This lecture explores how contested bodies—those whose very presence in public space is challenged—transform that condition into performative acts of resistance and space-making. By appearing on stages, digital platforms, and within moments of protest, activist bodies rehearse a right of appearance that both claims space and opens it to others. These practices make performance not only a method of resistance but also a way of creating accessible, shared spaces that extend from the local to the global.

Content note

08.11.2025 18:00

festival centre (Seltersweg 50)

Azadeh Ganjeh Azadeh Ganjeh is a performance artist, scholar, dramaturge, and activist, and a member of the Rebel-Ist-hah! collective. Born in Tehran-Iran, she holds a Master's in Theater Directing from Tehran Art University and a Doctorate in Philosophy-Theatre Studies from Bern University (2017).
Azadeh specializes in creating socially engaged and site-specific performances, participatory performances, performative interventions in urban public spaces, and performance for social-political empowerment. Her research interests encompass Narratives and Politics of the stage, the performativity of public events, the Performative engagement of body and space, emancipation through performing arts, Aesthetics of performativity and politics of space, and activism in performance art.
After serving as a professor at Tehran University, she has lectured extensively across Europe. Since April 2022, she has been a researcher and lecturer at the University of Hildesheim. In October 2024, she was appointed Professor of Performance Art in Social Context at the Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg. Driven by her commitment to merging artistic practice with critical research on performance and activism, she recently completed a Mercator Fellowship at the Collaborative Research Centre 1512 "Intervening Arts" at Freie Universität Berlin.

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