Barbara Bolt
Keynote speaker
Professor in Contemporary Arts and Culture, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, research theorist and visual artist
Abstract
Mobilising the Performative Power of Art through Artistic Research.
In an essay ‘A Manifesto for Performative Research’ (2006), Australian academic Brad Haseman proposes a performative paradigm for the creative arts, distinguishing it from qualitative and quantitative models that constitute the dominant research paradigms operating in academia. He proposes that in artistic research there is a double articulation that occurs in practice that brings into being that which it names. For him, artistic research is performative. (Haseman 2006, 2007).
A performative paradigm potentially offers the creative arts a radical new vision and a way of distinguishing artistic research from the dominant models of research and knowledge. However, before we make claims for a performative model for the creative arts, there are a number of urgent tasks that need to be addressed. In the uncritical application of the notion of performativity across the creative arts, there has emerged a tendency to call any art production “performative”, whether it is a theatre production, a performance, a sculpture, a film or a painting. But can we make the assumption that just because a practice brings into being what it names that it is performative or that it has value as a research discipline that can make a contribution to new knowledge and new forms of knowing? This paper makes an important distinction between the artwork and the work of art in order to help in this task. Here the artwork can be defined as the production, that is, the work that is exhibited/presented or performed. The work of art, on the other hand, is the work that art does.
In this schema, the “work” that art does, is not just the object – painting, sculpture, drawing, print and so on – that we have come to call an artwork. The work of art is the “movement” in understandings, thought, material practices, cultural practices, aesthetic effects, affect and discourse that occurs through the vehicle of the artwork. Through reference to artistic research case studies from across artforms, the task of this paper is to set out the stakes of a performative paradigm of research and demonstrate how such a distinction enables us to tease out the research innovation and new knowledge that emerges in and through the artwork and hence assess the value of a performative paradigm for research.
References
Haseman, B. (2006). A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, theme issue Practice-led Research, 118, 98-106.
Haseman, B. (2007). Tightrope Writing: Creative Writing Programs in the RQF Environment. Text online journal, http://www.textjournal.com.au/april07/haseman.htm.
CV
Barbara Bolt is a Professor in Contemporary Arts and Culture at the Victorian College of Art at the University of Melbourne. She is a practising artist and art theorist with special interests in ethics and artistic research. Her practice investigates the dialogue between the digital and analogue painting through the lens of New Materialisms.
Publications (PDF)
Max Bruinsma
Guest Closing Panel
Design critic, Editor, Educator
CV
Max Bruinsma studied art-, architecture- and design history in Groningen and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As an independent design critic, editor, curator, consultant and teacher, he led several design magazines and published extensively in art- and design journals worldwide. Bruinsma taught at numerous design schools in the Netherlands and abroad, currently teaching at Camera Arts, Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he is a research consultant at the Willem de Kooning Academy, currently co-creating a new cross-disciplinary PhD program in collaboration with RASL (the Rotterdam Arts & Sciences Lab, a joint venture with Erasmus University and CODARTS). In 2005, Max Bruinsma received the Pierre Bayle Prize for Design Criticism. His latest book project is ‘Design for the Good Society,’ 2015. Max Bruinsma’s shortest definition of the design profession is: “Designers are cultural catalysts.”
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Christian Gropper
Guest Closing Panel
Filmmaker, Middle-East journalist & educator for ARD, Documentary filmmaker for arte
CV
Christian Gropper (1962) is an independent film director, documentary maker and journalist focussing on the Middle East. With Gropperfilm, established in 1997, he produced over fifty television documentaries on (geo-)politics, social and cultural topics. For his work, he has been nominated for Grimme Preis in 2001, received the BVK Journalist Award in 2011 and the Television Prize of the Hessischer Rundfunk in 2016. Gropper has studied philosophy and history at the TU Darmstadt and continued his studies in film-design at the Darmstadt University of Applied Science, where he has graduated in 1993. Since then, he worked as a freelance producer and director for advertising agencies and television broadcasters. From 2005 – 2011 Christian Gropper has lectured at the faculty of film- and media studies at the TU Darmstadt and since 2018 he is a visiting lecturer and coach at the Lucerne School of Art and Design.
Filmography (PDF)
Brad Haylock
Keynote speaker
Associate Professor, School of Design, College of Design and Social Context RMIT University
Abstract
Communities of critical friends: Fostering peer learning in the design PhD through practice research symposia.
