För Künkel

Tinkering, Testing, Designing, Crafting - Scenography and Costume in the Independent Performing Arts as Aesthetic Practice (AT)

With this dissertation project, I research the working processes of scenography and costume design as aesthetic practice, focusing on scenographers and costume designers who work primarily in independent theatre and performance – that is, in contexts situated outside institutionalized theatre settings and their fixed workshop structures. In the absence of traditional theatre workshops, and within the context of flexible, often collective modes of production, experimental, craft-based practices emerge, so my thesis holds, situated between artistic intention and practical constraints.

This practice of "doing it yourself" shaped by an ongoing and often diverse specialization in craft. A wide range of methods – such as sketching spatial or physical possibilities in conversations and rehearsal processes, working with unfamiliar materials, or tinkering toward new solutions represent physical and sensory learning processes: forms of knowledge that reveal themselves in enactment and are further developed through practical doing. This work is characterized by a high degree of both verbal and non-verbal communication with and through the material.

My research interest lies in the question of how this practice and it’s specific forms of knowledge can be researched, described, and made visible; what traces do these practices leave behind; and how does knowledge transfer occur. Methodologically, the project is situated between rehearsal studies and craft sciences. Drawing on conversations with artists about their working processes, literature-based contextualization, archival research, as well as my own artistic practice as experiential knowledge from the position of practitioner-researcher, I examine the interrelations of material, tool, and body; methods of learning and experimentation; as well as self-conception, continuities, and ruptures within the practice.

2025–ongoing Doctoral project “Tinkering, Designing, Trying, Enacting – Scenography and Costume in Independent Theatre as Aesthetic Practice” (working title)

DFG Research Training Group 2477 “Aesthetic Practice,” University of Hildesheim

2015–2017 Directing Arts and Media, focus on Theatre (Master of Arts)

Stiftung Universität Hildesheim

Thesis: “The Pile and the Politics of Space” (grade 1.3, Oct 25, 2017)

First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Annemarie Matzke · Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Thomas Lange

2007–2011 Scenography – Costume (Bachelor of Arts)

Hochschule Hannover

Thesis: “Strangers” (grade 1.5, June 29, 2011)

First supervisor: Colin Walker · Second supervisor: Bernhard Gabert

April 2025–expected April 2028 Research Associate

DFG Research Training Group 2477 “Aesthetic Practice,” Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture, University of Hildesheim

Working methods of scenography and costume design in independent theatre and performance · Rehearsal studies · Craft sciences · Theatre historiography

Edited Volumes

Künkel, För/Hildbrand, Mirjam (eds.): Zirkuskunst in Berlin um 1900 – Eine vergessene Praxis [Circus Arts in Berlin around 1900 – A Forgotten Practice]. Berlin 2024. (Open access: tdz.de/shop/produkt/zirkuskunst-in-berlin-um-1900)

Articles and Chapters in Edited Volumes

Künkel, För: “Der Grundriss als Spur in die Theaterwerkstatt” [The Floor Plan as a Trace into the Theatre Workshop]. In: Schüßler, Lea/Eisele, Theresa (eds.): [Publication project on working with and on theatre-historical sources] (working title). Berlin: Neofelis Verlag (forthcoming, expected 2027).

Künkel, För/Hildbrand, Mirjam: “Streiflichter auf Künstlerinnen* der Berliner Zirkus- und Varietészene um 1900” [Glimpses of Women* Artists of the Berlin Circus and Variety Scene around 1900]. In: Oberkrome, Freia/Schüßler, Lea (eds.): Arbeiten zwischen Medien und Künsten. Feministische Perspektiven auf die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts [Working Between Media and the Arts: Feminist Perspectives on the First Half of the 20th Century]. Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 2023, pp. 25–51. (neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/wissenschaft/kultur-sozialwissenschaften/1066/arbeiten-zwischen-medien-und-kuensten)

Journal Articles

Künkel, För: “Zwischen Entwurf und Umsetzung. Interviews als Zugang zu handwerklich-künstlerischem Prozesswissen in den Freien Darstellenden Künsten” [Between Design and Execution: Interviews as Access to Craft-Artistic Process Knowledge in Independent Theatre]. In: thewis. Online journal of the German Society for Theatre Studies (forthcoming, expected autumn 2026).

