Presentations


Andrea Theis: 'How to build a raft in order to bridge a gulf'

Based on two exemplary art projects I want to discuss the aesthetic strategies, which I apply in my artistic practice, and how they function as methods for gathering data and gaining knowledge.

This preferred strand of my practice is the intervention into everyday cultures in the public space through context-specific, process-based, participatory interactions with the random public at a certain site. The setting and physical appearance of the work I create results from the context. The scenario tries to blend into reality. While the intervention's aesthetic form can be different, they have a basic notion in common: Learning about life in the street.

Being part of the process myself I observe the reactions to and interactions with the aesthetic scenario I offer. I observe people's behaviour and reflect my own. The data gathered basically consists of visual documentation such as photographs and video and of written notes describing my observations of the events, the encounters, the content of the conversations and my experience made.

How could this artistic practice inform qualitative research in social sciences? In order to bridge the gulf between art and anthropology I focus on the analysis of the artistic methods and aesthetic elements, which I apply in specific works. I had realized in the course of the my research that, in order to be capable to make a good case for the potential of artistic practice in relation to social sciences or knowledge production in general in the cross-disciplinary discourses, it is crucial to strengthen the artist's self assurance, to understand one's strategies of approaching and transforming a burning question, the artistic means and methods applied. How does the emerging artistic process work? What is the rigour of such artistic practice? And how can the knowledge gained be qualified?

The format will be a 20-minute talk supported by projected visuals and followed by a brief 10-minute discussion.

Bio: Andrea Theis is an artist, photographer and lecturer based in Belfast, Cologne and Berlin. Her artistic practice is primarily concerned with context-specific interventions into everyday cultures in public spaces combining the elements of process, platform and participation. Using dialogical and interactive strategies as well as reality-like but irritating scenarios she investigates how people tackle unexpected situations appearing in their routines. Since 1993 her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions and realised as free, self-initiated projects.
Andrea is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD research in Art with the University of Ulster, Belfast. From 2007-2009, she was assistant professor to the MFA-Programme "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies" at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, where she had graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2006 (including a guest semester at the University of Art and Design Helsinki). In 1994 she completed a Diploma in Photographic Engineering, specializing in photography, optics, film and video at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne.

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Karen Vermeren: Fault lines: Creating a new visual language for the geological landscape

I would like to give a presentation about my starting Phd research (2011-15), in which I want to link the exhibition space to the geological landscape, in particular, to fault lines. I want to interpret and visualise the geological landscape in in situ installations, starting from a two-dimensional, artistic framework. I will study the movements of tectonic plates, moving towards each other and moving away from each other; respectively, the San Andreas fault in Northwest America, and Þingvellir in Iceland. This research will be executed within the context of the research group Polar Ecology, Limnology and Geomorphology at the University of Antwerp, led by my tutor, Prof. Louis Beyens (fieldwork, contextual research) and the research group Image & Drawing at the St Lucas University College of Art & Design in Antwerp. The landscapes visited will be studied, photographed and sketched, in order to construct an archive of geological material. By confronting art and geology, I will add new methods to the tradition of landscape art by: (1) the fusion of geological processes within the exhibition space, and (2) experimenting with new materials (tape, plastic, medium). I am particularly interested in the way in which the geological landscape can fuse with the painterly image. Geological processes that take place in solid rock over a long period of time hence incorporate an instance of 'frozen time'. Likewise, a painting can be the result of a process of rigidity. In my artistic research I try to counteract this fossilisation by working with temporary interventions. My personal working method is strongly influenced by time and space, and therefore very apt to interact with the landscape. I create temporary interventions that simultaneously visualise a material process. I play on the existing structure of the exhibition space, which works as a palimpsest of the geological landscape.

