Leo
Kees
LEAP / LEARNING AS PERFORMANCE
Abstract
Under the title LEAP (short for Learning as Performance), I want to test and explore three formats:
Study Performances
Practice Performances.
Dialogue Performances.
The project understands the act of learning as a collective ability that must continually be practised anew in a diverse and changing society. Aesthetic design (mise-en-scène, image composition, acoustic arrangement) is an integral part of this process. The working method combines artistic and scientific research with participatory practice for an intergenerational audience.
Under the hashtags #learnchallenges and #readingchallenge, social media is strategically used as a curated space for reflection and communication.
The aim of the project is to build a sustainable network that establishes learning as an artistic practice.
The project is conceived for a diversity of contexts: museums, libraries, theatre foyers, seminar rooms, reading rooms, industrial spaces. At the same time, it is designed to connect across regions and internationally—something I have already achieved repeatedly throughout my artistic career.
Introduction
I want to take my career in a new direction and dedicate myself to the representation of learning as a performative act. I want to establish reading, practising, failing, not giving up, critical thinking and focusing as artistic practices in museums, on stages and in unconventional spaces.
The starting point is the conviction that, in an age shaped by social media, the public representation of learning processes—with all their complexity, duration and often demanding nature—is highly significant. Even creative processes in theatre and dance require weeks or months of rehearsal behind closed doors, while in the end only what has already been tested—the “finished” product—is presented.
After twenty years of experience as a director and choreographer, and more than ten years as a guest lecturer at Folkwang University of the Arts, I see the act of practising and experimenting as a lifelike metaphor for being human itself.
Motivation & Starting Point
While we celebrate excellence in the Olympic Games, football, fashion shows, scientific debates or world-class concerts, other processes largely remain invisible: how much work, frustration, mistakes, sweat, time, perseverance and—above all—patience are required to learn something new.
Recovering a Lost Image
Before smartphones, parks and waiting rooms seemed to be populated by books—something that fascinated me. Today, in many countries, screens, loud mobile-phone sounds and fleeting attention dominate.
“Learning as Performance” seeks to make this image visible again—not nostalgically, but as a contemporary, active gesture. People immerse themselves, alone or together: they train their concentration, share what they do not know, discuss insights and defend facts.
Why Now?
Attention is a scarce resource; knowledge is polarised, and complexity is often met with distrust. By staging learning processes publicly, the project makes doubting a necessary component of learning. It invites people to articulate what they do not know, ask questions, and examine facts together.
At a time when disinformation and cycles of outrage shape public discourse, the project advocates for slow, visible work towards understanding—as an aesthetic practice and a civic attitude.
Aesthetics of Mise-en-scène
Part of the research will involve experimenting with performance formats lasting between two and eight hours and extending over one or several days. With attention to detail, light, space, distance, lines of sight between readers and viewers, as well as materiality, will be composed and staged.
The content and modality of each performance (language-based or non-verbal, participatory or solo) will be developed in consultation with the organisers. Each performance will be documented to a high standard through photography, as well as through publications in the form of reflections, interviews or artist statements, published together with regional partners.
Three Modalities
Study Performances
The Study Performances take two forms:
– as participatory performances that bring together people of different ages and with different levels of reading experience.
– as solo performances that place concentration, endurance and depth at the centre,
The starting question is: "What should I—or what should we—learn here and now, and why?”
Each performance responds to this question through a Study Performance.
Each edition focuses on a specific topic or author, with one or more books being read around the respective theme.
It concludes with a public discussion, in which the engagement with the topic is shared through dialogue.
Practice Performances.
In this language-independent format, learning processes become tangible as embodied practice—with visible repetitions and slow progress replacing demonstrable virtuosity. The result is a canon of images of an intergenerational, pluralistic society in which learning is not a pedagogical obligation, but an aesthetic practice and social attitude. Without creating space for shame, but with the courage to be willing to learn, each Practice Performance is carried out by a group accompanied by a teacher, whose members generally have no previous experience in the respective practice.
Examples range from senior citizens learning to play video games, to football fans reciting poetry, to heterogeneous groups encountering Kathak, tango or sign language for the first time. Each Practice Performance is dedicated to the exploration of new forms and perspectives
Dialogue Performances.
The third format, “Dialogue Performances,” asks: in an era of polarisation and ideological bubbles, how can we encounter, and stay curious about, someone whose ideas and values are different from ours? It’s an inquiry into how we learn to sustain that space and navigate difficult conversations in a respectful manner. It aims to help us learn to understand the perspective of someone with a different background from ours.
“Dialogue Performances” are informed, among other approaches, by systemic coaching and can take the form of interviews, debates or socialising games, where we give people time to listen, question assumptions, and understand defensiveness, judgement, triggers and unconscious bias. The format seeks to explore how to work through disagreement and complexity while learning to remain calm and looking for consensus, compromises and potential solutions.