Claude Jansen

Claude Jansen studied Applied Theatre and Performing Arts at Justus Liebig University in Giessen. She is founding member and performer of She She Pop (1993-2001) and part of the artistic team Hajusom - a performing project with young refugees and migrants (2000-2010). During this period she also worked as DJ and writes for magazines and books.

Since 2010 she lives between Cape Town and Hamburg, works as freelance dramaturge, curator, director, teaches at universities, gives workshops and lectures – most activities with a focus on transnational artistic processes between Africa and Europe, as she has travelled for artistic & academic research and performance collaborations in various African countries since 1993.

Her interest to research on ritual practices developed over the past years by questioning several ritual and performance theories – such as Schechner and Turner – who translated their observations of (African) rituals as structural passages, ignoring the complexity of relational encounters between humans and non-humans and their transformative processes through shared agencies and several entanglements.

A knowledge she slowly gained with the support of artists, scholars & healers during several trainings and initiation processes. Her teachers and advisors who encouraged her to continue and share the work are Dr. Malidoma & Sobunfu Somé, Gogo Manglove, Harry Garuba, Kofi Kôkô, Germaine Acogny and many others with whom she had the honour to work with and to listen to. In 2019 she has started her program: Female Decolonisation - The Re-Enactement of Things, which she develops in cooperation with Bisrat Negassi. In 2020 both women are founding COME IN TENT – a transnational atelier and network for artists, academics and healers.