Head of Department: Univ.-Prof. Mag. phil. Eva Maria Stadler
In the Department of Art
and Knowledge Transfer societal issues are discussed and investigated in theoretical and artistic contexts. Beyond the all-too
entrenched tradition of the new, we examine time periods in relation to contemporary and historical arguments and their mutual
contingency. This type of rhizomatic transfer generates a connective form of science, whereby the approaches of genealogy
– the analysis of development conditions – are always anchored processually in the here and now. The objective of the Department
of Art and Knowledge Transfer is to create productive interfaces between artistic disciplines and non-artistic sciences on
the basis of the respective thematic field under discussion. After the foundation of the department by Oswald Oberhuber in
1987, the concepts of art and knowledge themselves have undergone multiple transformation processes. Since art began to take
an interest in the social sciences and humanities, which in the 1960s increasingly came to explore questions of everyday life
in order to determine the conditions under which cultural goods are produced, a form of knowledge production arose under the
term Cultural Studies, where science and scholarship in the field of art were no longer limited to just art history and critique.
Interdisciplinarity was a buzzword that took hold again in the 1980s, giving rise to great expectations for the renewal of
not only artistic production but also the structures of art schools and universities. Today the concept of arts-based research
is central in addressing questions of knowledge production. In the post-war era artists like Asger Jorn vehemently confronted
the institutionalised sciences with the demand for the arts to have an opportunity to conduct research.
In the
spirit of Jorn, the Department of Art and Knowledge Transfer views itself as a platform for engaged post-media production
of knowledge across the broad spectrum of fields at the University of Applied Arts. Furthermore, cooperations with universities,
art academies, and museums should help open the university and make the knowledge acquired in different formats of project
development accessible and useful for the outside world. Teaching, project development, exhibitions, publications, and editions
represent the formats in which the Art and Knowledge Transfer programme is conveyed.
