The performance artist and sculptor will be commencing his role in April with a new course titled Black Ritual and Durational Action. Selected students from various disciplines will complete three-week intensive workshop with the artist, culminating in new works by each participant.
The Folkwang University of the Arts has secured performance artist and sculptor Miles Greenberg for the Pina Bausch Professorship during the 2025 summer semester. The artist has sparked an international sensation with his spectacular long durational performances, including at the most recent Venice Biennale.
He will work with some 15 Folkwang students from all disciplines – music, theatre, dance, design and academic studies – in two project phases. His workshop motto is ‘Black Ritual and Action’, and students will have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with Greenberg’s principles and practices in the performative arts, as well as develop their own long durational performances. The professorship will culminate in a public presentation.
Miles Greenberg (born 1997, Canada) focuses his artistic work on the body’s relationship with space. He adopts this approach to create large-scale, sensorially immersive and site-specific environments which he activates with long durational performances, using the body as sculptural material. Rigorous and ritualistic in his methodology, he places particular emphasis on aspects such as slowness and the decay of form. It is through this process-based vividness that Greenberg heightens audiences’ sensitivities. The performances are recorded live, and serve as the basis for video works and sculptures.
Steering away from formal education institutions, he has worked under the mentorship of choreographer and dancer Édouard Lock, theatre director and artist Robert Wilson and performance artist Marina Abramović. He was also the Artist in Residence at Fountainhead (USA, 2023), and as part of the La Manutention residence programme at the Palais de Tokyo museum (France, 2019), as well as being the resident artist at The Watermill Center (USA) in 2017 and 2018. In 2023, Greenberg was named among Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in the Art & Style category, and was a 2024 finalist for the Sobey Art Award.
He has exhibited his works at internationally acclaimed museums and galleries and as part of numerous international art exhibitions, including at The Louvre (Paris, France), the Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany), the New Museum (New York, USA), the Arsenal Contemporary (Toronto, Canada), the PACE Gallery (New York, USA), Salon 94 Gallery (New York, USA) and the Galleria Continua (Les Moulins, Canada). He also featured at the Venice Biennale, Yokohama Triennale, Athens Biennial, BoCA Lisbon and Bangkok Art Biennale.
The Pina Bausch Professorship provides an opportunity for internationally acclaimed artists from all disciplines to work at the Folkwang University of the Arts as a guest professor, collaborating with the students to develop new work methods and applying mindsets and research approaches that transcend all boundaries.
The Folkwang University of the Arts established the Pina Bausch Professorship – named after world-famous Folkwang alumna Pina Bausch and run in co-operation with the Pina Bausch Foundation – in the 2022-23 winter semester. Its rousing inauguration came in the form of Marina Abramović’s Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab, which involved 24 Folkwang students, as well as the joint final presentation and 54 Hours publication. The Pina Bausch Professorship is made possible by the North Rhine-Westphalia State Ministry of Culture and Science.
Comments on the new appointment for the Pina Bausch Professorship:
Miles Greenberg_ Pina Bausch Professor Summer Semester 2025:
‘I’m deeply honoured to have been given this carte blanche opportunity to work with the students of the Folkwang University of the Arts in honour of the legacy of Pina Bausch. Though dance was never my calling, Bausch’s oeuvre has been a monument that helped inform my broader views on art; her work and her spirit radically transcend her medium in a way that very few artists have done.’
Holger Zebu Kluth_ President-elect of the Folkwang University of the Arts:
‘It gives me great pleasure to welcome Miles Greenberg as the new Pina Bausch Professor for the 2025 summer semester at Folkwang. Greenberg is the ideal appointment to continue this unique professorship, embodying both an interdisciplinary approach and the dawn of a generation of bold new artists. His ‘Black Ritual and Durational Action’ workshop will give Folkwang’s students intensive exposure to transculturality, transdisciplinarity and artistic confidence. As Folkwang’s future president, I see this as a great example of the exceptional opportunities offered by the courses at the Folkwang University of the Arts and the interdisciplinary collaborations between the arts.’
Ina Brandes_ North Rhine-Westphalia State Minister for Culture and Science:
‘Miles Greenberg’s appointment is confirmation of his stellar work on the international stage. As Germany’s second largest college for art and music, the Folkwang University of the Arts has become the poster child for music, theatre and dance education with an international flavour. I am very excited to see what extraordinary projects Miles Greenberg will surprise the students and us the audience with.’
Salomon Bausch_ Founder and CEO of the Pina Bausch Foundation:
‘My focus for this year’s professorship is once again to expand the students’ horizons. And that’s exactly what Miles Greenberg is all about. I adore his sculptural performances and the way they are transformed into video and photo installations. This notion of challenging the boundaries between performance and visual arts is the perfect fit for this professorship and for working with an interdisciplinary group of students.’
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