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AIL Platform: Support Art and Research

What does it mean to conduct artistic research today?

Research Presentations at AIL

TOPIC CONTENT:

AIL has been an interdisciplinary platform at the intersection of art, science and research since its foundation in 2014. AIL supports the realization of projects which highlight the in-between spaces that are the result of the interplay of different disciplines. Experiencing, understanding, learning and unlearning as well as rethinking relationships and interactions play a crucial part in making AIL a flexible and open space.

AIL presents projects from the field of Artistic Research on a regular basis, covering all states of research and a variety of formats_;and even works in progress. As a complementary understanding of research alongside traditionally academic ones, Artistic Research can expand epistemological questions, especially with regard to intersectional problems.

Together with the department 'Support Art and Research' AIL invites selected research projects to present their research and give insights into different research stages.

research presentation

Opening: 22 May 2023, 19:00

Running: 23 May 2023 – 26 May 2023

In the Presence of Artistic Research

Public Colloquium and Exhibition with the Artists of the Artistic Research PhD Program (PhD in Art) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna

A project by the Zentrum Fokus Forschung

Zentrum Fokus Forschung

Opening Hours Exhibition:

Opening Mon: 19:00
Tue, Wed: 9:00–18:00
Thu: 9:00–20:00
Fri: 13:00–15:00

Public Colloquium:

Tue–Thu: 9:00–16:30

‘Perhaps, even today, we do not deal with art. We might have overlooked the moment when it transformed itself into something else, something which we cannot yet name. It is certain, however, that what we deal with offers greater possibilities.’ — Jerzy Ludwinski

Photo: Anderwald + Grond (2018)

What does it mean to conduct artistic research today?

This exposition of artistic-research work is an invitation to reflect on the present through the prism of current artistic research. Situated in-between provocation and reflection, the exhibition and the series of public lecture-performances and lectures give insight into the diversity of topics, methods, perspectives, and discursive and display strategies afforded by artistic research. Artist-researchers make speculative propositions about the kinds of knowledge, action, and impact art might yield. The PhD in Art program understands modes of artistic-scientific working as an empowerment of the artists, a critical possibility to reach beyond perceived boundaries, to a mode and attitude of working which fuses and confounds, cross-pollinating the ecologies of the artistic and curatorial with scientific, practice-based and societal impact. Creativity and imagination are essential capacities shaping the present and enabling future-making. This reinvigoration of research-impacted artistic practices has situated artists as agents in social, scientific, and political spheres. The diverse practices of artist-researchers may address pressing artistic, social, political, and ecological issues. Employing creative methods that draw from artistic traditions as well as from research practices, artistic research reaches beyond the limitations of representing or elaborating the world, proposing different outlooks on the present and future.

What are the limitations and hazards of such intermingling, and what becomes generative and fecund in these contact zones? To discuss these questions together with the artist-researchers, this four-day event extends an invitation to be present and join the PhD in Art program in discussing the exhibition and presentations of the current state of the PhD in Art projects.

Reflecting on the candidates’ artistic work together with the audience, on the practices, modes and methods of research and critical analysis, four renowned international guest critics are present:

Sebastian Chichocki, chief curator and head of the research department at MOMA Warsaw and The Consortium for Postartistic Practices

Davide Deriu, architectural theorist and historian at the University of Westminster London

Yael Eylat van Essen, curator and researcher at Holon Institute of Technology

Astrid S. Klein, artist-researcher and lecturer at University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf and Quartier Flottant, will contribute from their perspective and give insight into their own work in the field.

Participants:

Tamara Antonijević, Niels Bonde, Nisrine Boukhari, Erik Bünger, Margit Busch, Andrew Champlin, Cristiana de Marchi, George Demir, Rah Eleh, Jošt Franko, Oscar Gardea, Joseph Leung, Judit Navratil, Ana Rajčević, Marthin Rozo, Juli Sikorska, Conny Zenk

Program Overview:

Opening: 22 May, 19:00

Exhibition: 23 May–26 May

Public Colloquium: 23 May–25 May

Further Events and Program at ZFF: 23 May–26 May

Zentrum Fokus Forschung at Rustenschacher Allee Vienna. Photo: Katarina Šoškić (2019)