Bio: KAREN VERMEREN (Ghent, *1982) studied Fine Arts, Painting, at the St Lucas University College of Art & Design in Ghent and obtained a Master-after-Master of Research in Art & Design at the St Lucas University College of Art & Design in Antwerp. Her work has been shown in Belgium and abroad. In in situ installations she tries to fuse the exhibition space with the portrayed geological landscape, challenging classical notions of two-dimensional representation. Since 2009 she is linked to the St Lucas University College of Art & Design as researcher and teacher in drawing.

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Laura Kuch: The Seed of Romanticism: In Search of the Blue Flower Exploring the German romantics' ideas and their relevance for conceptual artistic creation and the investigation of artistic creation in modern and contemporary fine art - An artist's (re)search

Romanticism and its role in modern and contemporary has attracted greater interest in the field of art theory in the recent past. However, within this discourse, Romanticism is still reduced to motifs of emotionality and melancholy, ignoring the complex analytical as well as poetical, praxis- as well as theory-orientated ideas developed in particular by the early German romantic writers, in which I not only see parallels to conceptual artistic creation in fine art, but also a great potential to explore new ways of critical approaches today. Further the ideological heritage of Romanticism in fine art has surprisingly not yet been investigated from an artist's perspective, an undertaking that seems essential dealing with a movement, whose founders being both philosophers and poets at the same time, demanded that art criticism should only be performed by people who would have "the ability to create the product they criticize themselves" (Novalis, Fragmente, 1798) - and I believe it's high time to catch up on that.

In the first part of my presentation I will discuss the Jena Romantic's notions of Universalpoesie, Entgrenzung (de-limitation) and Schweben (hovering) and their potential as approach not only for the poet but for the (conceptual) artist struggling with the problem of form versus idea, finite versus infinite, praxis versus theory. For another I will raise the question if the romantic model could not even provide a substantial alternative to a common tendency within the art discourse in general which is still characterized by a distinction between theory and practice.
In the second part of my talk will focus on my research in artistic praxis. I will introduce artistic working methods, originally developed by the Jena Romantics for literature, such as the act of poeticizing/romanticizing and romantic irony, and will demonstrate how those can be applied to conceptual fine art. Following the romantic tradition of theory and practice informing each other and existing equally alongside, the last third of my talk will consists of what can be described as a lyrical presentation of my own conceptual art works. This means I will comment on the slides documenting my objects and installations with the means of poetical language. This will provide further information and reflections on the art works and at the same time pick up on the theoretical subjects discussed before while serving to support my theoretical hypotheses in a practical way.

Bio: Conceptual artist, lives and works in London. Born 1980 in Germany. 2008 graduation as Meisterschülerin of Prof. Tobias Rehberger, Academy of Fine Art Städelschule Frankfurt. Since 2010 practice-related PhD programme at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Alumni of the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD and the German National Academic Foundation. Exhibiting since 2002 in various solo and group shows, amongst others Galerie Lorenz Frankfurt; Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden; Federal Exhibition Hall of Germany, Bonn; the 2nd Moscow Biennale; the 4th Gothenburg Biennale; Centre of Contemporary Art Prishtina; Kunsthalle Luzern and Arts Depot London.

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Tereza Stehlikova: Touch, Memory and the Moving Image

Summary: My practice based research is concerned with identifying, in theory and practice, approaches to film making which bridge the spatial and temporal distance between cinematic experience and the lived, embodied experience stored in the viewer's memories. Specifically, I am exploring how tactility might connect filmmaker and viewer, memory and film, while paying particular attention to the role of scale and vantage point.

Key words: touch, memory, haptic image, moving image, scale, vantage point, embodiment

After working with Softimage 3D animation software for some years, I found the absence of physical contact with the computer generated object frustrating, as a filmmaker. The inaccessibility of cg imagery to touch also leads to an absence of embodied memory or history in a cg object, because touch (human or other) literally helps to imprint time. This absence of embodied memory is further passed onto the viewer. To capture and communicate embodied memory through touch while using the expressive vocabulary of film has become an intellectual and practical challenge for me.