Künkel, För/Gaspar, Renata: “Den Haufen durchdenken” [Thinking Through the Pile]. In: Mittel & Zweck. Zeitschrift für relationales Denken, no. 2 (2021).

Künkel, För/Gaspar, Renata: “Looking through the Rubble – Material Traces of Impermanence.” In: Global Performance Studies 4 (2021), no. 2. (gps.psi-web.org/article/view/91/87/)

Künkel, För/Hildbrand, Mirjam: “Zirkuskünste in Berlin um 1900 – multimedial, experimentell und unerforscht” [Circus Arts in Berlin around 1900 – Multimedia, Experimental, and Unexplored]. In: w/k – Zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst, peer-reviewed online journal (2020). (wissenschaft-kunst.de/extrabeitraege/zirkuskuenste-in-berlin/)

Künkel, För/Gaspar, Renata: “Fragments of our Correspondence: Migrating Sediments.” In: Kaleni Kollectiv (eds.): Owela – The Future of Work. Festival journal of the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. Recklinghausen, 2019.

Summer 2026 Talk: “Those ‘Care-Work Things’ in the Work of Costume Designers”

Lecture series “Taking Care: Aesthetic Practice as Subject and Method of Cultural Studies Research,” Department 2 Cultural Studies & Aesthetic Communication, University of Hildesheim

Summer 2026 Seminar contribution: “Collaboration and its Temporalities”

Guest contribution with Renata Gaspar in the seminar “Research-Based Theatre Practice: Remembering What Was Forgotten”

Winter 2025/26 Workshop: “Rhetoric as Aesthetic Practice”

DFG Research Training Group 2477 “Aesthetic Practice” · Co-taught with Hannah Chodura and Elisabeth Graaf

Winter 2022/23 Seminar and practical course: “Dialogue with the Archive – Artists of the Berlin Variety, Circus, and Cabaret Scene between 1869 and 1914”

Co-taught with Mirjam Hildbrand, Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture, University of Hildesheim

Summer 2022 Seminar and field trip: “Rewriting History on Stage: Intersectional Spaces and Critical Aesthetic Practice”

Co-taught with Martina Groß, Festivalcampus Niedersachsen, Theaterformen Festival Braunschweig, University of Hildesheim

Summer 2021 Seminar and field trip: “We Are in This Together – Storytelling with Non-Human Protagonists”

Co-taught with Renata Gaspar, Theaterformen Festival Hannover, University of Hildesheim

June 25–26, 2026 Panel presentation: “Situated Knowledges – Circus as Cultural Heritage from the Perspective of Contemporary Archival Practitioners”

Symposium “The Archive in Miniature: Amateur Practices, Collecting, and Creating in the Performing Arts in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna in the 20th Century (Cabaret, Circus, Variety, Music Hall),” Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin

Oct 7–8, 2021 With Hildbrand, Mirjam: “Glimpses of Artists* of the Berlin Circus and Variety Scene around 1900”

Workshop “Working Between Media and the Arts: Feminist Perspectives on the First Half of the 20th Century,” Freie Universität Berlin/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

March 5–6, 2020 “Architecture and Technology in Berlin Circus Venues around 1900”

Symposium “Circus and the Avant-Gardes: Multimedia Technologies and Popular Body Machines,” Freie Universität Berlin – EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

Nov 8–11, 2018 With Hildbrand, Mirjam: “‘30,000 Liters of Spree Water Poured from the Circus Dome’ – Stage Technology in Circus around 1900”

Lecture performance, conference of the German Society for Theatre Studies “Theatre and Technology,” Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

April 2026–ongoing: Spokesperson of Research Training Group 2477 “Aesthetic Practice”

Member of the Working Group “Theatre Historiography” of the German Society for Theatre Studies

Peer review for: Schüßler, Lea/Eisele, Theresa (eds.): [Publication project on working with and on theatre-historical sources] (working title). Berlin: Neofelis Verlag (forthcoming), on behalf of the Working Group Theatre Historiography of the German Society for Theatre Studies