The function of the Zentrum Fokus Forschung is to develop projects in the post-graduate research areas of art and science (research projects, incl. projects evolving from the Artistic Research PhD Programme) and to support significant developments in art and science in general.
The Zentrum Fokus Forschung is a unit – complementing existing departments – at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, in which independent artistic research is generated and connected; artistic work is thereby regarded as the basis of knowledge production, of course in a productive relationship with existing ways of knowledge development, which have been established in other fields of research.
The aim is to generate fresh knowledge regarding specific issues in the arts by providing an adequate institutional focus, to contextualize artistic research and to adequately communicate results in both national and international artistic environments.
Zentrum Fokus Forschung is located at Rustenschacher Allee in Vienna and its core task is to coordinate and develop research activities. As a matter of principle, research in the sense of comprehensive knowledge production is open to any outcome, everything is possible.

research presentation

Opening: 04 May 2017, 20:00

Running: 04 May 2017 – 05 May 2017

Publishing in the Context of Artistic Research

An annual public colloquium that takes place in the context of the PhD course Artistic Research (PhD in Art) and where candidates can present their current research

Hosted by Zentrum Fokus Forscht

Following the public panel discussion on ‘Artistic Research and PhD’ on May 4, presentations by individual PhD candidates will take place on May 5.

This will be followed by an event about Publishing in the Context of Artistic Research, conceived by Nikolaus Gansterer (visiting professor for the PhD program 2016/17).

Using a selection of recently published output, Gansterer will engage in a discussion with the authors to determine which hybrid formats and new strategies need to be developed in order to adequately present artistic research.

Poulin, Katarina Šoškić, Anna Vasof

Guests (Publishing in the Context of Artistic Research): Alex Arteaga, Emma Cocker, Lilia Mestre, Mariella Greil

Panelists: Alexander Damianisch, Nikolaus Gansterer, Barbara Putz-Plecko

research presentation

25 Oct 2023, 15:00

MorphoPoly

Building, research and learning games on the question of the city model

How can we plan, design and inhabit urban existence differently – and for multiple living species and life forms? What is a model and how can we understand models differently and understand other models?

About MorphoPoly

morphoPoly is a process-oriented project in the field of artistic research. Several groups create city models and other designs from diverse materials and in diverse media for a performative, multi-sensory conception of contemporary urban existence. These designs evolve in the context of a ‘gamification’ that is itself part of the process.

At various locations in Vienna, the team of morphoPoly organized building, research and learning games on the question of the city model.

Which models we can design for the urban upheavals that are already underway? What is a model, what can a model do, how can we understand models differently and understand other models?

How can we plan, design and inhabit urban existence differently – and for multiple living species and life forms?

morphoPoly has, during its first period (2021–2023), undergone a complex process involving the planning and monitoring of building (and dissolving) model cities using various materials, ranging from Lego and toy bricks to everyday leftovers.

The initial builders were children aged 6 till 12, with some of them collaborating with us throughout the entire process. The project evolved within fluid structures, bridging the realms of Social Design and Zentrum Fokus Forschung. It combined the animating, almost therapeutic qualities of hands-on building and tinkering with transdisciplinary, multi-sensory research on our perception of cities, encompassing not only utopian but also real urban environments.

One branch of the project was dedicated to creating a board game meant to demonstrate the ecological challenges inherent in contemporary and immediate future city planning. Participants were instructed to transform the over-crowded cities of the 20th century with streets planned for car traffic into an urban development fit for the 21st century.

All those models and model games building on each other, but also wildly diverse and built in different venues, from the UNIDO and the Austrian Filmmuseum to the Poolbar Festival in Feldkirch, ask for a narrative bridge that was provided by an on-going project of (often hilarious) story telling.

At this event, we aim to present the project using audio-visual materials, which are the only lasting remnants of many long-dissolved cities, and the necessary hooks for the narrative. Additionally, we can exhibit objects and designs created by children (and others) that have the potential to endure the permanent dissolution process. Those designs will be offered to those interested in preserving them. The objects come with narratives of bold imagination, spanning from fanciful prison systems to luxurious swimming pools.

Thus the story telling arc of the project can go on in each household that will host a piece of morphoPoly.

All images: Simone Carneiro

book presentation

31 May 2023, 18:00

Playing with Ludwig

How do colours relate to memory? How does language relate to the world (and vice versa)? Can the invisible, such as thoughts, atmospheres or pain, be grasped through art?

On the occasion of the publication of the book ‘Playing with Ludwig’ by Nikolaus Gansterer and Klaus Speidel, two performative activations are taking place at AIL and Secession Wien.

How do colours relate to memory? How does language relate to the world (and vice versa)? Can the invisible, such as thoughts, atmospheres or pain, be grasped through art?

