ROMY Nūr SCHMIDT
Romy Nūr Schmidt is a curator and artistic researcher working at the intersection of performance, dance, media art, and exhibition practices. She develops research-based, relational curatorial formats that engage with embodied knowledge, collective memory, and alternative modes of knowledge production. Her work explores movement, sound, and performative practices as living archives and political epistemologies.
She grew up in former East Germany, in Saxony. This East German, post-socialist positioning shapes her sensitivity to intra-European hierarchies, epistemic marginalization, and the political conditions of memory, belonging, and visibility. She understands this positioning not only as a biographical background, but as an epistemological perspective from which she interrogates knowledge, history, bodies, and institutions—and which fundamentally shapes her curatorial and artistic practice.
Her practice is grounded in artistic research, transcultural approaches, and community-based formats. Schmidt works with participatory, care-based infrastructures and focuses on self-organization, collective authorship, and translocal knowledge exchange.
She understands curating not only as a practice of selection, but as a social, political, and infrastructural activity that produces new forms of relation, circulation, and belonging. A central concern of her work is the critical engagement with institutional frameworks, regimes of representation, and structural exclusions, as well as the development of sustainable and responsible modes of working.
She studied Communication and Media Management at Stuttgart Media University (HdM) and received a scholarship to attend the screenwriting program of Interspherial Pictures Stuttgart. In addition, she pursues continuous self-organized research in the fields of decolonial theory, embodied epistemologies, experimental curatorial models, and diversity-opening strategies for cultural institutions.
In 2018, she founded the transcultural WHY NOT? Collective, an international network of artists and researchers working across performance, dance, sound, media art, and memory politics. The collective develops productions for the independent arts scene as well as long-term research projects on post-socialist and non-Western knowledge systems. Within WHY NOT?, Schmidt experiments with collective authorship, non-hierarchical production models, and sustainable artistic ecologies.
Since 2024, Schmidt has been working in the context of MIGRANTENNALE – Festival for Migrant, Diasporic, and Decolonial Arts (Witten/North Rhine Westphalia) in the fields of production management and curatorial process consulting. The festival understands migration not as an identity category, but as an epistemic, aesthetic, and political movement.
In this framework, she works at the intersection of the independent arts scene and cultural institutions, developing formats of knowledge transfer that mediate between artistic practice, curatorial concepts, and institutional structures. Her work includes production coordination, curatorial process consulting, and the development of responsible, context-sensitive curatorial methodologies. Migrantennale collaborates with self-organized collective structures and transnational networks, focusing on issues such as displacement, colonial continuities, resistance, multilingualism, and embodied memory.
Romy Nūr Schmidt is currently developing a long-term artistic-curatorial research line on dance, movement, and sound as knowledge practices and embodied archives. Her emerging focus Ancestral Uprising explores Amazigh dance practices and Sufi-related movement forms in North Africa, examining them as epistemic systems, social archives, and collective memory practices.
The project centers on self-organized art ecologies, relational research approaches, and decolonial methodologies. This work is currently in development and will gradually unfold as a long-term research and production trajectory.
Alongside her curatorial and artistic practice, Schmidt has held leadership positions with a focus on audience development, participatory programming, and structural transformation.
From 2015 to 2018, she served as Artistic Director and Managing Director of the Prinz Regent Theater in Bochum, where she founded international and youth ensembles, established residency programs, and anchored the institution more deeply in its urban context.
From 2020 to 2021, she was interim Managing Director of the socio-cultural center Werk 1 in Görlitz, where she led processes of institutionalization, fundraising, and long-term strategic development.
She currently works in the field of cultural funding and program development at Kulturforum Witten, focusing on decolonial and anti-racist practices, access, and structural opening.
ROMY Nūr SCHMIDT
Romy Nūr Schmidt is a curator and artistic researcher working at the intersection of performance, dance, media art, and exhibition practices. She develops research-based, relational curatorial formats that engage with embodied knowledge, collective memory, and alternative modes of knowledge production. Her work explores movement, sound, and performative practices as living archives and political epistemologies.
She grew up in former East Germany, in Saxony. This East German, post-socialist positioning shapes her sensitivity to intra-European hierarchies, epistemic marginalization, and the political conditions of memory, belonging, and visibility. She understands this positioning not only as a biographical background, but as an epistemological perspective from which she interrogates knowledge, history, bodies, and institutions—and which fundamentally shapes her curatorial and artistic practice.
Her practice is grounded in artistic research, transcultural approaches, and community-based formats. Schmidt works with participatory, care-based infrastructures and focuses on self-organization, collective authorship, and translocal knowledge exchange.
She understands curating not only as a practice of selection, but as a social, political, and infrastructural activity that produces new forms of relation, circulation, and belonging. A central concern of her work is the critical engagement with institutional frameworks, regimes of representation, and structural exclusions, as well as the development of sustainable and responsible modes of working.
She studied Communication and Media Management at Stuttgart Media University (HdM) and received a scholarship to attend the screenwriting program of Interspherial Pictures Stuttgart. In addition, she pursues continuous self-organized research in the fields of decolonial theory, embodied epistemologies, experimental curatorial models, and diversity-opening strategies for cultural institutions.
In 2018, she founded the transcultural WHY NOT? Collective, an international network of artists and researchers working across performance, dance, sound, media art, and memory politics. The collective develops productions for the independent arts scene as well as long-term research projects on post-socialist and non-Western knowledge systems. Within WHY NOT?, Schmidt experiments with collective authorship, non-hierarchical production models, and sustainable artistic ecologies.
Since 2024, Schmidt has been working in the context of MIGRANTENNALE – Festival for Migrant, Diasporic, and Decolonial Arts (Witten/North Rhine Westphalia) in the fields of production management and curatorial process consulting. The festival understands migration not as an identity category, but as an epistemic, aesthetic, and political movement.
In this framework, she works at the intersection of the independent arts scene and cultural institutions, developing formats of knowledge transfer that mediate between artistic practice, curatorial concepts, and institutional structures. Her work includes production coordination, curatorial process consulting, and the development of responsible, context-sensitive curatorial methodologies. Migrantennale collaborates with self-organized collective structures and transnational networks, focusing on issues such as displacement, colonial continuities, resistance, multilingualism, and embodied memory.
Romy Nūr Schmidt is currently developing a long-term artistic-curatorial research line on dance, movement, and sound as knowledge practices and embodied archives. Her emerging focus Ancestral Uprising explores Amazigh dance practices and Sufi-related movement forms in North Africa, examining them as epistemic systems, social archives, and collective memory practices.
The project centers on self-organized art ecologies, relational research approaches, and decolonial methodologies. This work is currently in development and will gradually unfold as a long-term research and production trajectory.
Alongside her curatorial and artistic practice, Schmidt has held leadership positions with a focus on audience development, participatory programming, and structural transformation.
From 2015 to 2018, she served as Artistic Director and Managing Director of the Prinz Regent Theater in Bochum, where she founded international and youth ensembles, established residency programs, and anchored the institution more deeply in its urban context.
From 2020 to 2021, she was interim Managing Director of the socio-cultural center Werk 1 in Görlitz, where she led processes of institutionalization, fundraising, and long-term strategic development.
She currently works in the field of cultural funding and program development at Kulturforum Witten, focusing on decolonial and anti-racist practices, access, and structural opening.
