Barbara Kowa

Barbara Kowa born March 5 1973 in Hanover is an Austrian actress and performance artist Barbara Kowa grew up in Hamburg where she initially completed a musical theater program at the Stage School of Dance and Drama before earning her diploma in acting from the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin in 1996 Even during her studies she engaged intensively with performance art collaborating with artists such as Nan Hoover This was followed by international performances and projects in public spaces as well as engagements as a danceractress in various stage and opera productions in Berlin Paris and Tokyo Alongside her work as an actress Kowa increasingly developed her own multimedia performance and film projects Her intensive engagement with film as an artistic medium began in the early 2000s with a poetic film she created about the gardens of Friedensreich Hundertwasser Her first feature film dreaming Mali was screened at international festivals and received multiple awards Concurrently she continued to work as a freelance actress performing at venues such as the RenaissanceTheater Berlin and collaborating with directors including Mike Figgis and Tom DiCillo In 2013 she founded her own performance theater collective which explores the intersections between performance art and theater Thematically her works frequently address subjects such as consciousness communication cocreativity and life journeys Kowa hails from a family of artists and intellectuals she is among others the daughter of art historian Wieland Schmied