Understanding Art and Research

A newly launched, open documentation project provides insights into current projects in art and research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna on several levels (publication – film – exhibition). This involves transforming understanding, understanding transformation and, moreover, helping to develop perspectives.

Based on projects focusing on artistic research activities, the Angewandte provides an overview of potential positions and sheds light on current research perspectives.

Collaborative work at Angewandte is understood as research that is necessarily open and thematically boundless, owing to a dynamic focus on artistic methods. This can be seen in a variety of vivid examples demonstrating a welcoming environment of challenge and exchange, a work environment that rejects boundaries and fosters curiosity. This approach to understanding informs all areas of research and teaching, including science and art, design and architecture. Without its goal of directly contributing to societal transformation, however, it would not be the Angewandte. Obviously, this must be constantly reassessed.

We

• introduce different formats of artistic practice that challenge and reformulate our ways of perceiving, 
• present collaborative efforts that explicitly open up/guide artistic practice to developing new ways of understanding and recognising particular issues and objects, 
• reconnect “research-based teaching” (Humboldt) with its original potential to unfold excitingly as art-research-based teaching now expanded through art.