SHIFT: g.a.d.o

Artist duo g.a.d.o. (Lena Skrabs and Paloma Sanchez-Palencia) share their experiences as artists-in-residence at a school in rural Germany, where they have lived and worked on the school grounds since 2022, collaborating with teachers and students on all kinds of art projects.

Using the school environment itself as their material, g.a.d.o. give us a glimpse into their experimental, process-based work, where even they often do not know what will happen when they start a project.

Perhaps the school’s copy machine becomes a palm reader, or the morning speaker announcement turns into an audio piece. Maybe they host a ‘Goodbye PowerPoint Party’ to facilitate students to try more embodied methods of presenting work, or they devise an escape room based on maths class. It’s all part of what they call the ‘ceremonial of the ordinary’, presenting art not as something that sits outside of life, but as something that is always already there, waiting to be uncovered. 

Lena Skrabs and Paloma Sanchez-Palencia have been working together since 2016 as the artist duo, great artists doing okay, g.a.d.o. for short.

Their work combines storytelling, design, installation, celebrations, and often some kind of disappointment. More often than not, what they do leads to the production of experiences rather than art objects. They are interested in the celebratory possibilities of the ordinary, often focusing on the tension between work, play and rest. For the last three and a half years, they have been part of the residency programme Das fliegende Künstler*innenzimmer, in the countryside of Hesse, Germany, where they live and work in a schoolyard, collaborating with teachers and students on all kinds of art projects.

This film is part of SHIFT – Freelands Foundation’s seasonal series of short films spotlighting varied practices, approaches and philosophies within art education. 

All audiovisual material and research is courtesy of the artist.

Photos courtesy of g.a.d.o. and Christof Jakob.

Captions and editing by Sixbetween.

© Freelands Foundation, 2025