Nicoline van Harskamp was born in the Netherlands in 1975 and attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Den Haag, Chelsea College in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

Her performative works were staged live at, among others, the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London, KunstWerke in Berlin, Witte de With in Rotterdam, New Museum in New York, Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, Archive Kabinett/Scriptings in Berlin, Tenderpixel in London and the Kaaitheater in Brussels.

Nicoline van Harskamp's recent solo exhibitions include Project Arts Centre in Dublin, Kunsthalle Münster, BAK in Utrecht, C3A in Cordoba and Kunstraum in London. She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions such as at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Frac Lorraine in Metz, Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, De Appel in Amsterdam, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Clark House in Bombay, Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal, Ujadovski Castle in Warsaw, MUAC in Mexico City, Serralves Museum in Porto, Waterside Contemporary in London, Manifesta 9 in Genk, Performa 11 in New York, and the biennales of Sydney, Gothenburg, Taipei, Moscow, Ireland (Limerick), Bucharest and Shanghai.

Nicoline van Harskamp works with video, installation, and scripted live performance. Her projects can take several years to complete, and are exhibited in various stages of the process.

In Yours in Solidarity (2010 – 2013) she tells histories from the global anarchist movement after 1989, starting from a letter archive. In the series Englishes (2014 – 2016), she uses varieties of internationally-spoken English to propose a future shaped by the ubiquity and constant evolution of that language. The works PDGN (2016) and Some Name Some Noun Simply (2017) propose what such a spoken vehicular language might sound like in the future. My Name is Language/Mein Name ist Sprache (2018 – 2019) considers the translation and creolisation of personal names in multilingual societies. Englishes Mooc (2019 and ongoing) is an art project in the form of a Massive Online Open Course.

The students of the performative art class work in very different ways and media but share an interest in performativity in the broadest sense. Half of their spaces and resources are dedicated to studio practice, and half to programmed activities in the class' project area. They take from the tradition of performance art not only the media of body, voice, movement and time, but also the focus on cross-disciplinarity and solidarity. Collaborative practice is supported and valued as much as individual practice. Throughout the year they organize projects that allow (but do not oblige) students to research a specific methodology through the production of a work.

In Performance Room (since 2016), students each have one week to develop a performative work for the lens of a single camera. In Actors and Directors (2018), students instruct a professional actor in a work of their own, and then evaluate and adapt their directing skills with them. In 2019 the class focusses on scripting.

Guests that joined the colloquium since 2016 include the artists Mikhail Karikis, Roi Alter, Ahmet Ö?üt and Richard John Jones; the scholars Avishek Ganguly (Rhode Island School of Design, Providence) and Aneta Rostowska (Akademie der Kulturen der Welt); and the performers Monica Reyes, Serge Fouha and Kenneth Phillip George.

Some works of the class can be seen on vimeo:

Website of the class