Jen Goettner received her BFA in 1997 from The University of the Arts, where the ‘act’ of object-making provoked her interest in performance. After graduation in 1998, she mounted Wiglicious!, a multimedia floor-show at Shampoo, and then went to work in the scenic shops of the Walnut Street Theatre, building costumes, props and sets. This led her to WST’s Studio 3, designing the set for Orphans, in 1999, and the costumes for Vigil in 2000.

In 2001, Jen returned to UArts to pursue her graduate degree in industrial design. Her thesis, titled Site Ensemble: The Perfomative Product in the Urban Milieu produced a collection of interactive umbrellas: Sticky, Spinny and Spot. She received her MID in May 2003. Her re-focused approach to design was expressed in her role as prop-maker for Headlong Dance Theater, where she designed and built the wig for Britney’s Inferno, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival 2002, DTW, NYC 2003. It was while working with Headlong that Jen met Nichole Canuso, and later designed the costumes for Moxie Dance Collective’s Better I’d Stayed Up in 2003, for NCDC’s We Spar Down The Lane in 2005, and NCDC’s Fail Better and Other Works in 2006.

In 2003, Jen joined Basekamp, a socially-experimental art, design and curatorial residency program dedicated to collaborative cultural production. Through the course of her three-year term, she co-produced large-scale, interactive installations presented within the field of contemporary art. These works include Evident Use, (in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Architecture) in ‘DeTourism Bureau’ I & II. Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams. 2004 – 2006, ‘This Way Please’ Pond, San Francisco. 2005, and ‘Spacemakers’ Lothringer 13, Munich. 2004. Mobile Sandbox Unit in ‘Version>05’ festival and conference. Chicago. 2005 and Discussion Panels. In ‘Making Room for Redundancy’. Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. 2005.

In the summer of 2005, Jen mounted her site-specific performance installation titled Lunch-Hour Lifeguard: On Duty at Basekamp. In 2006, she was a finalist for the PEW Fellowship in Sculpture and Installation. Also in 2006, she and Scott Rigby co-authored a proposal for an experimental conference which received a PEI Research grant to support ‘Plausible Artworlds>Strategic Planning Event’ at the Basekamp gallery. Summer 2006. 

At the end of 2006, Jen left Basekamp to pilot Free Agent Design, a lab for non-verbal communication devices, specifically focused upon public performance and social theater, and prototyped performative products such as Sole-Mates, a collection of shoes designed for experimental sound and movement composition. A public demonstration and performance installation titled ‘This Play on Display’ featured Nichole Canuso, courtesy of UArts and the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery. May 2007. Immediately following, Jen worked as one of the production designers for NCDC’s ‘Wandering Alice’, where she experimented with props, scenic devices and installations, and designed the costumes for the Live Arts festival showing. Sept. 08

Currently, Jen works as a founding member and project director of Urban Studio (US). US is an inter-disciplinary team of local designers, artists and educators who initiate and manage community-driven, urban-scale projects toward a shared vision of a sustainable Philadelphia. Working collaboratively with a wide range of partners, from municipal entities to homeowners, these projects address an array of topics such as rainwater collection for row homes, placemaking strategies for ‘up and coming’ neighborhoods, and an urban-agriculture project to produce material crops for local industries. Ms. Goettner teaches design at the University of the Arts.