Artist Nikolaus Gansterer and philosopher Klaus Speidel discuss these and similar questions in the newly published book Playing with Ludwig, Figures of Thinking, published by Éditions Dilecta Paris. Taking Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as their starting point, Gansterer and Speidel have developed various works and formats, talking, drawing, assembling or doing all at the same time. Rather than just presenting results, the book documents the joint working process in numerous transcripts, which also reflect the genesis of the book itself. The work thus opens with a conversation between the authors and the book’s designer Grégoire Romanet, where the first graphic ideas are discussed. It ends with the dialogue ‘How to close a book’, which prepares the final series of images. Exhibition photographs and works from the first exhibition documenting the research project Figures de pensée at the Centre d’art contemporain Les Tanneries have been annotated, continued or completed in drawings. Different styles and methodologies, which unfold in the chapters of the book, correspond to different methods and themes in Wittgenstein’s work. Two additional precise essays by Eric Degoute, director of Les Tanneries, and Roger Malbert, curator and drawing expert, elaborate on the dynamic relationship between thinking and drawing and reading as a form of friendship. In the series ‘Philosophical Deviations’, Nikolaus Gansterer draws on various paragraphs of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, exploring various forms and procedures. Gansterer explains: ‘It’s important to say that none of these drawings are illustrations. I try to record how the text operates within me, how it influences my ways of thinking and feeling and then to take this movement as a springboard for drawing. It’s not so much about what is being said, but how it moves a reader.’

At the centre of the book stand the paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations themselves, to which the various works and conversations in the book refer, annotated in writing and drawing by Klaus Speidel. Memories of Colour, Just imagine a Rod and Now as One Thing, Now as Another are based on collections of hues, rods, and boxes (respectively). As Speidel, who obtained a PhD in philosophy from Sorbonne University, explains: ‘In our joint work, I am also interested in exploring the limits of philosophical abstraction. If we fail in our attempt at artistic concretization, this failure can in itself convey new insights in the sense of what Wittgenstein called ‚going against the frontiers of language’. I believe that art production enables philosophical insights.’ This interference between philosophy and art can be experienced concretely in the titular series Playing with Ludwig. In this performative experimental arrangement, two or more people sit opposite each other. Starting from a text, a new language game unfolds with drawings and objects.

On the occasion of the publication of the book Playing with Ludwig

by Nikolaus Gansterer and Klaus Speidel, two performative activations are planned:

1. Zerlesung und Tischgespräch / Dereading and table talk

Wed, 31 May 2023, 18:00

AIL, Otto Wagner-Postsparkasse, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna

Table Talk: Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel, Gerhild Steinbuch, Ruth Anderwald and Alexander Damianisch

2. Umzeichnung und Tischperformance / Undrawing and table game

Thu, 1 Jun 2023, 19:00:

Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna

Performance: Gansterer and Speidel invite you to the first Viennese Language Game Lab at the Secession, where they will work with drawings and objects based on a remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein, so that in the end a temporary installation is created according to the method of 'Playing with Ludwig'.

Info about the book:

Playing with Ludwig: Figures of Thinking / Jouer avec Ludwig: Figures de pensée,
Nikolaus Gansterer & Klaus Speidel
Publisher: Éditions Dilecta, Paris
Year 2022
Authors: Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel, Eric Degoute, Roger Malbert
Pages: 160
Size: 21 x 28 cm
Language: bilingual English / French
Graphic design: Gregoire Romanet
ISBN: 978-2-37372-165-2

research presentation

Opening: 20 Mar 2019, 17:00

Running: 20 Mar 2019 – 06 Mar 2019

Lighthouse

Light as the building block of the future museum by architect Andrea Graser in cooperation with artist Friedrich Biedermann

The essence of light is to define our perception of art and space.

Lighthouse is an installation that plays an active role in the discourse surrounding the ‘future museum’. Its light source is not static but dynamic and always changing. Artists, curators and architects develop a setting based on the preliminary findings from the current research into ‘light as the building block of the future museum’ by architect Andrea Graser.

Light is the key design element within the white cube.

The essence of light is to define our perception of art and space. An interplay of art, space and light. A 24-hour time lapse. Between light and darkness. Between ambient light and signal lights. Putting the connection of material space and substantial light to the test.

In cooperation with artist Friedrich Biedermann. The image shows part of his sculpture Lighthouse.

Photos: Studio Okular

research presentation

20 May 2015, 17:00

Angewandte Praxis with Roman Horak

Jüdische Sportfunktionäre im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit / Roman Horak will present his research project concerning jewish sports in Vienna during the interwar period

Research teams from the University of Applied Arts present current projects. Project-based research and artistic work will be presented as a practice in its own right at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Numerous works on Jewish Vienna in 1900 describe the attempts at Jewish self-definition and self- assertion against the backdrop of massive religious, cultural and, increasingly, racially based anti- semitism. Roman Horak will present his research project concerning jewish sports in Vienna during the interwar period.

research presentation

26 Apr 2016, 17:00

EMDL – European Mobile Dome Lab for Artistic Research

Angewandte Praxis with Martin Kusch and Ruth Schnell

emdl

Over a period of 20 months, the EMDL network will create a space for artistic cooperation and the exchange of technological expertise. The goal is to conceptualize and document the creation of an artistic model for ‘fulldome’ video display environments.

