German (Violence) Prevention Day at the train station next to the police information booths. Guests of the prevention day, police officers and travelers could watch the project results of the class and spontaneously lend their own voice to heroines at two laptop stations.

Good memories, bad memories– in Neukölln.
Video and performance project with Barbara Loreck and class 5a of the Grundschule am Richardplatz in the context of urban memories, Altes Museum Neukölln, Berlin 2010

This project with pupils of the Richard elementary school in Neukölln established a connection between the exhibition urban memories in the "Altes Museum Neukölln" (curator: Maria Linares) and the Ganghofer Straße neighborhood. The basic idea was not to address a specific target group and yet to record cultural and social similarities and differences with the help of an overarching question.

After two introductory meetings, the students approached about 100 passers-by in the Richardpassage, asked them about their good and bad memories, and entered the location of each memory on maps of various ranges. From the collected memories, those that could be translated into scenes were selected in a follow-up meeting. The subsequent staging for the video camera offered the pupils the opportunity to deal with the experiences of adults unknown to them and to rework them into a video film according to their own ideas.

The insights into the memories collected on site gave them - as later for the visitors of the exhibition - the chance to learn more about the Neukölln neighborhood and its inhabitants. n.