Because of its subject matter, my research cannot and should not be confined to a purely intellectual enquiry. This has, from the very beginning, been a great part of my fascination with this area of research. I realized that in order to expand my cinematic vocabulary and further my artistic practice, I needed to access and capture embodied, tacit knowledge.

Regarding myself as primarily an artist and a filmmaker I was initially concerned whether framing my work within a PhD structure may affect its outcome negatively, making my enquiry more self-conscious. I found however that something quite different happened. The research aspect of my investigation has led to gaining of a certain detachment, which now allows me to see all aspects of my work, both in terms of its successes and failures, as part of a complex long term process. My practical investigation (workshops and filmmaking) helped me greatly in identifying the more particular, rather than general issues within the theoritical field of my interest. It is this possibility for more precise discrimination in regards to practical relevance within a given field of investigation, which I see as a vital contribution to the more theoretical aspects of my research.

How I set out to do this can be divided into four sections:

1. Personally tailored methodology, which I developed as a result of the very particular area of concern as well as my own artistic background. This includes my exploration of the tactile and its relationship to visual imagery, sound, and memory through tactile drawing workshops, encouraging participants to explore connections between memory, scale and visual/tactile modes of perception. I have elaborated these based on visits to controlled environments eg. the Hamburg exhibition Dialogue in the Dark as well as through a dialogue with artists and filmmakers concerned with touch (Jan Svankmajer, Rosalyn Driscoll, Bonnie Kemske); neurologists (Mark Lythgoe, Beau Lotto) and material scientists (Mark Miodownik). Additionally, through Tactile Arts peer group Art in Touch, which I set up in 2009, I encourage dialogues across disciplines, in a form of screenings, group exhibitions and seminars.

2. Imaginative reflection on and the incorporation of the results of these experiments (this includes the audience's feedback as well as my own personal observations) into both my research and my creative work, all of which form the basis of the artistic knowing in question. I am deeply interested in the translation of the outcomes and feedback between/from different media, such as writing, drawing, filmmaking, 3D objects, so that the findings help to cross-fertilize the diverse strands of my research. Further I am looking at various methods of recording as well as classifying the heterogeneous material gathered as a result of these experiments.

3. Original way of using these processes and findings in my own artistic practice, so that they enrich my vocabulary of a filmmaker, while also finding best ways of presenting the results of my research, giving them space as both artistic works in their own right, while also an expression of a particular area of research I am concerned with. I am therefore also exploring concepts such as multi-media installations, group collaborations, one off events (i.e. "salons") , various workshops exploring touch and memory, screenings and conversations, as well as publications (journals, such as Artesian etc).

4. Theoretical investigation / written response both inform and expand my practical research, helping to contextulise my own artistic practice by grounding it in the wider academic field, while allowing for a more rigorous analysis of my research in the form of a written thesis.

Bio: Tereza Stehlíková works as an artist, filmmaker, writer and associate lecturer in animation. She is currently researching towards a PhD (both in theory and practice) at the Royal College of Art, in the tactile language of the moving image.
Tereza teaches animation theory and practice at the Universities of Westminster and Bedfordshire. Previous positions have included a visiting lectureship at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design.
Tereza's solo exhibition, Interior: Constellations, for Kingsgate Gallery, London, featuring new film, photography and assemblages, showed in September and October 2010. Her solo photographic exhibition, Sensory Strata, was shown at Pages of Hackney during November 2010. Her a group exhibition, Just Under the Surface, took place at the Crypt Gallery, London (2011), as the first event organized by Art in Touch, the tactile arts network she founded in 2009.

In 2007 Tereza co-founded the publishers Go Together Press and co-edits Artesian, its house journal of committed creativity in art and life. Her illustrated book for children, The Story of Violet, is also published by Go Together Press. This was the Czech representative of a pan-European Children's Literature event at London's Southbank Centre and in Liverpool in November 2010.
Her films, which have been shown in various international film festivals, include Melusine, a collaboration with the award-winning filmmaker Grant Gee and The Perpetual, with an original score by the acclaimed sound artist Scanner. Fingertips, an extended collaboration with experimental musician Philip Jeck, resulted in a projection for live performance that toured internationally.

