• Theatre
  • Art + Design

Sylke Rene Meyer

Professor

Sylke Rene Meyer is a writer, director, media artist, performer, educator, and co-founder of the performance group Studio206 [Berlin/Los Angeles]. In 2018, she also co-founded the performance group ‘The Family Room Collective’ in Los Angeles (2018-2020).

Before joining Northeastern University, she has been a professor at the University of Technology, Arts and Sciences, Cologne, Germany, and at California State University in Los Angeles, where she also founded and directed the Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology (InArt).

Sylke studied theater, philosophy, and law at the Free University of Berlin. After graduating from law school, she studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at the Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg Film and Television University and graduated from the Munich Screenplay Workshop at the University of Television and Film Munich in 2000.

She worked and lived as a film editor, production designer, writer, and director in Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. Her practice is informed by and engages with film and media history, theory, and criticism, and encompasses feature and documentary filmmaking, as well as writing and collaborative experimentation across film, theater, new media, and digital platforms. Her work has garnered numerous awards such as an Emmy Award, and Best Film Awards at major festivals such as Seattle, Chicago, and Montreal, and has been theatrically released, broadcasted on public television channels worldwide, and shown in exhibition spaces in Berlin, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, New York, and Warsaw.

Sylke’s research centers on spatial story design, narrative theory, and the human body at border zones: imaginary and real, analog and digital, or in simulation and imitation.  She has published several papers on narratology and the politics of narrative, as well as a book on Interactive Storytelling.

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Education

  • Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin) Philosophy and Theatre Law School (bar examination, (Staatsexamen=terminal degree)
  • University for Film and Television Berlin-Babelsberg (HFF Konrad Wolf) Screenwriting & Film Directing, (Diploma)
  • School of Film and Television Munich (HFF München) Graduate of the X. Screenwriting Class (Master Class)

Awards

  • 2012 Best Screenplay Winner at Independent Filmmakers Showcase Film Festival, The True and Local Solar Time (screenplay award)
  • 2012 The BlueCat Screenplay Competition, Quarterfinalist, The True and Local Solar Time
  • 2011 Independent Film Quarterly Film & Media Festival, Maps of Manifold / The True and Local Solar Time (screenplay award)
  • 2009 Nominated for the Federal Film Award (best screenplay) The Hours of Night and Stillness Loving
  • 2008 Villa Aurora Fellowship, Artists Residency Los Angeles
  • 2008 10th Annual BAMkids Film Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music for Filiz in Flight (best Film)
  • 2007 Silver Gryphon Award 37th Children’s Film Festival Giffoni for Filiz in Flight (best Film)
  • 2007 International Children’s Film Festival Chicago, certificate of excellence for Filiz in Flight
  • 2007 International Film Festival Seattle Proscar (BEST FILM) for Strajk
  • 2006 International Film Festival Saturno, Golden Saturn for Strajk
  • 2004 Nominated for the German Screenplay Award with Occurrence of Inner Unrest
  • 2003 Certificate of excellence for Who is Anna Walentynowicz? BANFF Montreal
  • 2001 Mecom Award, Best Screenplay for 2 fish and 1 bicycle
  • 2000 INTERNATIONAL EMMY AWARDS– best screenplay (Ustinov Award) for Who is Anna Walentynowicz? (later: Strajk)

Professional Experience

  • Artist, There’s nothing I know to do, Studio206 in collaboration with Fernanda Flores, in development, tbd, Fall/Spring 2021/22
  • Director, Unreal Realities, short film/VR performance, a studio 206 production in cooperation with the Departments of Computer Sciences, Theatre, and Film, Television, and media at California State University Los Angeles, Spring 2021
  • Director, Hotel Paraíso, short film/VR performance, in cooperation with the Departments of Computer Sciences, Theatre, and Film, Television, and media at California State University Los Angeles, Fall 2020
  • Artist/Director, The Minutes theatre performance with Studio 206 and ‘The Family Room Collective’, Arena Theatre, Los Angeles 2019
  • Artist (TFRC), House of Fear, multi-media performance/solo museum show with ‘The Family Room Collective’, Art Galleries, California State University Northridge, 2019
  • Artist (TFRC), Paper Over, multi-media performance with ‘The Family Room Collective’, Tiger Strikes Astroid Gallery, Los Angeles 2019
  • Artist/Director (TFRC), Strange Loops, multi-media performance with ‘The Family Room Collective’, Arena Theatre, Los Angeles 2018

Research/Publications Highlights

Right, Left, High, Low-Narrative Strategies for Non–linear Storytelling, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2016/17

Sprechen über Hören (Talking about Listening),  in Aßmann, S./Moormann, P./Nimmerfall, K./Thomann, M. (Hrsg.) (2016): wenden. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf das Phänomen turn. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Animal Husbandry, Tragedy, and the Patriarchal Psychosis, in New Theatre Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, 1/2015

Right After This Message, in dkritik, Schwerpunkt Ausgabe Arbeit, Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Braunschweig, Januar 2014

Play Episode, in “Weimaerer Beiträge, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft, Ästhetik und Kulturwissenschaften”,  4/2013, Herausgegeben von Peter Engelmann gemeinsam mit Michael Franz und Daniel Weidner, Passagen Verlag

Low-Fi, Low-Tech–Resiting a Discourse of Mastery, ZFiction-Immersive Realities, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Missing Foundations, Intersectionality, and Institutions in the Master’s House, presented at CILECT/GEECT Cologne, Germany, 2019. https://filmschreiben.de/missing-foundations-diversity-intersectionality-and-institutions-in-the-masters-house/

This is not a Game, presented at College Arts Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, 2018

Mirror Staging, Selfies and First Person Shooters as post-patriarchal Narratives in the Eye of the I, On the Image, University of California, Berkeley, 2015

Play Episode II, in Körperinszenierung in Medienkulturen, University Salzburg, Fall 2014

Interactive Storytelling, editor (co-editor: Gustavo Aldana) and contributor, book publication, Perform Series, Routledge, 2021

Politics of Narrative, in 21st Century Film and TV School Book, a book publication edited by CILECT, The International Association of Film and Television Schools (Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de TélévisionCILECT), Fall 2016

 

Talks, Panels & Keynotes (Selects)

2021                            Keynote Speaker, ZFiction-Immersive Realities, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), June 2021

2021                            Organizer and Moderator of a symposium on “Interactive Storytelling”; roundtables included the business of interactive storytelling, queer and transgender identities in expanded reality, and artificial intelligence and revolutions. Panelist were Zachary Vernon, Liz Rosenthal, Yichao Michael, Lee Tusman, Holden Holcombe, Lark Alder, Cynthia Wang, Sharon Smith [Gob Squad], Grayson Earle, Carlin Wing, Ingrid Kopp, and Paisley Smith. May 2021

2021                            Invited guest speaker, University of Cologne, Studio Art and Research Program, May 2021

2021                            Invited guest speaker, Building Bridges, Aalto University, Helsinki, January 2021

2020                            Invited guest speaker, Visiting Artist Lecture Series, OTIS College of Art and Design, March 2020

2019                           Keynote Speaker, Building Bridges, Aalto University, Helsinki,  May 2019

2019                           Keynote Speaker, Embracing Diversity, Cilect/Geect, Cologne, Amsterdam. March 2019

2018                           Invited guest speaker, innovation hub, FH Düsseldorf June 2018

2018                           Invited guest speaker, Gamelab Berlin, May 2018

2018                            Keynote Speaker, 1st Babelsberg symposium Gender and Film, Filmuniversity Konrad Wolf Potsdam Babelsberg, May 2018