Four European and three Canadian institutions, renowned for their work at the intersection of art and science, will cooperate in the context of EMDL to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, methodologies, strategies and content. The program includes a series of workshops and residencies, presentations, performances and publications.

The first event in the form of a workshop at Satosphère, one of the most advanced venues for artistic fulldome projection, will take place at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal in February.

Project partners/institutions:

Department of Digital Arts/University of Applied Arts Vienna [Austria]; i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art and Technology) at Plymouth University [UK]; Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau/CYNETART Festival, Dresden [Germany]; NTLab, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens [Greece]; Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], Montreal [Canada]; kondition pluriel, Montreal [Canada]; Laboratoire des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Image, du Son et de la Scène [LANTISS] / Université Laval, Quebec [Canada]

video

Showcase: Anna Vasof on her project Non Stop Stop Motion

ZFF – Zentrum Fokus Forschung (University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Each month, AIL presents a selected artistic research project realised at the ZFF, the department for postgraduate research projects in the field of art and science. Anna Vasof’s “Non Stop Stop Motion”, an investigation of cinematic illusion in everyday life, is the third project in this series.

Zentrum Fokus Forschung
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About the project

Non Stop Stop Motion is a series of experiments that took place from 2014 till 2020 and investigate where we can find the essence of cinematic illusion when we look at everyday life and what happens when we use everyday situations, objects, actions and spaces as cinematographic mechanisms. The film follows the attempts and the failures of an artist to understand the mechanics of motion and cinematography and her desires to find new ways of storytelling.

Anna Vasof: Non Stop Stop Motion, Still | Image by ©Anna Vasof

Filmstill from Anna Vasof: Non Stop Stop Motion, © Anna Vasof

Anna, how do you transform understanding?

When I use the words understanding and transformation I start immediately feeling pretentious that's why I would like to take the opportunity to talk about research through artistic practice, an area where these words are circulating a lot. Great artists did always research, but what changes now, is that we start establishing educational and funding programs for research through art practice. Through this change, research through art practice can be an opportunity for artists to start communicating research questions, failures and processes that can have serious impact to many other fields and disciplines, but it can also be used as an excuse for excuses. In order to start transforming our narrow and problematic world we need less professional art researchers who jump from one topic to the other finding connections and more deeply curious people who are willing to risk their position and question systems.

Anna Vasof

is an architect and media artist. Born in 1985, she studied architecture at the University of Thessaly (2010) in Greece and Transmedia Art (2014) at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since 2004 her videos and short movies have been presented in several festivals, some of them winning distinctions. At 2020 she finished her Ph.D. thesis about a cinematographic technique that she developed with the title Non Stop Stop Motion. She is now working on designing and building mechanisms for producing critical and narrative videos, actions and installations.

annavasof.net

More from the online series Showcase ZFF

Ebru Kurbak The Museum of Lost Technology
Cordula Daus
Outer Woman

research presentation

18 Jan 2017, 17:00

Path Out

Angewandte Praxis with Georg Hobmeier in cooperation with the research cluster Passagen des Spiels, Game Lab Vienna

In 2014, young Syrian graphic designer Abdullah Karam and his brother left their hometown Hama to escape the killings and destruction of the ongoing civil war. Almost two years later, he is still waiting to be granted asylum by the respective Austrian authorities.

Together with Causa Creations game designers and cultural scholar Florian Bettel, he wants to tell his story in form of a game. Work on the game will be accompanied by a theoretical reflection on the representation of forced migration in the media and contemporary art.

conference

Opening: 22 Sep 2016, 12:00

Running: 22 Sep 2016 – 24 Sep 2016

InSEA Regional Conference on Art education

This conference discusses the role of art and design education in the current social climate

Hosted by International Society for Education trough Art (InSEA)

About InSEA

Art education has always faced different challenges due to political and social change. Today, we need to meet historical challenges that are the result of interrelated phenomena, such as the global financial crisis, massive migration and the technological infiltration of our daily lives.

This conference discusses the role of art and design education in the current social climate in the form of keynotes, presentation and workshop sessions and school and museum excursions.