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Jonas Zipf: Stadttheater als soziale Skulptur

Bisher gibt es wenige querschnittsbildende Arbeiten im Feld der Site-Specific-Art. Und doch gewinnt dieses Feld künstlerischer Betätigung zunehmend an Bedeutung. Kann urbanistische Kunst den sozialen und öffentlichen Raum tatsächlich verändern? Was macht eine gelungen Urbane Intervention aus? Wo liegt eigentlich der Unterschied zwischen interventionistischer und Site-Spefic-Art? Und: gibt es einen Ort, an dem sich urbane Kunst sammeln und bündeln lässt?

Unter dem Titel "Stadttheater als soziale Skulptur" möchte ich das interventionistische und Site-Specific-Programm der neuen künstlerischen Leitung am Theaterhaus Jena vorstellen und als potentielles Best-Practise-Beispiel für eine urbanistische künstlerische Praxis theoretisch kontextualisieren. Wie kann das Theater einer Stadt zu seiner zentralen sozio-kulturellen Plattform werden? Bis wann kümmert es sich um das eigene Kerngeschäft, erfüllt seinen kulturellen Auftrag? Ab wann ist es Abbild der kreativen künstlerischen Kräfte einer Stadt?

Bio: Jonas Zipf, geborener Odenwälder, studierte Psychologie an der FU Berlin sowie Sprech- und Musiktheaterregie an der Bayerischen Theaterakademie in München. Seit 2007 nutzt er mit seiner freien Theatergruppe "O-Team" (www-team-odradek.de) leerstehende Räume zwischen. In der Zwischenzeit realisierte er Projekte in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Staatstheater Stuttgart, Alfortville Paris oder dem GT Luxembourg (u.a.). Momentan promoviert er an der HfbK Hamburg zu urbanistischer Kunst. Nach einem Engagement am Thalia Theater Hamburg wird er mit Beginn der Spielzeit 2011/2012 leitender Dramaturg am Theaterhaus Jena.

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Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel: Stop and Go. Nodes of transformation and transition

In the presentation we will focus on our ongoing research-project "Stop and Go" and give an outlook on our next steps to be accomplished. At the same time we will refer to the project "EXIT St. Pankraz" we realised as an on-site installation in 2007.

For our ongoing project "Stop and Go" the main focus of the research lies on the large number of informal stopover points along the transnational routes of the so-called PAN-European corridors in East Europe, which are successively being replaced by formal ones. These terminals and hubs form liminal places of mobility that are controlled to differing extents and in which actors who represent different forms of mobility, modes and rhythms encounter one another. Via the routes and biographies of these actors, it is possible to perceive both the far-reaching, superordinate, political and socio-economic transformations and techniques of government and the changing working and everyday life of the individual protagonists, who develop routines and rituals for establishing themselves in fragmentary, transient communities within their multi-local existence.
The goal of the project is to plot, on the basis of empirical research at such intersections, a networked "cartography" of the routes, individual experiences and alternative forms of knowledge of the mobile actors, and to then transform these into a future-oriented meta-network of mobility flows to which fictional protagonists (and locations) are added, who not only imbue the polyrhythmic ensembles of the network intersections with everyday compulsions but also with utopian ideas. Effectively a road map is created, or a manual for the communities of tricksters on route, which is however to a large extent fictionalized so that their knowledge is not made accessible to the controlling organs and used to regulate the informal networks. The media available for the translation of this road map are large-scale models of the network of routes and installations, as well as a website and a book.
The periodic research trips will be made using a transporter van and foldable displays will be stored in the loading space along with artistic artefacts taken from comics and maps, instant interventions, each of which serve as a trigger for the episodic in-situ interviews. However, the van also serves as a mobile laboratory, studio and archive, in order to collect the forms of knowledge at the terminals, to exhibit them in a third location and above all to bring them back to a stationary laboratory and project space in Vienna. In this space in the direct vicinity of the customs office and the Euroline bus terminal in Erdberg in Vienna, the reference collection for the project methodology and theory will be continuously supplemented, artistic techniques for implementation and display will be tested and evaluated in workshops and the meta-network, which is constantly expanding and becoming more consolidated, will be made accessible to the public as a walk-in installation.

