Antje Budde 安琪 布徳
Antje Budde is a conceptual, queer-feminist, interdisciplinary experimental scholar-artist and the Artistic Research Director of the (Digital Dramaturgy Lab)squared, currently working and living on traditionally indigenous land in Tkaronto. (Toronto, Province of Ontario, Canada). Treaty information HERE
Antje also works as an Associate Professor of Theatre Sciences (Theaterwissenschaften), Cultural Communication and Modern Chinese Studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto. Antje has created multi-disciplinary artistic works in Germany, China and Canada and works tri-lingually in German, English and Mandarin.
Antje is the founder of a number of queerly feminist performing art projects including most recently the (DDL)2 or (Digital Dramaturgy Lab) Squared - a platform for experimental explorations of digital culture, creative labor, integration of arts and science, and technology in performance, interested in the intersections of natural sciences, the arts, engineering and computer science.
A youth educational trip to the concentration camp museum’s site of Ravensbrück at the age of 13 fundamentally changed her outlook on life and death, the politics of the everyday and provoked an honest, consequential commitment to social change. Equally important was the oral history, transmitted through family, about the experience of war, displacement, cold war, separation, capitalist and socialist authoritarian oppression. Her experience with the East German civil disobedience movement of the late 1980s, that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, deeply informed her approach to learning, artistic expression, research creation and matters of social justice.
As a result, Antje is more interested in positions of empowerment than in positions of power, more interested in a round table than a podium.
That, along with a Brechtian understanding of the pleasure of learning, Hannah Arendt’s explorations of the human condition, Angela Davis’ queer black power of action and philosophical thought, Sarah Ahmed’s ideas around queering willfulness, Judith Butler's theatrical machines, and Halberstam's notions of the queer art of failure guide her engagement with the world and the labor of becoming.
Laughter, as a major critical instrument of de-centering one's thoughts/knowledges/importance is central (dialectical conundrum intended).
- MA (Modern Chinese Studies), Humboldt-University Berlin
- PhD (Modern Chinese Studies) Humboldt-University Berlin
Books
- 2021-2024 (In progress) Antje Budde. Deep Learning.–Digital Dramaturgy as Experimental Performance.
- Antje Budde (Ed.) Fiebach.-Theater, Wissen, Machen.(Fiebach–Theatre, Knowledge, Making) Theater der Zeit. Berlin. 2014
Book Chapters
- Antje Budde with Art Babayants “Homo Ludens–Common. Play. Grounds. A praxisreport on workshop-making by the Digital Dramaturgy Labsquared(DDL2) at Coburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany2019”In:Elfenbeinturm oder Kultur für Alle?Kulturpolitische Perspektiven und künstlerische Formate zwischen Kulturinstitutionenund Kultureller Bildung.Edited by Julius Heinicke and Katrin Lohbeck.KoPaedPublishing. Munich2020.111-143
- Antje Budde "Affecting the apparatus: Queer feminist re/de-codings in the works of the Digital Dramaturgy Lab (DDL), Toronto" in: Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times. (Contemporary Performance Interactions Series) Edited by Elin Diamond, Denise Varneyand Candice Amich. Palgrave 2017. 189-200Antje Budde. “Hacking Hacks–Queer observations.-Hacks als Ingenieurquerer/queerer Baustellen imaginierter und spielerischer Welten?" in: Hacks. Jahrbuch2016. Peter-Hacks-Gesellschaft. Edited by Kai Köhler. Eulenspiegelverlag Berlin, 2016. 111-154.
Articles
- Pia Kleber and Tamara Trojanowska with Antje Budde and David Rokeby. Performing the Digital and AI: In Conversation with Antje Budde David Rokeby TDR/The Drama Review. Special Issue: “Algorithms and Performance” Edited by Elise Morrison, Tavia Nyong’o, and Joseph Roach.201963:4 (T244),99-112.Antje Budde and Sebastian Samur “Making Knowledge/Playing Culture: Theatre Festivals as Sites of Experiential Learning” Theatre Research in Canada. TRIC/RTAC Vol. 40 / Nos. 1 & 2. Fall 2019.83-101
- Antje Budde. "How to Slam the Door, or Not to, or Almost, or Maybe... Configurations of a Speculative Moment in the Global Doll House of Patriarchal Order." Canadian Review for Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 38.2 (2011):145-53.
- AntjeBudde."Nora'sChildren-ANorwegian-ChineseTheatreAdventure."CanadianReviewforComparativeLiterature/RevueCanadiennedeLittératureComparée38.2(2011):240-54.