Venice Residency (Rimini Protokoll)
CPPM Students Transform Valga into a Living Site for Performance, Architecture and Community Exchange.
About
rimini protokoll
DOCUMENTARY THEATRE · EVERYDAY EXPERTS · PARTICIPATION · TECHNOLOGY · SOCIAL INTERVENTION
Rimini Protokoll is a German theatre collective founded in 2000 by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel, who met while studying at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen. The group creates documentary theatre pieces, interventions, scenic installations, and radio plays characterized by interactivity and playful use of technology, pioneering what has become known as “new documentary theatre”.
Widely regarded as one of the most innovative companies in European theatre over the past two decades, Rimini Protokoll works exclusively with “everyday experts” — real people with unique life experiences rather than professional actors, including Tourette’s patients, immigrants, truckers, police officers, and other non-theatre practitioners. Their productions challenge conventional notions of theatre by bringing authentic voices and experiences to the stage, creating performances that blur the boundaries between documentation, performance, and social intervention.
The prototypical origin of their practice can be traced to Peter Heller spricht über Geflügelhaltung (Peter Heller talks about Poultry Farming) from 1997, an idea that emerged in a student bar in Giessen. The collective has received numerous prestigious awards including the Faust Theatre Prize in 2007 and the Grand Prix Theater / Hans-Reinhart-Ring award in 2015.
Their work often features participatory elements and explores questions of audience agency, democracy, and contemporary social issues, exemplified by works such as Home Visit Europe, a performance without performers where audiences participate in a game in a private home, and Win >< Win, which explores audience interaction and the climate emergency. The three founding members work both collectively and on individual projects, with each bringing distinct perspectives to their collaborative practice.
Imanuel Schipper
Imanuel Schipper is a longtime dramaturg with Rimini Protokoll who holds master’s degrees in theatre and dance studies and in acting. He has worked for many years developing a contemporary approach to documentary theatre as intervention and political think tanks with the collective, contributing significantly to their dramaturgical innovations.
Schipper is also a cultural and theatre scholar focused on concepts of dramaturgy in digital cultures, serving as a researcher at the CityScienceLab at HafenCity University Hamburg, where he works on integrating VR/AR/XR into co-creative urban planning. His research covers contemporary concepts of dramaturgy, performance studies and digital cultures, socially relevant functions of art, and concepts of spectatorship.
He has held positions as deputy professor, senior lecturer, and senior researcher at universities and art academies in Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and other countries in the fields of performance studies, cultural theory, and art theory. Currently, Schipper directs the Contemporary Performance & Dramaturgy programme at Kunstakademie Uniarts Helsinki, where he serves as senior lecturer. His publications include Rimini Protokoll 2000–2010, Rimini Protokoll: Staat 1–4: Phänomene der Postdemokratie, and Performing the Digital: Performance Studies and Performances in Digital Cultures.
INTRA SPACES: Site-Specific Audio Walk Workshop
INTRA SPACES is an intensive two-week professional development workshop in Venice for contemporary performance makers, created for the MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Set within the context of the 61st Venice Biennale, the workshop uses the city and the Giardini as a living studio for site specific creation. It brings together walking practices, deep listening, and sound based dramaturgy to explore a central artistic question: how do we guide an audience's attention without prescribing what they should think or feel.
Over the two weeks, participants develop a shared working vocabulary for attention, pause, and listening through daily practical work — building tools for attention choreography and spatial-temporal composition that can be applied directly to performance making. The Biennale becomes both material and method: a dense landscape of artworks, national pavilions, crowds, atmospheres, and temporal rhythms that can be curated, reframed, and transformed into a performative journey. Through field recording, writing, group composition, and dramaturgical testing, participants learn how to shape experience through sound, proximity, timing, and instruction, while remaining responsive to the contingencies of public space.
The practical outcome is the creation of two parallel audio walks in the Giardini, developed in strands and pairs. These audio walks may weave together pavilion encounters, selected artworks, field recordings, layered soundscapes, directed attention and tasks for listeners, and autobiographical narration that moves between past and present. Participants investigate how voice, sound, and guided movement can generate vivid spatial imagination, shifting the listener between individual reflection and shared perception, between documentary detail and poetic association. Alongside artistic development, the workshop strengthens key professional skills in audio walk composition, field recording, spatial and temporal dramaturgy, collaborative devising, and contemporary performance making in one of the world's most significant international art contexts.
Week 1 - Corfu island, greece
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Spectatorship, Reception, and the Politics of Attention
— Seminar Reader · Collected Readings —
A four-session seminar for MA students in
Contemporary Physical Performance Making
From Rancière to Instagram · From the Global South to the Live Body.
Texts:
Session 1 - The Spectator Rehabilitated
Rancière — The Emancipated Spectator
Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
Session 2 - Watching Under Conditions
Bishop - Disordered Attention
García Canclini - Lectores, espectadores e internautas
Session 3 - The Body Knows
Taylor - The Archive and the Repertoire
Moten - In the Break
Muñoz - Disidentifications
Session 4 - In Minor Keys: Synthesis
Kouoh — In Minor Keys
Boal - Theatre of the Oppressed
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Integrity, creativity, and empathy shape the way we work. These aren't just words—they’re the foundation of everything we build.
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What began as a passion project has evolved into something more. We’re proud of where we’ve been and even more excited for what’s ahead. What sets us apart isn’t just our process—it’s the intention behind it. We take time to understand, explore, and create with purpose at every turn.
Week 2/3 - venice biennale 2026
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We believe in keeping things simple, smart, and human. Every project starts with listening and ends with something we're proud to share.
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Integrity, creativity, and empathy shape the way we work. These aren't just words—they’re the foundation of everything we build.
-
What began as a passion project has evolved into something more. We’re proud of where we’ve been and even more excited for what’s ahead. What sets us apart isn’t just our process—it’s the intention behind it. We take time to understand, explore, and create with purpose at every turn.
Team
peader kirk
Peader Kirk is a renowned international artist and mentor who specializes in Performance and Sound Art. He has recently exhibited his work at the ICA in London, the National Theatre of Greece in Athens, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Peader’s work ranges from intimate encounters in small spaces to large-scale public works in urban environments, which he creates both independently and collaboratively with Mkultra.
At the heart of Peader’s work is an exploration of how we experience existence in the present moment, particularly within the context of our society and location. His site-responsive installations use the physical and social architecture of a location as a foundation, incorporating sound and object installation to develop a unique immersive experience that transcends traditional theatre conventions.
Mona camille
Mona Camille is a London-based, award-winning set and costume designer. She has designed for the West End and The Globe, amongst other theatres. Mona grew up in her native Seychelles — and is fluent in English, French and German. She works across theatre, dance and film in the UK and internationally.
Mona also teaches design at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.
Olivier Van Den Hende
Olivier is a French-American actor best known for 13 jours, 13 nuits (Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival 2025) and his appearance in French TV shows Un si grand soleil and L'Or Bleu (FranceTV).
Olivier grew up between Paris and New York. He studied the cello at the National Conservatory of Paris for ten years before training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
VARES Valga Architecture Residency
VARES is an international interdisciplinary residency for spatial practice, whose main task is to seek, find and create alternative spatial practices that are not based on market logic, but rather on the desire to create spaces and places that enrich everyday life, empower the local community and town of Valga.
We are interested in finding ways to practice slow architecture, critically rethinking the discipline of architecture, learning and resurrecting vernacular and traditional crafts, gathering old and used materials and creating a place for lifelong learning for architects and spatial artists.