The project "EXIT St. Pankraz" (realised in the framework of the Festival of Regions - Exits and Dead Ends 2007) places a motorway services area at one of the most important European trans-national and trans-alpine north-south connections in the centre of the investigation as an intersection of trans-national migration routes. Starting with local actors driving by and using ties established with local visitors and employees, a network of the traces of 12 actors was set up and translated into an abstracted path network in the form of a walk-through sound installation in the motorway services area car park. In this way, the installation generated its own public and in a sense itself from the users of the motorway services area. The authors' own mobility was limited during the research and implementation to selective local visits lasting several days.

Online-documentation of the project:
http://hieslmair.him.at/2007/12/07/exit-st-pankraz/

Bio: Michael Hieslmair and Michael Zinganel live and work as artists, curators and writers in Vienna. Since 2005 they collaborate in research and art projects about the impact of transnational mobility, migration and tourism on cultural change in urban, suburban and rural agglomerations. Both graduated at the faculty of Architecture at Graz University. Michael Zinganel holds a PhD in contemporary history.
Joint workshops, conferences, exhibitions and contributions to exhibitions on transnational mobility, masstourism and migration, among others for Shrinking Cities II, GfzK Leipzig (2005); Exits and Dead Ends, Festival of the Regions (2007); Artist on Tour, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2008); Crossing Munich, Places, Representations and Debates on Migration in Munich, LMU and City Hall Gallery Munich, Open Cities, 4.th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, NAI Rotterdam (2009); B1|A40 The Beauty of the Grand Road, European Capital of Culture (2010); Rotor, Styrian Autumn Festival Graz (2010); Camillo & Peppone, Changeover, Festival of the Regions (2011)

http://hieslmair.him.at/
http://zinganel.mur.at/

Documentation of joint works and projects for download:
http://hieslmair.him.at/download/

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Elke Mark: EINGESCHRIEBEN - Mediale Ablagerungen?
Welche Spuren hinterlässt der Umgang mit digitalen Medien im Individuum?

Im Mittelpunkt der Präsentation steht die Untersuchung der Wechselwirkung von Haptik und Taktilität mit digitalen Medien. Der Bezug zum menschlichen Körper, als "haptischen Leib" verstanden, ist dabei Ausgangspunkt der Forschungsarbeit.

Die Grenze der visualisierten Auswertung von Datenmassen ist heute Anlass, die taktil-haptische Wahrnehmung gegenüber der visuell-akustischen aufzuwerten. Touchscreens und die Einführung der Tablet-Computer lassen eine Tendenz zu vermehrter leiblicher Erfahrung im Umgang mit digitalen Medien vermuten. Im Kontrast zur Dematerialisierung, Virtualisierung und Entkörperung in digitalen Datenstrukturen zeugen Spuren von einer Anwesenheit und nehmen einen Rückbezug zur "dinglichen Welt" vor.

Das praktische Projekt "Der Händedruck" (Arbeitstitel) greift zunächst das existentielle Bedürfnis des menschlichen Wesens nach taktiler Kontaktaufnahme auf und ist im Spannungsfeld von Traditionen und sich wandelnder Anpassung verortet. Die Hand als Kommunikations- und Handlungsorgan bildet die Grundlage des künstlerischen Arbeitens. Essentiell ist dabei die haptische Kontaktaufnahme, sind doch beim Händedruck beide Interaktionspartner Berührende und Berührte in einem.
Darüberhinaus steht das (handschriftliche) Schreiben im Mittelpunkt der Unter-suchungen. Auf Grundlage aktueller, weltweiter Diskussionen in den Neurowissenschaften zu den Auswirkungen zunehmender Digitalisierung auf die Lese- und Schreibschaltkreise des Gehirns wird die Rolle und das Potenzial haptischer Wahrnehmung in den Verarbeitungs- und Verinnerlichungsprozessen thematisiert.