Although it hasn’t always gone by this name, the Practice Research Symposium (PRS) has been at the heart of RMIT University’s higher degree research training in practice research for three decades. Instituted by Emeritus Professor Leon van Schaik, the PRS began as a locus of architectural research, but for many years now it has also been central to practice research training in art and other design disciplines at RMIT. The PRS is a platform for peer learning and for the dissemination of research insights at all stages of candidates’ research journeys, not least at the moment of examination. This keynote address offers an overview of the PRS model and appraises its significance from the standpoint of Etienne Wenger’s concept of ‘communities of practice’. What are the benefits to researchers when research is regularly made public in an intellectual climate that balances collegiality and criticality? This address will be of relevance to supervisors and candidates in use-inspired and practice research, and will be of particular interest to coordinators of research programs in these domains.
CV
Brad Haylock is a designer, publisher and academic. He is an Associate Professor of Design in the School of Design at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, where he is Co-ordinator of Higher Degrees by Research. His own research interests span typography, publishing studies, human-centred design and the sociology of critique, and he is founder of Surpllus, an independent, para-academic imprint focusing on critical and speculative practices across art, design and theory.
Recent publications
Wood, L., & Haylock, B. (Eds.) (2019). One and Many Mirrors: Perspectives on Graphic Design Education. London: Occasional Papers (forthcoming).
Haylock, B. (2019). What is critical design? In G. Coombs, A. McNamara & G. Sade (Eds.), Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design (pp. 9–23). London: Routledge. Haylock, B. (2019). Picture Education Today: Data Visualisation as a Practice of Critique and Care. In L. Vaughan (Ed.), Designing Cultures of Care (pp. 37–54). London: Bloomsbury.
Blamey, D., & Haylock, B. (Eds.) (2018). Distributed. London: Open Editions.
Serena Cangiano
Panel moderator
Researcher, Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana, SUPSI
CV
Serena Cangiano works as a researcher and coordinator of the MAS program in Interaction Design at SUPSI, University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lugano. Since 2012, she is responsible of FabLab Lugano, a space dedicated to the digitalization in design education and open innovation. Since 2016, she has been involved in an EU funded project called Digital Social Innovation (digitalsocial.eu) with a focus on open source design approaches and technologies for social impact. Within this project she gave lectures and workshops on bottom-up innovation. Since 2015, she co-leads Re-programmed Art, a project focusing on the reenactment of technological art from ‘60s. In 2017, she did a design residency at Motoelastico studio / IDAS University on an exhibition project featured in the first Architecture Biennale in Seoul. In 2018, she joins a team of experts of REMODEL by Danish Design Center and the R&D team of WeMake, a makerspace that proposes co-design approaches to technology development. She is currently working on the development of products: Square, a kit to teach computational thinking at school, and Ethafa, a kit to teach programming with a storytelling-based approach.
Her last publications focus on design education (Critical Maker Reader, 2019), Machine Learning (Art Machines Conference, 2019) and community driven projects in the field of healthcare (Rebelling with care, 2019). Since 2010, she also designs and coordinates the SUPSI IXD work-shops. The last two editions (2018-2019) have been organized at MuDA, the Museum of digital art in Zurich.
Paula Hildebrandt
Keynote speaker
Artistic researcher, Berlin
Abstract
The researcher is present. Artistic forms of knowledge production in the social sciences.
Paula Hildebrandt will give an insight into one of her latest artistic research projects called ‘Welcome City’. ’The Guest’ is an exploration of the mostly unspoken rules for living and settling in a new city – the rules that you are supposed to know or which you did not even know exist. What constitutes a contemporary practice of hospitality? Which skills and what kind of knowledge are necessary to act and be considered a citizen? For two weeks, she invited a guest to share her flat in Hamburg. And the camera goes on when he enters the room and, suddenly, this thing called ‘art‘ starts to happen.
CV
Paula Hildebrandt is as a freelance researcher, video/filmmaker and writer from Berlin. She holds a PhD from the Bauhaus University of Weimar and lectured at various universities, mostly in Germany, the UK and Brazil. Before turning to art and academia, she worked in the field of international development cooperation, and co-founded several collectives and independent educational initiatives at the interface between urban art and politics.
Personal website
Publications
Hildebrandt, P., Evert, K., Peters, S., Schaub, M., Wildner, K., & Ziemer, G. (2019). Performing citizenship: Bodies, agencies, limitations. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hildebrandt, P. (2018). Das Treffen in Harburg. Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof von 1999 e.V. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://kvhbf.de/.
