Claudia Kappenberg’s research focuses on moving image, live and interdisciplinary performance practices, choreographic approaches and screendance, as well as the historical and theoretical narratives which underpin these practices. She is concerned with the integration of choreographic and cinematographic practices, with visual literacy, performance philosophy and concepts of body-mind integration. This work is framed by a wider interest in questions of representation, feminist discussions and contemporary debates on neoliberalist politics and their impact on the artist and artistic production.

PhD application for research in related fields are welcome. For further information see TECHNE.

In her visual and performance practice Claudia Kappenberg draws on a background of dance and visual arts to create minimal choreographies which examine patterns of the everyday. The work is often developed for particular sites or reconfigured in their relocation to other sites and exhibited in the form of live interventions, gallery based performances or screen-based installations. The work has been shown in Europe, the United States and the Middle East.

Claudia Kappenberg is a founder-editor of the International Journal of Screendance and peer-reviews for a number of journals, as well as for research councils such as the British AHRC and the Canadian SSHRC. She undertakes consultancy for Screendance initiatives, juries on related film selection panels, and is regularly invited to speak at Screendance festivals such as in Buenos Aires, Limerick, Bordeaux, Brussels, Wuppertal, Basel, Bucharest, Freiburg. She has been guest lecturer at the École des Beaux Arts de Grenoble (France), Akademie der Künste (Munich, Germany) and Hazira Performing Arts (Jerusalem, Israel), and is currently a guest on the board of the École Supérieure d'Arts de Clermont Métropole (France.)

Claudia Kappenberg trained in Modern Dance, Butoh and Movement Analysis and danced professionally in Europe and New Zealand before coming to London in 1991.  She completed an MA Fine Art/Film and Video at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1998 and taught at Central Saint Martins and London Guildhall University until 2002. She worked freelance as videographer for Tate Modern, Tate Britain and independent arts organisations, and started lecturing at The University of Brighton in 2004.

My supervisory interests lie in moving image, live and interdisciplinary performance practices and screendance, as well as the historical and theoretical narratives which underpin these practices, such as performance philosophy and concepts of body-mind integration, questions of representation, as well as contemporary debates on neoliberalist politics and their impact on the artist and artistic production.

My expertise is in practice-based PhDs and in interdisciplinary practices and discourses. My own PhD explored the notion of uselessness as a strategy for contemporary performance practices, and considered historical debates on use and uselessness particularly within French philosophical and literary traditions, drawing on the writing of Catherine Clément and Georges Bataille.