Primary Schools

Discover the fascinating world of performance art and enrich your (art) lessons with new impulses!

Performance art – what is it anyway?

The focus is on an unrepeatable, unique action of one's own body in space and time. We already have everything we need for this: Our bodies, everyday forms of movement and action, completely normal things. Placed in other contexts, surprising and powerful images are created.

Why performance art in art lessons?

Performance art combines visual art, theater and movement and enables an interactive, experimental confrontation with oneself, with others, with current social phenomena and with strategies of contemporary art.
In addition, this engagement promotes positive group dynamics, creativity, self-expression, critical thinking and the experience of self-efficacy in your students.
Performance art is very well connected to the world of children, e.g. to practices of repurposing and rededicating objects and spaces of the ‘adult world’ in child's play.

What do the kids do? 

In numerous practical exercises, pupils experiment with using their own bodies as an artistic medium and perceiving them in new and different ways: For example, how do I move in the world when I consciously switch off my sense of sight? They play with temporal parameters and specific places: How is an action changed if I do it really quickly or really slowly? What if I show it on the stairs, in the elevator, in the schoolyard? They rededicate everyday objects and learn to see the world as a space of possibilities: What can I do with a chair other than sit on it? And finally, they develop their own performances in small groups and show them to their peers.

inclusive
no prior knowledge required
for pupils from Year 3 upwards
concept tailored to the respective group
as a supplement to regular lessons or as a project week

And what does a project like this look like in practice?

Realized examples can be found here and here.

Cooperations:

Wartburg-Grundschule Münster
Overberg-Grundschule Münster
Johannisschule Münster
Dreifaltigkeitsschule Münster
St.-Bernhard-Schule Rulle
Schule in der Dodesheide Osnabrück