Hildebrandt, P. M. (2016). Escamouflage oder ein Faultier. Performative Bürgerschaft, künst- lerisch erforscht. PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur, 36 (144), 414-431. doi:10.3224/peri- pherie.v36i144.25715
Luzia Hürzeler
Keynote speaker
Artist, Research Dept., Bern University of the Arts, HKB
Abstract
How to sleep among wolves.
In my dissertation “How to sleep among wolves” I report about the coexistence of humans and animals in the zoo, as an institution of humans for the animal and for itself, using the example of the wolf enclosure. It is based on my artistic installation project „How to sleep among wolves“, to place a life-size sculptural image of myself – sleeping – on the hill in the wolf enclosure at Zurich Zoo, which can be seen from the visitor‘s point of view and which often serves as a place to sleep for the wolves. Since this plan met with resistance, I wanted to find out what it was like and which ideas about the human-animal relationship – which exclude my imagination – were embodied in the exhibition display. Exploring the concrete daily practice of image production and maintenance in the zoo and the way the actors talked about it, it became apparent that it was very difficult to address them about their staging practice. Only the attempt to bring the sculpture into the enclosure and the associated negotiations about whether or better why this should not be brought into the exhibition and be visible to the visitor, enabled me to actually address the staging as such and the underlying assumptions and justifications.
CV
Artist, graduate of HEAD-Geneva, she obtained a Master‘s degree at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2004. Member of the Swiss Institute of Rome from 2007 to 2009. Between 2012 and 2016, she was a doctoral fellow at the Hochschule der Künste and the University of Bern in the SNSF project „We are hibernating!“ and received her PhD in Fine Art and Social Anthropology in 2017. Since 2017 she leads the HES-SO research project „Qui a vu le loup ?“ at the Valais School of Art. Her installations, exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Switzerland and abroad, explore the constitution of the image itself, its spatial and medial conditions.
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Florian Krautkrämer
Panel moderator
Head of Interdisciplinary and public programmes (IDA), Lucerne School of Art and Design
More information on the personal profile @ HSLU
James Langdon
Keynote speaker
PhD Candidate, RMIT Melbourne
Abstract
Some interactions of reflection and practice in graphic design.
I am a graphic designer working primarily in relation to contemporary art. The PRS model of practice-based PhD has been an effective context for consolidating historical precedents, aesthetic preferences, and other assumptions in my practice into a precise vocabulary. Critical reflection through writing has always been an element of my work, but this more rigorous process of extracting and refining language has been instrumental in stimulating new practice moves and establishing new research directions in my work.
CV
James Langdon is an independent graphic designer and writer and professor for communication design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. Since 2004 he has worked closely with many artists on graphic design for publication and exhibition. From 2008–2018 he was a founding director of the artist-run space Eastside Projects, Birmingham. He is presently working on a biography of English designer Norman Potter (1923–1995) as a teacher, and is a PhD candidate at RMIT, Melbourne.
Rachel Mader
Panel moderator
Head of the Competence Center for Art and Design in Public Space, Lucerne School of Art and Design
More information on the personal profile @ HSLU
Massimo Menichinelli
Keynote speaker
Research Fellow, RMIT Europe
Abstract
The Open Science dimension of researching Open Design.
Open science is a rising movement that aims at making scientific and its dissemination transparent and accessible to all stakeholders. This approach works by sharing all knowledge and tools developed through collaborative networks: publications, notebooks, data, hardware tools, processes, software and so on. This talk will explore how Open Science unfolded in my research about the emergence of the Maker Movement and how designers can facilitate Open Design processes with open source digital platforms, providing thus insights on the use of digital tools for open and collaborative research processes and, more generally, how Open Science could be adopted in Design and New Media research.
CV
Massimo Menichinelli is a designer who researches and develops open, collaborative, and co-design projects and the systems that enable them since 2005. Massimo has published several scientific articles, books and given lectures and workshops on Open Design, the Maker Movement and User-driven, Open and Social Innovation in various countries including Italy, Spain, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom, Mexico, Colombia, South Korea and Singapore. Massimo has worked as project manager on Horizon 2020 and Creative Europe projects for many years and now as Research Fellow at RMIT Europe. He is currently doctoral candidate in the Media Lab Helsinki at Aalto University.
