Sofia Bempeza & Annette Krauss (Heads of Department)

The lynx’s tail is scratching the love pan.
Posthumous creature is silent.
Just follow its gestures,
plant the words in your mouth,
shallow all big theories,
salivate your food,
learn how to chew.
Your sweat is a memory.
Your production is cursed.
Nothing is broken, except linearity.
Unruly parts are not b-r-o-k-e-n.
Tiny parts are broken, but no more comparisons.
No bodyguards,
just bodies defending dirty words,
engine fluids,
and water.
Sofia Bempeza

Keine Bildung und Kunst ohne Streben nach sozialer Gerechtigkeit. 
Diesem Erbe sehe ich mich verpflichtet.

Annette Krauss

Studying at the department KKP, students engage with artistic and art pedagogical practices that are sensitive to differences within teaching and learning processes. In this context students develop artistic/educational work, and consider the socio-political conditions in which artistic/educational projects take place, how they are produced and located. In this way, students get prepared to read images, texts and practices of today's societies from within artistic practice with regard to changing subjectivities, migration, climate change, ecosystems, digitalisation, and the changes in the labor market and the education system. They learn to act in them and co-shape these. 

The syllabus umfasst unterschiedliche Seminare und künstlerische Positionen, die das Feld der  Kunst, der Kunstpädagogik und der digitalen/visuellen Kulturen als kritisches Denken und Handeln sowie als experimentelle Praxis verstehen. Das KKP Team besteht aus ca. 20 Künstler*innen unter der Leitung von Univ. Prof. Sofia Bempeza und Univ. Prof. Annette Krauss. Lehrende und Studierende entwickeln ihre eigene Praxis mit Fokus auf künstlerisch-edukativen, visuellen und performativen Herangehensweisen, die zu einem kritischen und engagierten Umgang unter anderem mit Wissens- und Bildproduktion befähigen.Wir gestalten die Lehre von Kunst und kommunikativer Praxis als unvollständigen Prozess, in dem performativ, affektiv und kollaborativ Wissen und künstlerische Praktiken erprobt werden. Dabei geht es nicht nur um das Ent-üben von (unseren) Denk-, Handlungs- und Wahrnehmungsmustern in sozialen, ökonomischen, und geopolitischen Kontexten, sondern auch um das Mit-Gestalten von sorgetragenden gesellschaftlichen Prozessen. Daran arbeiten wir künstlerisch, situiert und polyphon weiter.

⋇ Polyphony ⋒ Situatedness ⌔ ⍦ ⌔ Affect ⊱ Ecologies
⋯ Collectivity ⚕︎ ⍜ Metaskills

We build on practical knowledge transfer and the continuity of the KKP studies as developed over many years by Barbara Putz-Plecko and the KKP team, most notably focusing on transdisciplinary work in the field of artistic and educational training. Moreover, visiting artists and cultural workers offer various impulses with regard to current art practices and visual cultures. Visiting professors in the last fifteen years have been: Danica Dakić, Werner Feiersinger, Imogen Stidworthy, Michael Kienzer, Simon Wachsmuth, Carola Dertnig, Anette Baldauf, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Helmut Draxler, Lindsay Seers, Robert Del Tredici, Pierre Hébert, Prinzgau Podgorschek, Willem Oorebeck, Simonetta Ferfoglia (gangart), Zou Bin, Basak Senova, Ebru Kurbak, Chico Mac Murtrie, Aboubakar Fofana and Isin Önol.

Graduates of the department work as educators, artists, and (art) mediators in both formal and informal educational contexts: as art educators at secondary schools and in tertiary education, in art and cultural mediation—for example in art and cultural spaces, museums, and galleries—and they develop new practices at the intersections of art and culture, science, education, and society. Through additional guest semesters at international universities and through students’ participation in the department’s interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and transcultural projects, they gain access to a broad and diverse field of experience and activity from multiple perspectives..

The Department of Art and Communication Practices is part of the Institute of Studies in Art and Art Education

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Ongoing

Shaken Grounds: Seismography of Precarious Presences
Projektleitung: Mariella Greil und Lucie Strecker (PEEK AR 780),
Angewandte Performance Lab

Completed

SPACEX – Spatial Practices in Art & ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange
Projektleitung: Barbara Holub
(EU Horizon H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019, project nr. 872561)

Choreo-ethische Assemblages: Erzählungen bloßer Körper
Projektleitung: Mariella Greil-Möbius
Austrian Science Fund (FWF): V 733 Richter-Programm (incl. Richter-PEEK)

A Research of Doing
Projektleitung: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Basak Senova und Dr. Johan Thom
OeAD Africa-UniNet und BMBWF: P017_South Africa/ A Research of Doing/ University of Applied Arts Vienna, University of Pretoria

Passenger Diaries
INTRA Projekt 2020: Mariella Greil

Sounding Research
INTRA  Projekt 2020: Ricarda Denzer

The Octopus Programme
Programmleitung: Basak Senova

The Entanglement between Gesture, Media, and Politics
Arts & Science in Motion (Volkswagen-Stiftung): Florian Bettel, Konrad Strutz
(at the Braunschweig University of Art with Irina Kaldrack)