Zoë Svendsen & Roman Senkl
The Visible (in)visible: art, AI algorithms and surveillance cultures in the contemporary
Intensive Week, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Tuesday through Saturday, 22.-26.7.2025, 10-17 h in Hardenbergstr. 33, Raum 4 & 110

Registration on Moodle starts on 14.4.2025: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2668
Enrollment Key: public

We will use the story.glitch (minus.eins) platform to explore our contemporary relationship with public space and paranoia. Using a game/participatory performance structure, we will invent interventions in public space to test the tipping point where the invisible becomes visible, and observation becomes surveillance, where an eye for detail becomes conspiracy theory. Today when so much of our activity – and our mental lives – is shaped by digital experience, what effect does this have on our public interactions? This course forms part of our investigations towards a new public-digital artwork exploring AI, migration, climate crisis and the tyranny of (digital) bureaucracy.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Curiosity; interest in teamwork and collaboration; commitment; flexibility; imagination. Each student will need to bring a smartphone, and be willing to use their web data/app function.

Zoë Svendsen (zoë/her) is a Brighton/Cambridge-based director/dramaturg/ writer/researcher, making participatory art exploring ecological crisis / capitalism: Wild Dress (Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking), the Amt für Zuwart und Gegenkunft, Floating University, Berlin; Love Letters to a Liveable Future (Cambridge Junction); Ness, a sonic landscape work (Metal Culture/Estuary Festival); video installation Factory of the Future (Oslo Architecture Triennale); Artsadmin Green Commission, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican), World Factory (Young Vic/tour); 3rd Ring Out (Tipping Point commission; tour). As dramaturg, Zoë collaborates to reimagine classic texts: the Globe, Young Vic, RSC, NT. As lecturer at the University of Cambridge (Faculty of English), I teach graduates/undergraduates, designing and delivering lectures and seminars, supervising PhD / MPhil dissertations.

Roman Senkl (he/him) based in Berlin/Vienna, is a theatre director/writer with a focus on digital and hybrid theater since 2008, both in ensemble theater (Burgtheater Wien, Schauspiel Köln, Volkstheater Wien, Schauspiel Dortmund, Deutsches Theater Berlin) and in independent theater (Ringlokschuppen Mülheim a.d. Ruhr, HAU, Konzertsaal UdK). His pioneering works include stage and multimedia productions, mixed reality performances (AR, VR - including the world's largest VR environment in Mozilla Hubs with Ars Electronica), holographic projections, as well as apps for interactive storytelling and artificial intelligence. His work has been nominated for both “Digital Showcase”/Theatertreffen as well as FAUST Prize, his livestreaming projects generated more than half a million views, whilst his creative campaigns received more than 20 international creative awards (including the Golden Lion Cannes, London International Awards, CLIO Awards Las Vegas, ADC Awards International & Germany). Roman is Artistic Director of Burgtheater Wien’s “Kasino”.