Mittels Ansätzen der Visuellen Anthropologie und Methoden der Performance Art soll mit Blick auf Leiblichkeit und Vergegenwärtigung Spuren von Taktilität und den Einflüssen der Medien auf die Nutzer nachgegangen und der Versuch der Entwicklung einer leibliche und digitale Taktilität vergleichenden künstlerischen "Praxis-Sprache" unternommen werden. Mit Interviews und Videoaufzeichnungen beginnend entsteht ein schillerndes interdisziplinäres Gewebe, im Versuch den prozesshaften Abläufen jenseits visueller Repräsentationen "habhaft" zu werden. Zur Abschlusspräsentation werden außerdem Positionen anderer Künstlerinnen einbezogen sowie eine begleitende Veranstaltungsreihe erarbeitet.

Performative Präsentation meines Vorhabens.

Bio:
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Anke Eckardt: SCHALLBEAM ))) Zur Wahrnehmung extrem gerichteter Beschallung

Hörst du was? Ich höre was. Und du? So gut wie nichts. Das kann nicht sein! Ob zur Überbringung von Werbebotschaften in hochpreisigen Verkaufsflächen, als nicht-tödliche Waffe beim Militär, im Sinne eines fortschrittlichen Audio-Guides in renommierten Museen oder zukünftig evtl. auch in Mensch-Maschine-Interfaces wie Bankautomaten und Flughafen-Self-Check-Ins eingebaut - extrem gerichtet eingesetzter Schall, vergleichbar mit dem Lichtstrahl einer Taschenlampe, soll den einzelnen Menschen gezielt beschallen. Im besten Falle so, dass Menschen im selben Raum, welche sich außerhalb der Abstrahlrichtung aufhalten, nichts davon hören. Dieser Ansatz steht im Widerspruch zum natürlichen, räumlichen Ausbreitungsverhalten von Schall. Akustische Räume werden kreiert, die nicht mehr mit dem architektonischen Raum, in dem die Schallereignisse erklingen, übereinstimmen. Im Abgleich mit der alltäglichen Erfahrungswelt, in der das Hören sehr stark der Orientierung dient, treten beim Erleben extrem gerichteter Beschallung Irritationen auf. Das gelernte Wissen, abgespeichert im Gedächtnis des menschlichen Körpers, wird in Bezug auf das Hören in Frage gestellt. Immer noch bedarf es teurer technologischer Lösungen wie z.B. ultraschallbasierter Lautsprecher sowie der Verhinderung von Reflexionen im Raum, um ohne den Einsatz von Kopfhörern die gezielte, individuelle Beschallung zu ermöglichen. Welches Potential eröffnet sich durch diese Technologie für die Kunst? Ist es möglich, Klang im wörtlichen Sinne "skuptural" zu formen? Ich bin Künstlerin. Es handelt sich demnach um eine künstlerische Arbeit, die aber einer theoretischen Basis wie auch des engen Kontaktes und Austausches mit Forschungskollegen und ihren Forschungsansätzen in der Technologie, der Natur- und der Kulturwissenschaft bedarf.

Ziele des Forschungsvorhabens: im wörtlichen Sinne 'skulptural' mit Klang im Rahmen der Klang- und Medienkunst zu arbeiten / anhand von extrem gerichteten Lautsprechern in Mehrkanal-Setups, die Bewusstmachung und kritische, theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit den kulturellen Bedeutungen dieser Technologie in Bezug auf ihren Einsatz im öffentlichen Raum

Methoden: künstlerisch-empirische Forschung, theoretische Forschung aus der Perspektive der Historischen Anthropologie der Klänge im weiter gefassten Umfeld der SoundStudies

Zu erwartende Ergebnisse des Forschungsvorhabens: multisensorische Skulpturen und Installationen, Publikationen/Vorträge zum Thema

