15–17.06.2026
Bucharest
COLLEGIUM. Jeroen Peeters
Writing as artistic practice
June 15–17, 2026, 11:00–16:00
Teatre/ Theatres, Schitu Măgureanu 21, Bucharest
registration deadline: June 9, 2026
registration form
The Institute of the Present presents the 2026 edition of COLLEGIUM—a layer of action within its educational programme centred on the artists’ engagement with pedagogy and sharing practices, as well as other forms of reflection upon the process of working. In the form of an intensive workshop, COLLEGIUM puts forward a knowledge-resource space, advocating for a confrontational field featuring a variety of performative and visual practices.
Writing as artistic practice
How do you set up conditions for the work to come about? How do you create a shared ground for exploring the unfamiliar in pursuit of making sense? These questions are at the heart of dance and performance dramaturgy as an experimental, collaborative practice and a material form of thinking. What if we were to apply these ideas to the practice of writing?
The 2026 Collegium workshop is led by dramaturg, performer and writer Jeroen Peeters and is dedicated to artists’ writing placed in various instances in relation to the performative process. This may include documenting one’s work, process or ‘languages of making’ in various ways. But also using one’s artistic methods or poetics to experiment with essay or fiction writing as well as making artist’s books.
The workshop features three daily sessions. These will propose discussions around selected texts and also writings by participants. In view of developing materials, we’ll work with individual as well as collective writing exercises. Prompts include: notebook discussions to inspire both ethnographic and speculative approaches to working methods; staging conditions of (not) writing; experimenting with reading scores to open up alternative ways of performing one’s writing; working with constraints to make small publications.
The workshop is open to professional artists and writers. There is no prior preparation required, but participants are invited to bring their notebooks and drafts they’re working on. You may also bring texts and books you find inspiring—we’ll install them in the workshop space as a small reference library. If you’d like to get a flavour of Peeters’ writing practice, you can read the self-interview What is the landscape you’re working in?.
REGISTRATION
Professionals interested are requested to fill in a short application form available at https://forms.gle/7Aw7u1zTYpGzYqHt7 by June 9, 2026. A total of max. 10 participants shall be invited to join the workshop. Applicants shall be notified about their registrations’ status as they are received and no later than June 10, 2026. Details: ip@institutulprezentului.ro.
The workshop will take place at Teatre/ Theatres space in Bucharest on June 15–17, 2026, 11:00–16:00, with lunch break. Participants should be available for all workshop sessions.
There is a suggested donation for confirmed participants in amount of 100 Ron or 20 Euro. The sum raised contributes to the project’s costs.
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The workshop includes an artist talk event, “Dramaturgies of (not) writing”, on June 17, 19:00, also introducing Jeroen Peeters’ practice as writer and editor. After the talk, there will be a pop-up bookstore with publications of Jeroen Peeters and Varamo Press.
Jeroen Peeters (BE, 1976) is an essayist, dramaturg and performer based in Brussels, working across the media of writing, performance and publication. He writes about art and matters such as ecologies of attention, embodied knowledge, material literacy, readership, commoning and sustainable development.
Peeters has published widely on contemporary dance and performance, art theory and philosophy, including a book on spectatorship in contemporary dance, Through the Back: Situating Vision between Moving Bodies (2014). Interested in documenting the ‘languages of making’, Peeters set up several dialogical projects with artists in the field of contemporary dance, which resulted for instance in a book in collaboration with Meg Stuart, Are we here yet? (2010). Other publications include the artist’s book We don’t know what free jazz is (2015), the essay Reseeding the library, gleaning readership (2018), a series of essays on Mette Edvardsen’s work, Something Some things Something else (2019), the artist’s book Bookmarks of sorts (2021), and the handbook And then it got legs: Notes on dance dramaturgy (2022). In 2025 he obtained a PhD in Art at Hasselt University with research on Conceptual Landscapes: Readership in the Expanded Field.
Recent performance works include The elusive eloquence of dozing off (2018) and A Table (2024). Peeters regularly engages in artistic collaborations with among others Mette Edvardsen, Jack Hauser, Sabina Holzer, Sara Manente, Martin Nachbar, Meg Stuart, David Weber-Krebs and Jozef Wouters. Together with Mette Edvardsen he runs the publishing house Varamo Press. www.jeroenpeeters.work / www.varamopress.org
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Collegium is an annual project of the Institute of the Present, conceived by Ștefania Ferchedău. The 2026 edition is organised in the frame of the project “Collegium. Timelines for Future”.
Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. Partner: Teatre/Theatres.The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.
