Eszter Salamon is a choreographer, filmmaker, artist and performer. She lives and works in Berlin and Paris. In 2019, she won the Evens Art Prize. She won the La Vie Bonne call for projects organised by the National Centre for Plastic Arts (FR) and Aware: Archive of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions in 2020. In 2023, she received the prestigious Hedda Prize in the Best Scenography and Costume category for her costume design for MONUMENT 0.10: The Living Monument, created in collaboration with Carte Blanche. In 2025, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

Salamon uses choreography to combine and structure a variety of media, including images, sounds, music, texts, voices and bodily movements and actions. Since 2001, she has created solo performances, large-scale projects, performative installations, and films, showcasing her works at performing arts venues and museums worldwide.  including Centre Pompidou Paris (FR), Centre Pompidou Metz (FR), Festival d’Automne (FR), Avignon Festival (FR), Ruhrtriennale (DE), Holland Festival (NL), The Kitchen New York (USA), HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin (DE), Berlin Documentary Forum (DE), PACT Zollverein (D), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (BE), Kaaitheater (BE), Tanzquartier Wien (AT), Kampnagel Hamburg (DE), steirischer herbst (AT), Manchester International Festival (UK), Holland Festival (NL), Nanterre-Amandiers (FR), FTA Montreal (CA), Dance Triennale Tokyo (JP), TheatreWorks Singapore (SG), Panorama Festival Rio de Janeiro (BR), Movimiento Sur Valparaiso (CL).
 She is frequently invited to present her work in museums, including MoMA (USA), Museo Reina Sofía Madrid (ES), Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (ES), Serralves Foundation (PT), Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE), mumok (AT), 15th Baltic Triennial CAC Vilnius (LT), Kunstnernes Hus Oslo (NO), BHM Kiscelli Museum Budapest (H), Cité international des arts, Paris (F), Collection Lambert, Avignon (F), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (AT), Villa Empain - Boghossian Foundation (BE), ING Art Center (BE), KINDL (DE), Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) (NL), Museo Centro Gaiás, Santiago de Compostela (ESP).

Her exhibition Eszter Salamon 1949 was presented at Jeu de Paume (F) in 2014 as part of Satellite curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez. Her large-scale performative installation Study for the Valeska Gert Pavilion, was presented at the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art 2022. Following her films Reappearance (2022) and Sommerspiele (2023), her film installation Landscaping premiered in September 2025 at the 21st Biennale de la Danse in Lyon and was presented at IRCAM in Paris as part of the Centre Pompidou's Constellation projects.

The Living Book

The overarching objective of this course is to direct attention towards the figure of the German avant- garde dancer and artist Valeska Gert and the question of embodied history through the lens of performance and text study. The course constitutes a further development ofEszter Salamon’s decade-long research into Gert's life and work, and the 'Valeska Gert Monuments series' developed since 2016. These monuments, which embody performative and temporal dimensions, are conceptualised as anti-monuments. The purpose of this proposal is to introduce innovative methodologies that deviate from historically prevalent practices of academic research, which are characterised by the abstraction of relations between structures of power. Students are offered the opportunity to acquaint themselves with artistic research that is critical and experimental in nature, with the objective of exploring ways of engaging with 'situated knowledges'.
The Living Book is a long-durational performance that draws upon Gert's autobiographical book, Ich bin Eine Hexe: Kaleidoskop meines Lebens (1968),as well as photographic documentation of her stage and onscreen performances. It will explore the dynamic interplay between memory and archive, and develop methodologies for animating collective historical consciousness through the exercise of transgenerational poetic empathy. The act of composing with the past from the perspective of the present is divergent from imagining the past as it could have happened. The aim of The Living Book is to interrogate failed historical consciousness and devise new relationships with the past in order to shape the future (of art and artistic research). The question of what remains in the fishnet of history is one that has been posed by many scholars and artists alike, and there have been and continue to be reasons why Gert's role has not gained more relevance in the history of art. Asking what we learn and how we learn, as well as what we remember and how we remember, is crucial for developing critical relationships with the production of knowledge and art. It is important to note that remembering and archiving is not only for learning about the past; archives shape our imagination and consequently our future.

Events:

8 June Lecture and film screening @ AdK Blackbox 
8 July Closing Event of the Professorship @ AdK Blackbox