Janina Janke
Senior Fellow
Janina Janke is a scenographer and researching artist and lives in Berlin. She develops collaborative practice-as-research projects, site-specific performances and spatial installations that explore the social structures and transformative processes of specific locations. At RIFS, she researches the spatial conditions of encounter, negotiation and dialogue, and asks how physical spaces can foster social contact between people of different backgrounds and beliefs. After an apprenticeship as a carpenter, Janina studied European ethnology and philosophy in Munich, and then stage design at the Berlin University of the Arts. She co-founded the transdisciplinary formation Oper Dynamo West for contemporary music theatre in urban spaces. Since then her work consistently takes place in dialogue with particular buildings and spaces in Berlin and internationally, such as the Zoologischer Bahnhof Berlin, Le Corbusier’s Unités d’habitation in Berlin and Marseille, and the UN headquarters in Vienna, Nairobi, New York City, and Geneva. Janina is a member of the theatre collective Turbo Pascal, which is known and awarded for its interactive performances and participatory theatre projects.
- 2013 - today: Member of the theatre collective Turbo Pascal.
- 2021/22: Participant of the practice based research project "Virale Theatres“ with workshops, symposium and exhibition on the transformation of theatre in the Covid-19 pandemic. In collaboration with Ramona Mosse (EXC 2020 Temporal Communities FU Berlin, PI), Nina Tecklenburg (Bard College Berlin, Interrobang) and Christian Stein (EXC Matters of Activity HU Berlin, gamelab.berlin), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
- 2018/19: Artistic Direction (together with Maurice de Martin) of "Just Intonation" - research project on working with contemporary music in psychiatry at the University Hospital Immanuel Klinik Rüdersdorf near Berlin. Supported by the Music Fund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Montag Foundation.
- 2017/18: Artistic Direction (together with Bill Dietz) of "Totale Architektur“, Archive research, performances and interactive sound installation on the immaterial heritage of the Bauhaus at the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung Berlin.
- 2016 - 2018: Artistic Direction (together with Julie Rüter) of "ANKOMMEN bauen wohnen leben“, four-part participatory art project series with the Heimatmuseum Bernau on the transformation of the city in the 20th/21st century. Supported by the Stadtgefährten fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation, in collaboration with the city of Bernau.
- 2014 - 2016: Contextualizing research and staging of the handwritten play "Griseldis" (1713) from the archives of the Marienberg Benedictine Abbey (South Tyrol). In collaboration with Toni Bernhart. Part of the research project „DramaNet – Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net“ at Freie Universität Berlin.
- 2011 - 2016: Artistic Direction (together with Maurice de Martin) of "unknown spaces“, arts-based research project with field research, workshops, exhibitions and lecture performances at the UN headquarters in Nairobi, New York City, Vienna and Geneva and the host communities. A sub-project of the FWF/PEEK research project "andere räume - knowledge through art" at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt/ Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Further Education.
- 2011 - 2013: Artistic Direction (together with Bill Dietz) of "Das Wort haben die Benützer/ La Parole est aux Usagers“. A comparative study and a participatory art project in Le Corbusier's Unité d'habitation in Berlin and Marseille. Supported by the Capital Cultural Fund, Marseille-Provence 2013 - European Capital of Culture. In collaboration with the Electronic Studio of the TU Berlin, German Centre for Architecture (DAZ). A production by Oper Dynamo West, Ensemble Zwischentöne, ehrliche arbeit - freies Kulturbüro.
- 2006 - 2016: Co-founder and member of the transdisciplinary music theatre formation Oper Dynamo West.
- site-specific, participatory and interactive theatre and performance
- functions and transformations of urban spaces
- feminist spatial theory
- local impact on global politics
- folk theatre (18th and 19th century)
Publications prior to joining the RIFS
- (mit Ramona Mosse, Judith König, Christian Stein, Nina Tecklenburg) (2022): Viral Theatres’ Pandemic Playbook - Documenting German Theatre During COVID-19, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (RPDM). DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2022.2031800
- (mit Toni Bernhart) (2019): The Crystallization of Early Modern European Drama in the Folk-Theater Tradition in Tyrol: The Marienberg Griseldis from 1713, Staged in 2016. In: Joachim Küpper, Jan Mosch, Elena Penskaya (eds.): History and Drama. The Pan-European Tradition. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 147–159. DOI: 10.1515/9783110604276-014
- (ed.) (2010): Oper Dynamo West - Die Stadt als Bühne. Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
- research scholarship by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR, 2022/23.
- #takecare scholarship for research on theatre in digital space, 2020.
- artist in residence at the UN headquarters in Vienna, New York City, Nairobi, and Geneva, 2011 - 2016.
- artist in residence at quartier 21 - MuseumsQuartier Vienna, 2015.
- fellow of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, 2014.
- resident fellow at GMEM - centre national de création musicale in Marseille, 2013.
- residency fellowships from the Goethe-Institute in New York City and Nairobi, 2011/12.
- fellow of the German Academy in Rome, Casa Baldi, 2010.
- project fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude, 2009.
- fellow (pilot phase) of the Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences at the Berlin University of the Arts, 2008/09.