The Healing Arts:
Encounters in Art and Medicine
Berlin University of the Arts
18.06.2025
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schoch, Dr. Lily Martin & Maryna Makarenko

Prof. Dr. phil. Kerstin Schoch (they|them) is a scientist, art therapist, and psychologist who interdisciplinarily works between art, therapy, and psychology. They hold a professorship for Intermedial Art Therapy at the Medical School Hamburg. They are the co-founder of the Pop-up Institute where they communicate science by means of Arts and Arts Therapies to fight sanism in society. They were a mentor in the Open Science Fellow Program as well as the re·shape program for fostering knowledge equity – both by Wikimedia Germany. As @kunsthochzwei they micro-/blog about art therapy, psychology, intersectionality, and Open Science.

Dr. Lily Martin is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in training currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at Brandenburg Medical School and as a practitioner at the psychosomatic day clinic Sonnenallee of Vivantes in Berlin. Her research focuses on the interrelation between psychiatric disorders and body movement, as well as on the empirical and experimental substantiation of theories of embodiment and disembodiment In her doctoral project, Lily analysed movement characteristics of people with schizophrenia. Together with Kerstin Schoch, she founded the Pop-up Institute in order to tackle stigma of mental illnesses using creative and artistic methods.

Maryna Makarenko is a transdisciplinary artist, performer, educator, and a bodyworker. Based in Berlin for the past 14 years, she studied moving image and moving body at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her practice spans video, performance, sound, and voice, and she enjoys facilitating workshops and artistic laboratories. Drawn to the tools of speculative fiction, she weaves them into her personal narratives, exploring themes of identity and the body and their complex interconnections. As a migrant, she navigates a continuous state of transition and suspension, engaging with notions of liminality and in-betweenness.

© The Healing Arts is a series of discursive encounters between art and medicine hosted by curator and educator Lukas Feireiss with the International Society for Arts and Medicine in collaboration with and the Network Arts and Medicine at Charité Medical Center Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts since 2023.