Photo: Martina Lajczak

research presentation

29 Mar 2017, 19:00

Art Education and Coloniality

Angewandte Praxis with Carmen Mörsch and Nora Landkammer

Since 2011, the Department of Art and Communicative Practice at the Institute for Art Studies, Art Education and Art Mediation (Abteilung für Kunst und kommunikative Praxis am Institut für Kunstwissenschaften, Kunstpädagogik und Kunstvermittlung) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Institute for Art Education at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK and the teaching and research area Art - Mediation - Education at the Institute of Cultural Studies for Art and Visual Culture at the Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg have been cooperating in the field of Art Education in research and with a joint doctoral program.

In the context of the research cooperation and PhD program Art Education, two presentations will give insight into current research projects from the field of postcolonial art education:

Die Bildung der A_n_d_e_r_e_n durch Kunst - Carmen Mörsch

Kolonialität verlernen? Vermittlung in ethnologischen Museen - Nora Landkammer

research presentation

Opening: 17 Jan 2017, 18:00

Running: 17 Jan 2017 – 21 Jan 2017

Stitching Worlds

Angewandte Praxis with Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch

Stitching Worlds combines the artistic research areas of art, design, open culture, digital manufacturing, information technology and electronics with the scientific methods of textile technologies.

This project regards textile technologies as controversial means of digital manufacturing, specifically the electronic object, and is based on findings of previous artistic research: The knitted, weaved and embroidered patterns will be created according to the digital manufacturing code. Because the pattern can be saved, copied and shared, the textile might be reproduced in different temporal and spatial settings. Furthermore, the emergence of electronic textiles holds the potential of adapting the textile production process so that patterns might also fulfill an electronic function. Elaborate processes and materials can thus be used to manufacture electronic components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and entire electronic applications. Other than previous projects, which focused on technological and fashion-related aspects, Stitching Worlds will be at home in experimental production laboratories. This way, the focus will be on artistic practices which are not subservient to technological research but form the basis of a critique of the possible and far-reaching implications for cultural values and practices.

Ultimately, Stitching Worlds addresses the crucial question of whether ‘what’ we do should still be considered more important than ‘how’ we do it. Instead of constant invention and reaching ever more consumers, we should focus on new production procedures that involve new active stakeholders. What would happen if electronic objects were the result of textile production processes? What would be the difference between technologies if textile technologies became the new catalysts of the electronics industry?

research presentation

15 Jun 2016, 17:00

A Matter of Historicity

Angewandte Praxis with Kristina Pia Hofer and Astrid Poyer

The material substance of audiovisual artworks is the ideal starting point for an analysis of the current debate about the social and political agency of art. In art theory, film and media studies and feminist/queer theory, we can witness a 'material turn', which posits materiality – the material basis of objects – to be potentially agential and a creative force within political and cultural relations. Despite these developments, the current reflection on critical art is still dominated by structuralist and content-driven readings while formal, technological and spatial dimensions as well as haptic, sonic and affective aspects are being overlooked.

The project aims to analyze the technological and material basis of the production, presentation and reception of audiovisual artworks in order to look at the 'material turn' from a new critical, art and film theoretical perspective:

To what extent do material and technological aspects have an effect on our aesthetic experience? What is the concrete agency of materiality?

We explore the complex question of the potential politics involved in an aesthetically and technologically materialist research approach in the age of digital production and distribution.

Project by: Mag.a Dr.a Kristina Pia Hofer, MA (postdoc assistant), Astrid Poyer (student assistant)

research presentation

08 Jan 2015, 17:30

Growing as Building

Angewandte Praxis with Barbara Imhof

GrAB – Growing As Building translates nature’s growth patterns and dynamics into architectural design to create new living architectural structures.

The goal of GrAB is to develop new architectural concepts for structures that can grow. This project will be based on three main research areas: abstract adaptation of natural growth principles for architectural purposes, integration of biology into material systems, and biological organisms and concepts as interventions in existing architecture. This will also entail research into the mechanisms of genetically controlled and self-organizing growth in organisms and the difference between biological tissue and other materials. Research parameters will include the size, height and speed as well as key characteristics like the rigidity and flexibility of structures, which are equally important for living systems as for architecture.

workshop

26 Mar 2015, 15:00

Apertus AXIOM

The first open source professional cinema camera

Hollywood has discovered the AXIOM as the first chance to reclaim control of the tools and therefore cinematography.

The goal of the global community-driven apertus project is to create a variety of powerful, affordable, free (in terms of liberty), sustainable and open digital cinema tools that we as filmmakers love to use. The AXIOM product line is the result of this ongoing endeavor and after successful crowd funding and receiving an EU Innovation grant is well on track to redefine the industry well beyond the DIY garages and hobbyist labs the project started in.