MW

When a world loses its shape

My path took me from Wuppertal to Bayreuth, Sydney and The Hague — through the strange worlds of theatre, dance and cultural theory.

I studied Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Musicology and Classical Archaeology, and received my PhD in Media Aesthetics and Digital Culture from the University of Cologne (Digitaler Alltag, Utz Verlag, 2012).

From 2007 to 2009, I worked as Assistant to Pina Bausch. After her death, I became Research and Development Manager at the Pina Bausch Foundation, where I co-developed the foundation’s archives and helped shape its early projects around legacy, memory and cultural heritage.

In 2014, I founded the International Research Center for Contemporary Arts and Applied Cultural Theory – Ekeby Art & Research, based in the Netherlands. In 2026, I founded The House of Mr Who, a new independent European literary house.

Over the past two decades, I have worked across Europe and beyond as an author, archivist, dramaturge, director, creative producer, lecturer and cultural manager, with a particular interest in artistic research, dance heritage, dance film and living archives.

My current work asks how we can find our own way through an increasingly complex world — and what art and literature can contribute to that search.

Selected publications:

mAPs – The Power of Transformation. A Toolkit for Dance, Film and Social Change (eds. Wagenbach/TANZRAUSCHEN), Wuppertal: TANZRAUSCHEN 2023 – And so you see …: On the Situatedness of Translating Audience Perceptions, in: Michaela Ott/Thomas Weber (eds.), Situated in Translations. Bielefeld: transcript 2019, pp. 191-214 (with Gabriele Klein); Archive des Kolonialen. Übersetzungen kulturellen Erbes im Tanz, in: Knopf/Lembcke/Recklies (eds.): Archive dekolonialisieren, Bielefeld: transcript 2018, pp.191- 206; Inheriting Dance. An Invitation from Pina (eds. Wagenbach/Pina Bausch Foundation), Bielefeld: transcript 2014