Mr. Unruh’s Studio, Studienzentrum Naturkunde, UMJ Graz, 2018 © Dejan Markovic
What kind of space does art need? Inviting students to dissect and think through the process of a transdisciplinary artwork, this course offers the opportunity to engage with contemporary art production at the intersection between science, technology and politics. If art is understood less as an object and rather as a site of knowledge production and a practice of collaboration, conflict, or confrontation, neither starting nor finishing with an exhibition, the question arises as to whether it is still bound to artist studios or workshops. Does it not instead shape itself in between spaces of interest that offer possibilities for discovering, learning, acting and critical exchange?
Retracing the steps which led to the collaboration “Shapes of Things Before my Eyes”, students will explore the relationships between the involved experts, institutions and current discourses from their respective fields by means of interviews, observation methods, discussions, recordings and modelling. With particular attention to the way in which this investigation could make displaced processes of contemporary art production tangible, the students, based on their individual interests, will develop new positions towards the relations explored. Coursework will include interaction with scientists from the fields of informatics, robotics and the natural sciences, craftspeople, filmmakers, museum curators and employees of the Natural History Museum, the Neue Galerie, Universalmuseum Joanneum Graz, the Institute for Software Technology and the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision at the Graz University of Technology.