RoboLAB is a laboratory for inclusive art and culture at the cultural venue Odonien in Cologne. This year, the RoboLAB Festvial will take place here for the second time, with performances, film, music, literature and visual arts, created by and for people with and without disabilities. Once again, students from KISD are involved.
For the festival, students developed prototypes for an accessible Odonien. The projects were developed in collaboration with artists and performers with various disabilities and create new, multi-sensory accesses to the Odonien site. The project centered on the “aesthetics of access” – the idea that accessibility is not an add-on to existing cultural forms, but a distinct material for design and an integral part of the creative process.
In the student projects, for example, the focus lies on access to food and drinks for the deaf, visually impaired or people with cognitive impairments, or the translation of live music into vibrations and movement. Periscopes enable a change of perspective, questioning one’s own perception and making it possible to experience the site in a new way, an installation collects diverse descriptions of the sculptures in Odonien and makes them available for listening on site, and a moving robot surveys and maps the site to make it easier to navigate for people in wheelchairs.
RoboLAB opened in 2020 as a venue for professional, interdisciplinary, inclusive art projects and serves as a production and presentation space. Since then, exhibitions, performances, installations, media and music projects as well as workshops by and for artists with and without disabilities have been realized here with various cooperation partners.
The project RoboLAB 2021 is a cooperation of the KISD of TH Köln with Odonien, Leib + Seele Produktionen, Un-Label Performing Arts Company, kaethe:k kunsthaus, Film Festival Cologne, Filmfestival Klappe auf! and DIN A 13 tanzcompany.
RoboLAB Festival
August 19-24, Odonien, Hornstraße 85, 50823 Cologne, Germany
August 21, 5pm: RoboLAB presents: Concerts, exhibitions and performance, with the participation of KISD students
Complete festival program at https://robolab.online/
Participating students of KISD
Henrik Barth, Benjamin Breuer, Helena Fey, Omid Fröhlich, Charlotte Groß, Lisa-Marleen Mantel, Julian Marticke, Ruth Müller, Marlene Neumann, Ronja Preuß, Veronica Rodriguez Villarreal, Julius Walsch, Kjell Wistoff
Supervision
Prof. Dr. Lasse Scherffig, Eduard Paal