Bio: Anke Eckardt ist Klang- und Medienkünstlerin. Sie wurde 1976 in Dresden geboren, seit 1994 lebt und arbeitet sie in Berlin. Ihre Arbeit umfasst multisensorische Skulpturen und Installationen, präsentiert im In- und Ausland, wie auch einen theoretischen Diskurs zur Phänomenologie von Klängen. Sie absolvierte ihren Master of Arts in Soundstudies an der Universität der Künste Berlin, erhielt das Aufstiegsstipendium vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung 2009-2010 und außerdem das Artist-in-Residence-Stipendium der Kunstministerin des Freistaates Sachsen 2011, vergeben in Kooperation mit der Landeshauptstadt Dresden und ko-finanziert mit Mitteln der Europäischen Union aus dem Programm Kultur (2007-2013) im Rahmen des europäischen Vernetzungs- und Kooperationsprojektes "E.C.A.S. - Networking Tomorrow's Art For An Unknown Future". Desweiteren wurde sie zur Stipendiatin der Graduiertenschule für die Künste und die Wissenschaften der UdK Berlin 2011-2013 ernannt. Vor ihrem Studium arbeitete Anke Eckardt von 1999-2008 als professionelle Tontechnikerin.

www.ankeeckardt.org

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Johanna Bruckner: Curating as Artistic Practice: Performative research and the articulation of protest

My practice examines how knowledge can be 'taught' as an exhibition format itself. It epistemologically addresses the museum's presentation of arts, which has been challenged through artistic research. Through a performative panel I investigate a setting of an artistic knowledge exposition that practically reflects what it epistemologically discusses: how do institutions respond to knowledge dissemination in practice? I am interested in the ways museums 'transfer' knowledge through expanded public programs. A panel represents a significant adjunct to current exhibition formats - a scenario that 'educates'. But, what is a panel trying to teach us?

A performative panel as an artistic research project presents a fictional discussion scenario of how different agents performing significant positions such as curator, educator, public institution, and audience respond to artistic knowledge dissemination and presentation in exhibitions. These conversational pieces rendered as texts in the form of film scripts reflect how I am conditioned to respond to the creative formats of practicing research and how I am part of these institutional structures, which are made visible through the panel texts that are written by me. This performative discussion will specifically investigate the exhibition "based in Berlin" in the context of the articulation of protest. Forms of oppression and resistance in contemporary art practice lead to questions of where curating places political art with regard to its Vermittelbarkeit. The exhibition's forms of adjunct resistance have shown how contemporary art itself materializes a battleground of socio-political capital forms that struggle for utterance and yet challenge the concept of the exhibition as a spatial and temporary metaphor towards one of deconstructive aesthetics of criticality.

In a broader context, my project will address the way the museum 'functions' in the context of a research-based inquiry, which reflects a conditioned setting that tells about how we have come to educate it in turn; thus we may challenge the museums discursive 'appearance', its concept, its representation and its function through artistic knowledge exhibitions that question the museum's epistemology of educating through the way we practice and have come to practice a museum - or, practically approach a museum.

Bio: Johanna Bruckner is artist and artistic researcher. She was born in 1984 in Vienna and graduated from the University of Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Sabeth Buchmann) in 2009. She has just been accepted to post-graduate studies in fine art practice at the Royal Art Institute Stockholm. She conceptualizes and curates panel programs, as recently for example at the LOOP Fair Barcelona 2011. She has just been shortlisted for the ISIS Arts Fellowship, has been artist in residence at Flux Factory, New York City, 2011, and is currently writing text for the Berlin Biennale. Her work has been shown in international festivals such as Videoformes, Videoakt and LOOP. Bruckner recently founded the platform for artistic research, and is curator for public programming and moving images at frida martha tannhäuser, Berlin. Galerie Suvi Lehtinen, Berlin presents her work.
What is the impact of knowledge when it is not bounded by discipline but begins freely to move across different creative and institutional modes? This question has been addressed in a recent talk by Irit Rogoff I attended at the James Gallery in New York City this spring. It encourages me to ask what signifies contemporary art as current art within a research based framed context of understanding art practice. How can we respond to current art knowledge discourses through art practice and make these subject of work and practice-led research platform itself? How has the art knowledge industry itself become object of critical art research and how is it being "consumed"? I am interested in the underlining settings of knowledge production and functions and how they circulate within the institutional setting. How do I inhabit these structures in my work?

