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Antje Velsinger: Platz da!

What happens when children assert their right to leisure, play, and freedom of expression? And what happens when they use artistic and performative means and strategies to seek out spaces of their own in their city, claim them, and make them their own? Taking these questions as a starting point, choreographer and performer Antje Velsinger has developed a choreographic audio walk for the New Patrons of Schwelm.

Platz da!
A choreographic audio walk by Antje Velsinger for the New Patrons of Schwelm
Saturday, April 24, 2027, Schwelm
Free admission; no registration required
Further details about the event will be announced here in due course.
 

Antje Velsinger and her artistic team are developing Platz da! in dialogue with the New Patrons of Schwelm: a choreographic audio walk through Schwelm. It connects three locations chosen by the patrons, makes them accessible to the public through sensory experience, and invites people to discuss child- and youth-friendly spaces of freedom in Schwelm. A permanent intervention will be created at one of the three locations and handed over to the local community.

In the lead-up to the project, Antje Velsinger and her patrons experimented with temporarily appropriating public space through movement, bodywork, and various materials. Together, they explored how public spaces can be transformed through presence and behavior. An artistic team documented the process. The patrons then selected three locations that will become spaces of freedom along the choreographic audio walk.
 

Credits
Patrons: Leticia Castagna, Emma Dadalau, Marie Günther, Anton (Engelbertstraße Primary School, Class 4a), and Lara Sophie Herbst, Matilda Jahnke, Fiona Nickel, Phil Sachs (Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm, Class 8c)
Mediator: Kattrin Deufert
Artist: Antje Velsinger
Local project lead: transmissions
Co-organizer: Heike Philipp (ateliersieben)
Production management: Nicole Van Velzen
Press and coordination of the student press team: Susanne Schütte-Gerold (Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm)
Educational lead: Niklas Bernd (Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm)
Educational support: Theresa Buhr (Märkisches Gymnasium Schwelm)
Graphic design: Kirsten Rönfeldt / design handlung

Initiated and premiered within Citizen-Commissioned Dance and Performance, a program of Gesellschaft der Neuen Auftraggeber. Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Funded by the Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).

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Past Events

We warmly invite you to the inauguration of the village garden in Wietstock! A group of people from Wietstock designed and created the village garden together with the artist Antje Majewski: as a snack garden with berries and old apple varieties for children, as a bird garden with a bird bath, and as a place for celebrations and conversations around the fire.

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