Blurred Territories: Kunst / Gestaltung / Forschung
The title of the publication Blurred Territories: Kunst / Gestaltung / Forschung describes something pictorial: areas whose boundaries are not clearly defined, which merge and blur. This coming together continues in terms such as 'artistic research', or 'research in design', which can be understood both as academic disciplines and as working methods and practices. We want to draw from this blurring taking into account a wide diversity of perspectives. The specific interest of this publication is to make debates and approaches that are discussed, explored and tested within the weißensee school of art and design berlin visible, bringing them into dialogue with each other in order to strengthen the discourse within our institution and beyond.
This negotiation, as well as the title of the publication, developed from a public lecture series organized by +dimensions in 2022. Speakers from different disciplinary positions were invited to the series to reflect on the interdependencies of research and aesthetic practice from their respective perspectives and to discuss different methods and exchange ideas. The aim of the series was not only to expand the understanding of the terminology and the meaning behind artistic and design research, but also to widen the exchange to include different institution-independent perspectives on research in art and design.
Our goal with this publication was not to edit a book with definitions, summaries or the results of a discussion in which other actors have been active for much longer than we have, but to collect and disseminate the many forms in which artistic and design research at the weißensee school of art and design berlin are practiced and thought about. For this reason we conducted an open call inviting all members of the art school community. 39 authors - including professors, students and other interested parties from different departments - and a large number of texts in the form of essays, dialogues, artistic text and image contributions and project documentation came together in the final publication. We have constellated these submissions around five central axes, which arose from their reading alongside the questions from the individual presentations and which we have summarized in pairs of terms: Structures & Institutionalizations, Borders & (Un)Disciplines, Collaborations & Laboratories, Processes & Dynamics, Polyphonies & Interweavings. These are open-ended suggestions for a first reading of the these texts; it could well be that they are reshuffled and put together in a completely different order and reading dramaturgy. It is the diverse relationships that reveal new questions and ways of exploring.
This possibility of rearranging the content, as well as a certain ease with which we want to deal with the questions, is reflected in the form of the publication itself, which appears as a series of light booklets that can be read in different orders and contain design elements that reflect the constellation axes visually.
With contributions by Juana Awad, Marleen Clara Bauer, Elaine Bonavia, Kaja Busch, Kathrin Busch, Florian Dombois, Knut Ebeling, Denis Esakov, Judith Glaser, Essi Johanna Glomb, Christine Goutrié, Verena Graf, Herbert Grüner, Constanze Hein, Robin Hoske, Jörg Hugo, George Jaramillo, Mona Jas, Konrad Jünger, Pascal Kress, Nils Krüger, Daniel Kruse, Birgit Kunz, Madeleine Madej, Alexia Manzano, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Tyyne Claudia Pollmann, Felix Rasehorn, Stefanie Rau, Christine Reeh-Peters, Katharina Reinsbach, Patricia Ribault, Lara Roßwag, Christiane Sauer, Mona Schmidtke, Sandra Stark, Mareike Stoll, Henrike Uthe, Ruven Wiegert & Hanna Wiesener.
