Judith Philippa Franke, M.A. MBA

Judith Philippa Franke ist seit 2020 Senior Artist am Masterstudiengang „Applied Theatre. Künstlerische Theaterpraxis & Gesellschaft“ am Thomas-Bernhard-Institut, Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.
Schwerpunkte liegen zwischen künstlerischer und aktivistischer Arbeit im u.a. Theater für Junges Publikum, Interventionen im Stadtraum und der Entwicklung kooperativer und partizipativer Formate.
Judith Ph. Franke studierte Szenische Künste (Universität Hildesheim, BA), Puppetry and Directing (University of Exeter) sowie Szenische Forschung (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, MA).
Schwerpunkt ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit ist die Gruppe das_explorativ (seit 2018)

Titel des Dissertationsvorhabens:
Let’s go: Walking the city in the arts and everyday as democratic, queer-feminist practice

Erstbetreuung: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nicole Haitzinger

Zweitbetreuung: Prof. Dr. Rachel Mader

Abstract:
The PhD project in the field of performance studies deals with practices of walking in the city through the interplay of theory and practice, which are examined and tested regarding their queer-feminist implications as well as their potentials of being democratic interventions between artistic staging and everyday life.
Existing literature in the fields of urban development and performative arts in the public realm as well as historical artistic perspectives on the art of walking are analyzed. Through this review, new possible forms of queer-feminist walking in urban space are developed. The partially overlapping areas of literature and quotidian, politically staged and artistic practice will be looked at.
The project aims to make a contribution to keeping democratic spaces open and expanding them, creating opportunities for exchange and debate, questioning seemingly unavoidable realities and searching for possibilities that go beyond the given through critical fabulation[1] (to be elaborated in chapter 2) and practical action; it aims to do a part in building a queer-feminist world and society by research and artistic interventions exploring ways to walk!

Let’s go.
A call to closely examine practices and thoughts by other flinta* researchers and artists in a solidaric attempt to walk in their traces and to take further steps.
Texts out of queer-feminist as well as urban planning contexts will function as inspiration for thinking about possible intersections and mutual benefits between urbanism and queer-feminism. Furthermore, three forms of walking – quotidian, artistic, directly politically motivated – are assumed to condition and influence each other and to be researched as political practices.
Using artistic interventions, these approaches will then be put to the test – changing the city and contributing to female* and queer-feminist contemporary perspectives on knowledge production and urban development.

Let’s go.
A call to dedicating energy and resources to the urgent crisis democracies are facing being attacked by nationalism and right-wing populists, with the patriarchal regime ruling and informing every part of it.
A call to start one of many possible attempts to contribute to keeping open spaces for democracy, for friction, for ambivalence, ambiguity and dialogue.
Questions regarding the queer-feminist, political-artistic potential of a supposedly incidental practice lie at the center of the project: Where do everyday processes of urban walking reveal social deficits and potentials in terms of democratic participation? What potential do performative strategies of urban walking have to reveal social constitutions and thus not only to design counter-models of democratic use of space, but also to try them out and make them tangible? Which spaces are traversed and which boundaries are crossed when walking happens in and on queer-feminist ways?
Constantly interlocking theoretical and practical research, learning from other flinta* artists and quotidian walkers, I aim to generate artistic interventions that practically explore how we can change the places we inhabit towards a more queer-feminist status quo and how queer-feminist practices can become an occupancy of majorities.

Let’s go.
A call to see where it gets us.
Besides the written thesis consisting of the scientific analysis as outlined in the table of content this phd will possibly lead to a series of artistic interventions. Followed by an artistic-written publication containing analysis of texts and artistic practices as well as documentations of the conducted artistic interventions, the establishment of an online network, as well as an international symposium.
Whether the resulting contribution will be a queer-feminist contribution to the field of performative urban development or a performative contribution to that of queer-feminist urban development remains to be seen.

Lets go.

[1] https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/research/centres/blackstudies/venus_in_two_acts.pdf