Annika Schäfer

Director, curator – Leipzig, Germany
Participant International Forum 2022

Annika Schäfer (*1991 in Stuttgart) lives and works as a freelance director and curator in Leipzig. She studied theater and film studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and then directing at the Academy for Performing Arts Baden-Württemberg. As a scholarship holder from the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, she completed a semester abroad at the Academie voor Theater en Dans in Amsterdam. Between the years 2014 and 2017 she created i.a. the short film “GESTERN HABE ICH ANGEFANGEN DICH ZU TÖTEN MEIN HERZ” and the autobiographical work “HERZKAMMER”. Annika Schäfer was one of the five founders and curators of FURORE - International festival for young theater 2016 in Ludwigsburg. Her interest in designing meeting spaces for different groups of artists, the organisation, curation and management work in the theatrical context impacted her entire work ever since. Along with the artist Lara Scherpinski she founded the duo schaefer||scherpinski in 2017. Their main interests engage in biographical work, historical events and the human body as a memory archive. The personal and political handling of the ambivalence between “remembering” and “forgetting” in Germany plays a central role in their artistic work.

In 2019 Schäfer curated the international exhibition “RIVER IN TRANSITION”, which explores the hidden heritage of the Danube and has traveled through Europe. In the same year, schaefer||scherpinski premiered the autobiographical performance “FALLSUCHT” at naTo Leipzig, which toured in German-speaking countries in 2020/21 and was last shown at the Fast Forward Festival. From 2019 to 2020, Annika Schäfer was a scholarship holder of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.