Shortlist publications (PDF)
LinkedIn profile
Praveen Nahar
Guest of Honour, Welcome Speech
Director of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad
CV
Praveen Nahar is the Director of National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad with its extension campuses in Gandhinagar and Bengaluru. He has also been a faculty member in the Product Design discipline at NID since 2002.
Nahar studied Production Engineering at the undergraduate level; he did his master’s in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, in addition to pursuing a postgraduate course in Sustainable Design from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. He has over 23 years of experience in design teaching, consultancy, and research. Prior to joining NID, he was a lecturer in Industrial Design at IIT Bombay for 4 years and also worked as a research associate in Transportation Research at IIT Delhi for 2 years.
Nahar has been on the institute’s Senate and Policy Planning Committee for several years and has served in various positions at NID as Activity Chairperson of various departments such as: International Programmes, Research & Publications, Knowledge Management Centre, and Design Consultancy Services; he was also the Vice Chairperson of Outreach Programmes and Head of the Design Vision Centre at NID. He also has been a member of various committees and advisory groups at NID.
He taught extensively in the Product Design discipline for several years and was also the Discipline Lead of the same. Nahar has also been the lead and mentor for the Transportation & Automobile Design discipline during its formative years at NID.
His range of academic and professional interests include: Systems Thinking in Design, Design Thinking, Sustainable Design/Green Design, Design in the Public Domain, Social Design, Appropriate Technology, and Strategic Design to name a few.
Nahar has been involved in various research projects and consultancy projects at both the micro and strategic levels in various domains of the industrial and social sectors. Some of the significant ones include ‘Diagnostic Study and Institutional Framework for Crafts in Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat & Madhya Pradesh’. He worked on many projects with Amul Dairy Cooperative ranging from designing packaging of value added milk products & milk distribution service. He made significant contribution towards designing Mumbai Suburban Trains and Mumbai Monorails apart from working on several other important projects for the Indian Railways which led to the setting up of the Railway Design Centre (RDC) at NID.
His research project titled ‘Design thinking for Prison Industries’ with UAL, UK received many accolades including British Council-CII India-UK excellence award for Collaborations in Higher Education.
He has been actively involved with academic projects with students concerning Systems Thinking and Design which involves projects with complex issues and problems ranging from healthcare to mobility.
He has travelled lectured widely and presented his views in various forums and conferences as the keynote/plenary speaker and conducted design workshops and seminars in the areas of Systems Oriented Design, Sustainability, and Design Thinking overseas. Nahar has been the key contributor, has served as the jury member, and has also been part of scientific committees, academic, and advisory boards.
More information on the personal profile @ NID
Hans-Joachim Neubauer
Keynote speaker, Panel moderator
Professor, Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Board member SwissGradNet
CV
Hans-Joachim Neubauer, Dr. phil. habil., is a Berlin based author and journalist, playwright and dramaturg. He was head of Cultural Journalism Studies at University of the Arts, Berlin. He now works as a professor for Transmedia Narratives at Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. His books have been translated into seven languages.
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Giovanni Profeta
Keynote speaker
PhD Candidate, Polytechnic of Milan & Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana, SUPSI
Abstract
Opening the cultural digital depot. Research methods to investigate cultural content aggregators.
In recent years, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions are digitizing and releasing under open licenses their collections in order to make them more accessible. This phenomenon is fostering the development of cultural content aggregators, such as Europeana and Wikimedia Commons. They are web platforms that store multiple collections, contributed by cultural institutions and the user community, that support end-users in their research, dissemination, and artistic activities. Analyzing the current cultural content aggregators, through methods based on open content, can inform the redesign of these platforms in order to increase the collections’ discoverability. The talk presents new research methods to investigates the access and the usage of open digitized collections within cultural content aggregators.
CV
Giovanni Profeta holds a Master Degree in Visual and Multimedia Communication at University Iuav of Venice. He collaborated on projects about web design and digital publishing. At the Laboratory of Visual Culture – Interaction Design Lab of SUPSI he is carrying out projects of applied research, focused on data visualization and interaction design. He also teaches interaction design at the Bachelor in Visual Communication. Currently he is a PhD Candidate in Design at Politecnico di Milano.
Full CV
SUPSI profile
LinkedIn profile
Twitter profile
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Alisi Telengut
Keynote speaker
PhD Candidate, Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Abstract
Lake Baikal: Re-animating Animism.