My presentation will give a reflective statement about my artistic research and why it has become important for my practice as briefly addressed above. I will present my research outline via power point presentation in German or English. I will start by shortly introducing myself (2 minutes), continue by reflecting on my motivation of practicing artistic research and the methodologies I have developed through my research on the panel, and why I currently believe they have become significant to focus on (7 minutes). I will continue my presentation by reflecting on my current research project of the panel installation, outlining basic research questions, how I approach these, (8 minutes) and conclude by contextualizing my practice (2 minutes). My presentation lasts 20 minutes, and includes images through the power point presentation.

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Sheila Pontis: Mapping Complex Information (MapCI): Model of analysis for developing diagrammatic maps

The main topic of this presentation is an information design practice-led PhD investigation aimed to develop a model of analysis for enhancing the design thinking in projects dealing with visualisation and communication of complex information, such as infographies. The model of analysis is referred as MapCI: Mapping Complex Information. Its objectives are to illuminate the stage of information organisation in the design thinking of experienced designers, and, consequently, improve their professional practice when creating complex information design print-based projects.
The three main stages of the development of MapCI-analysis, development, evaluation-will be discussed, presenting the case study analysis and complementary methods used to gather information. Essentially, the methodology is based on a case study, the London Underground Diagrammatic Map, to learn about the information architecture (Costa and Moles, 1992; Baer, 2008) of complex diagrams. Action research strategies are also used for data collection, evaluation and refinement of MapCI.
Workshops are exclusively introduced as the core action research strategy for gathering the specific information needed for the early stages of the defining process and for the evaluation of MapCI in the final stages. The three series of workshops designed from 2008 and 2010, which took place in Basel, Barcelona and London respectively, will be explained. Finally, the final evaluation method, which takes place during the forthcoming October 2011, will be outlined.

A combination of qualitative visual methods adapted for an information design study-content analysis (Rose, 2007), visual disaggregation (Engelhardt, 2002) and compositional interpretation (Rose, 2007; Tufte, 1998)-together with a set of methods specifically designed for the purposes of the thesis- analytical template and effectiveness boxes-are also introduced as a way to examine, explore and analyse both the written and the visual outcomes collected from workshops.

Finally, MapCI is presented as a deck of cards, with each card presenting one guideline. The ultimate version of MapCI format presented here may be not definitive, as guidelines may change after the very last forthcoming evaluation. However, a first set of conditions and limitations of MapCI developed as a result of the evaluation workshops will be introduced.

Key areas for further work following this thesis will be discussed, including further evaluations of MapCI and its development for a broader media.

Bio: Sheila Pontis completed her BA(Hons) in Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Then she moved to Barcelona to complete an MRes in Editorial Techniques and a DEA (Research Diploma) both at the University of Barcelona. In 2008 she moved to London where she is completing her Ph.D. in Information Design at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She has over 7 years of academic and research experience, including lectures at the University of the Arts London (LCC, CCA), University of Barcelona, Elisava School of Design (Spain) and Terrassa Escola Municipal d'Art (Spain), and teaching at the University of Buenos Aires. She has also given national (LCC, University of Leeds) and international (Eikones, Basel; Lisbon, Portugal; Amsterdam; Madrid, Santiago de Chile) conferences about Information Design, Diagrams, Design Research, Graphic Design and Visual Methods. As professional information designer she is specialised in information design problems, research strategy and consultancy. Her interests are projects which improve the communication of complex information, and working with multidisciplinary teams.
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