Expedition NOW
A project by Kulturtankstelle – Coop-Platform of the University of Art and Design Linz. A collaboration between the departments of Architecture, Art History & Art Theory, and Visual Communication. In cooperation with the Graduate Institute for Transdisciplinary Art of National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan.
Project
The “Expedition NOW” takes stock of uncertain times, imagines strategies and coping mechanisms, and ventures out to look for public spaces, threads, and openings, telling stories of the NOW.
Using various media and formats, the expedition attempts to develop collaborative as well as individual narrative forms in which these antinomies are articulated. It is an attempt to create an interdisciplinary dialogue that accepts and productively transforms the challenges of today.
The expedition takes a moment to look at the present: Where are we at? We venture out into uncertain times in order to reflect, to sort, to formulate relevant questions – and to create possibilities for action. How do we want to live with each other? Do we even want to live with each other in the first place? And who is the “we” in question?
We are opening up a debate. But where? Where are and will urban communication spaces exist or be created when proximity is dangerous? How accessible are they, who can use them, and what are they used for? We don’t want to be infected by viruses, but we do want to spread ideas and visions. We ask ourselves – where do we get infected, and by what? How do the transmission processes work? What functions as a medium of transmission? How do certain frameworks promote or prevent exchange and infection? What becomes of the ideas of sharing, of the commons, when proximity and exchange are perceived as dangerous?
(2021)
Team
Four disciplines, one expedition team
The department of Visual Communication investigates forms of communication in public space and develops cultural probes in participatory processes. They aim to create new perspectives and speculative narratives, as seeds of ideas.
The department of Architecture traces the “urban commons” during a global pandemic: what happens to the commons and collective resources of a city, when proximity holds danger? What do spaces look like NOW?
The department of Art History & Theory examines closed spaces and places of contagion beyond the medical discourse: Where is one infected by what? How do strategies of enclosure prevent and enable exchange? How can we experiment with the mutations effectuated in the process of the transmission of ideas, objects or emotions?
The Graduate Institute for Transdisciplinary Art at the National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan examines the NOW 9000 km further to the East, in Taiwan.
Supervised by
Clemens Bauder, Huai-Wen Chang, Ludwig Engel, Tina Frank, Jasmin Mersmann, Cheng-Yu Pan, Marianne Pührerfellner, Anne von der Heiden, Katharina Weinberger-Lootsma, Pei-Kuei Tsai, Mali Wu, Luana Bechstein
Partners
Kindly supported by:
Linz Kultur, Förderverein der Kunstuniversität Linz, Nüssli, Raiffeisen Landesbank OÖ