Against the backdrop of the modern existential crisis, there is a necessity to re-conceptualize and reclaim animism to deconstruct the ontological tradition of modernity. The Western idea of animism as the pre-modern other is the most radical antithesis to the Cartesian dualistic wor- ld views. This project starts with the re-examination of the notion of animism, a term emerged from anthropology in the 19th century, in order to recognize modernity’s raptures and natura- lized assumptions. In the recent two decades, with the movements of worldwide indigenous communities, the concept of animism has taken on a new life for environmental ethics and the rights of non-human materialities. By learning the redefined identity of the indigenous Buryat people around the Lake Baikal, the research will explore the “new animism” through theoreti- cal investigations as well as creative art practice with a decolonial approach. By combining theoretical inquiry with artistic creation, science and art become equal forms of thinking and acting that generate knowledge. The theory and practice relation is revealed in an interwea- ving way, not in a hierarchical fashion, but in a situated complexity in order to break the binary oppositions of the two approaches.
CV
Alisi holds a BFA in Film Animation and a MFA in Studio Arts with the SSHRC scholarship both at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her recent works received multiple international awards. In addition to being screened at Sundance, Slamdance, TIFF, AFI, and various world- wide exhibitions as animation and moving image artworks, these films have also contributed to enthnographic and ethnocultural research archives. She‘s currently pursuing her doctoral research at Filmuniversität Babelsberg.
References (PDF)
Personal website
Evert Ypma
Closing panel moderator
Head of the Bachelor‘s Programme in Camera Arts, Lecturer
CV
Evert Ypma (MA MAS) is a design strategist and course leader in visual media and transmedia storytelling at the Lucerne University of Applied Science and Arts and research associate of the City Science Lab in Hamburg, which is a cooperation with MIT Media Lab. He studied communication design at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and AVANS Academy Breda as well as design and management at University of Applied Sciences Northwest Switzerland. Between 2005 – 2010 he has led a postgraduate design program on identity, representation politics and globalisation at the Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Design Research. Parallel he taught experimental design at the FHNW, Basel. In 2011, he was a visiting lecturer at the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney. He worked on projects with European Youth Information and Counselling Agency, Council of Europe, Netherlands Ministry of General Affairs, Club of Rome and Studio Ai Weiwei. He served as ambassador of ICO-D, the International Council of Design and is on the advisory panel of the Journal of Communication Design at Bloomsburry Routhledge. His PhD research focusses on the analysis and design of choice architectures and digital citizenship.
Bachelor in Camera Arts, Lucerne School of Art and Design
https://cameraarts.ch
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Gesa Ziemer
Moderator
Director City Science Lab, HafenCity University Hamburg.
Board Member SwissGradNet
CV
Gesa Ziemer (Prof. Dr. phil.) is professor for Cultural Theory and Cultural Praxis and Vice Presi- dent Research at the HafenCity University Hamburg. Research foci: urban publics and practices of participation, collective forms of work and artistic research. She also leads the City Science Lab, a partnership with the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, which conducts rese- arch on the future of cities (with a focus on digitalization). She is a Member in the Advisory Councils of the Böll-Stiftung umdenken and Lucerne School of Art and Design, where she also holds a Guest Lectureship.
Personal website
Shortlist publications (PDF)
Astra Zoldnere
Keynote speaker
PhD Candidate Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Abstract
Representation of seniors in German fiction films: re-enacting stereotypes.
Even though population ageing has become a new challenge for the world, we still live in a youth-oriented society. My research project studies the representation of older people in current day German-speaking fiction films by identifying the most typical scenes with older characters and examining the stereotypes displayed in these scenes. Afterwards, I will use my research material to create a documentary film. I will invite a group of older people to re-enact the typical scenes identified, for example, self-observation, memories of being young, dying, and illness. The interviews and discussions with the older participants will reveal their feelings about becoming ‘typical older characters’. Would they describe the re-enacted scenes as realistic or fake, fully developed or stereotypical? Do the scenes reflect their everyday life or the life of their older friends/colleagues? What alternative ways of portraying later life the older participants of the project would offer? The intention of this scientific-artistic research is to encourage a critical discussion about the representation of older people in film.
CV
Astra Zoldnere is a Latvian film director, curator and researcher. In her line of work, practical and theoretical aspects of film interact with each other. Astra holds an MA degree in film directing from Baltic Film and Media School. Her shorts “Treasures of the Sea” (2013), “All My Dead” (2014) and “Blueberry Spirits” (2016) have participated and been awarded in numerous film festivals. As of October 2018 she is a student of the artistic-scientific PhD program at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.