Knowledge & Movement

Knowledge in Motion: Dance and Movement as a Gateway to Science

How is knowledge generated through movement, exchange and shared experience? The thematic focus “Knowledge & Movement” explores how movement, dance and body-based methods can enrich scientific thinking and make knowledge tangible in new ways. It ries out approaches that use movement as a research, teaching and outreach methods, and that foster dialogue between the arts, science and society. Participatory formats, artistic research and educational projects create spaces that allow participants to explore scientific topics through physical experience. The Public Engagement Hub “Embodied Futures. Knowledge and Movement,” the Practitioner in Residence programme and projects such as “WisTanz” demonstrate how movement can open up new approaches for research and learning in dialogue with society.

Science through Movement

“WisTanz” stands for the German words Science and Dance. The aim of the project is to combine scientific thinking with artistic forms of expression – in particular movement and dance. The project is aimed at primary schools and provides children as young as primary school age with an artistic approach to scientific topics. This approach fosters curiosity, creativity, body awareness and collaboration amongst pupils. The movement-based approach brings complex scientific concepts to life and allows for learning processes to be designed in an interactive and participatory way.

For this project, the artist-researcher and choreographer Irina Demina (SCABOD Lab) collaborated with Prof. Valentina Forini, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Through movement, third-grade children were able to experience how the tiniest particles and the largest celestial bodies move, what role gravity plays, and how it might feel when “everything is connected to everything else.” “WisTanz” has since taken place at several primary schools and further school partnerships are planned for the future. 

Moving Science and Opening Doors

How does knowledge move? What transformative potential lies in the act of moving to share and shape ideas? Does research have a rhythm, a form, a choreography? The Practitioner in Residence programme at the Zentrum für Kulturtechnik started out in 2025 with the choreographer and artistic researcher Irina Demina (SCARBOD Lab), who is exploring embodiment as a methodological approach to research, teaching and learning. 

In collaboration with the Office for Public Engagement and Knowledge Exchange with Society, the visiting artist is developing new formats that explore body- and movement-based methods as research, teaching and outreach methods. Collaborative processes in which artistic and academic perspectives interact on an equal footing are the focus of this endeavour, giving rise to new forms of knowledge production. The pilot programmes explore how movement can expand academic thinking, make theoretical content tangible and foster dialogue between research and society. 

Through open movement sessions, performative conversations and experimental workshops, Irina Demina creates spaces in which knowledge is experienced with the whole body. During her residency she uses the Objekt Lab as a space for body-based exchange and collaborative learning. Her formats invite researchers and lecturers to explore the potential of dance as a method of scholarly thinking and to experiment with new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration.