Digital Presence Lab for Performing Artists: What Happened in the Room

From 17 to 20 August 2026, NIPAI held the first edition of the Digital Presence Lab for Performing Artists in Berlin.

Over four days, twelve actors, directors, choreographers, and dancers from the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Slovenia worked together in a format that brought digital strategy into the studio.

The Lab was led by Kseniia Lohvyniuk, creator of the Digital Strategy Through the Body method.

The starting point was simple: performing artists already work through presence, action, relationship, rhythm, attention, and the body. So what happens when these same tools are used to examine digital presence?

For eight hours across four sessions, the group explored the relationship between who we are offline, who we become online, and what other people actually encounter when they find us there.

The work was not about becoming an influencer or producing content endlessly. It was about finding a form of online presence that can support an artist’s professional life without turning the artist into a content machine.

Over four days, twelve actors, directors, choreographers, and dancers from the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Slovenia worked together in a format that brought digital strategy into the studio.

The first edition of the Digital Presence Lab for Performing Artists in Berlin, 17-20 August 2026, Berlin

Working through the body, not only through the screen

The Lab combined individual reflection with physical and practical work.

Participants worked with exercises around identity and positioning, improvisation, movement, pair and group tasks, video creation, and different approaches to presenting themselves online. They examined Instagram profiles from several perspectives and explored how the same artist can communicate different aspects of their practice without losing coherence.

Some content was created directly during the Lab.

Although the work happened in a group, individual attention was an important part of the process. Each participant received a personal profile review and had space to raise questions connected with their own professional situation. The details of those conversations remain private, but they became an important part of what NIPAI learned from this first edition.

Participants also received individual workbooks designed to support continued work for the following 60 days.

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What changed after the Digital Presence Lab for Performing Artists

For us, one of the most important results was not what participants said during the sessions, but what they began doing afterwards.

Some started recording and publishing videos on Instagram. Others immediately applied changes to their profiles based on the feedback they had received.

Participants described the individual feedback as detailed and useful, and several commented on the different way the Lab approached the relationship between an artist and social media.

One participant wrote:

“I never thought a workshop for artists about social media could be so fun and creative.”

Another described the Lab as:

“A very innovative way to look at marketing and existing in the digital world.”

Others spoke about discovering a new perspective on what it can mean to be an artist in social media, rather than simply learning another set of platform rules.

That distinction matters.

We believe most artists already know much more than they think they do about how they want to be seen, what they want to communicate, and where they want their work to lead. The challenge is often not to invent an identity, but to recognise it, clarify it, and give it a form that other people can understand.

The first Lab was also research

The August edition was the first time the Digital Strategy Through the Body method was tested with a real group of performing artists in a studio.

That meant the participants were learning, but NIPAI was learning as well.

The individual profile work helped us understand more precisely where artists experience resistance, confusion, and pressure in relation to digital presence. The results and feedback from this first edition are now being used to revise parts of the curriculum before the next session.

The next Digital Presence Lab for Performing Artists will take place in Berlin from 8 to 11 January 2027.

Those interested in continuing the subject can also explore NIPAI’s programmes for performing artists and the dates of upcoming international projects in Berlin.