Students in this course at the University of Applied Arts Vienna Performance Lab design and mediate participatory situations emphasizing knowledge transfer and independent learning in non-frontal environments. Students are invited to explore the integral and intricate role of the mediator/facilitator in physical, hybrid and digital environments. The course emphasizes the role of the facilitator, meaning someone who provides support, direction, or supervision, often in an indirect or low-profile manner.

During the course we will explore, reflect on and discover implications related to an active mediator/facilitator's role in implementing and managing participative situations. By means of hands-on research, we will create a reflective setting to share and apply methods to create participative situations. We will learn more about the complexities of participation, how it can be designed, inspired, and provided, and how to manage it autonomously, thereby strengthening the ability to act and make autonomous decisions from within a supervised situation.

In accordance with the instructor's expertise and together with invited international speakers, we will explore the diversity and complexity of "mediation" stemming from performance, extended choreography, architecture, didactics and education, collaborative theater, cognitive science and practices in mindfulness. This will take place in various formats such as on-site, online, hybrid learning, machine learning, and AI.

When observing a decision-making process, "participation", for example, can be regarded as a constantly moving relationship-based method that needs to remain self-regulating. The mediator involved in this type of process often stays more in the background while the actual experience is being created and managed by a variety of involved aspects. These aspects may include people, objects, materials, transient immaterial influences, nonhuman and digital processes. The course seeks to introduce a transdisciplinary approach that facilitates this kind of constant movement and extends beyond the artistic context to embrace all aspects of communication, decision-making, interrelationships, social structures and more.
 

How can a low-threshold introductory situation be turned into a learning situation?

What kind of intangible elements (such as time, emotions, experiences) come into play during participative situations?

At which point does a mediator/facilitator intervene, and when does the mediator/facilitator move to the sidelines?

How do digital learning environments change participation and mediation?