Ongoing and completed third-party funded projects
(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics
'(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics' is an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, grant ZK93). Over a period of four years, the researchers will investigate the improvisational character of ethical behavior using live encounters with musical ensembles as case studies.
| Term | 2021-2025 |
| Research group | Caroline Gatt (University of Graz), Joshua Bergamin (University of Vienna), Christopher Williams (KUG). |
Short description | The project is based at the Doctoral School for Artistic Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at University of Graz, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. |
Glass Works. Taking Roots through Training and Networking
Duration: 2018-2022
Project management University of Graz: Katharina Eisch-Angus
EU partner project, funded in CREATIVE EUROPE CULTURE
Cooperation partners: Bild-Werk Frauenau, Germany (lead partner), the Royal Danish Academy - Copenhagen, Bornholm; Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology of the University of Graz; associated partners in Germany, Denmark, Austria, the Czech Republic and France.
The GLASS WORKS project aimed to bring actors in hand-manufactured and artistic glass in European glass regions, artist-makers, educational and museum institutions, industrial and political stakeholders together in practical and knowledge exchange, and dynamic collaborative networks. At its core is the intention to create new futures for emerging glass makers, to encourage sustainable careers and creative responses to changing societies and globalized markets. Capacity-building extended into creating public awareness of the cultural values of a diverse glass heritage in Europe today. GLASS WORKS implemented these objectives by organizing three 6-months start-up trainings for graduates and young professionals in glass crafts, art and design. An international touring exhibition "Glass Works. European Glass Lives in Craft, Art and Industry", combined with a web portal and ongoing PR and social media activity, created transregional attention. Guided tours, discussion and presentation events, and a conference "Glass Works. Creating Glass Lives" generated manifold inter-European exchange of expert knowledge and experience. Ongoing research and documentation created a shared knowledge base for the envisaged implementation of a permanent European networking platform.
Breaking Art Rules? New clients and the old rules of art
Duration: 2021-2022
Project management: Judith Laister
funded by the Gesellschaft der Neuen Auftraggeber - GNA gGmbH
The project "Breaking Art Rules" is based on an understanding of art and the humanities that programmatically aims at social relevance and the strengthening of democratic and participatory processes. In cooperation with the international organization of the "New Patrons", the project is dedicated to a transdisciplinary perspective on the commissioning of art based on civil society: What happens when not the church, state or patrons, but committed citizens act as patrons of art?
Advancing the Value of Humanities - in Academia, Society and Industry
Duration: 2018-2021
Project management: Monika Litscher (Vaduz), Johanna Rolshoven (Graz), Kathrin Wildner (Hamburg)
Funded by the European Commission
At the center of the project is the core task of the humanities to contribute to a better understanding of the complex and intertwined world and to act as an innovative force for change in a sustainable society. The project focuses on new educational impulses and curricula in the field of humanities as well as artistic and technical studies, which enable students in interdisciplinary contexts to develop new perspectives on their subjects and to recognize complex interrelationships. The project addresses three urgent challenges: 1- The perspective need for committed and interdisciplinarily involved humanities in universities and science: How can reflexive knowledge be made fruitful for different scientific fields against the background of humanities theory formation? What kind of training and curricula are needed here? 2- The lack of knowledge about context and critical thinking: How to generate context-oriented and critical knowledge that places the content of "non-humanities subjects" as well as elements of the specific curricula in a historical, philosophical, social, psychological context and provides graduates with a framework for their future professional work? What kind of theoretical and project-based training is appropriate here? 3- The 21st century skills expected of graduates by employers in industry and society are aimed at understanding complex, dynamic and ambivalent transformations and overcoming the challenges associated with them. How to gain insights into unfamiliar cultures, develop emotional intelligence, promote empathy, imagination and understanding, and thus improve graduates' employment prospects in a globalized world and on the job market.
Democracy and peace on the streets
Duration: 2017-2021
Project management: Johanna Rolshoven, Judith Laister, Gerald Lamprecht
The international conference "Democracy and Peace on the Street" was part of the interdisciplinary art, research and peace project COMRADE CONRADE. It explored the question of how democracy and peace are lived, negotiated and represented on streets around the world. Against the backdrop of the Year of Remembrance 2018, the event examined urban streets from various academic perspectives as a yardstick for political participation, social coherence and everyday conflict resolution. International experts from various cultural and social science disciplines joined artists, students and interested city dwellers to discuss how power relations between genders, generations, institutions, political actors and social groups are visible and challenged in the public space of the street - both historically and currently.
Organic to the power of 3: Traditional knowledge, organic farming and avant-garde lifestyles
Duration: 2017-2019
Project management: Gabriele Sorgo and Helmut Eberhart
Employees: Andrea Heistinger and Elisabeth Kosnik
Project funding: Province of Styria - Office of the Styrian Provincial Government
The research project investigates the central functional characteristics and the knowledge gained from experience of old rural agriculture in order to develop practical principles for future forms of rural production (e.g. Community Supported Agriculture, revival of regional products and production methods). Based on precise historical case reconstructions of individual organic farms in Styria, criteria for a regionally desirable balance between profit orientation and non-market trade (public welfare-oriented and traditional microeconomic practices and lifestyles) will be developed. The Bio3 project refers to three dimensions of the embedding of food and its production processes in the sense of the economic historian Karl Polanyi. It examines the inseparable link between regionally valid and physically bound experiential knowledge (1) and an ecologically and socially caring economy (2) as a prerequisite for sustainable lifestyles (3). Therefore, a further focus is on practices generating and passing on embodied knowledge in order to derive new networks and methods of acquiring agricultural knowledge and thus facilitate the entry of - especially young - people into regional agriculture.
Contentious Images - Unruly Practices. An Ethnography of Visual Protest Repertoires in Southeastern Europe
Duration: 2016-2018
Project management: Johanna Rolshoven, Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Karl Kaser, Southeast European History, Florian Bieber, Southeast European Studies
Doc-Team: David Brown, Angelos Evangelinidis, Marija Martinovic
Coordination: Marion Hamm, Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology
Recent political mobilizations have been accompanied by an abundance of highly visualised and creative street protests pointing to a new type of networked, culturally inclined social movement. The DOC-team project aims to analyze the visual dimension of contemporary protest in four empirical settings located in Southeastern Europe. The research is guided by two interconnected questions: How is protest visualized in contemporary Southeastern Europe, and why are actors emphasizing visual protest repertoires? The first question aims at processes of meaning-making on the micro-level: how do protest actors link their everyday experiences to the political terrain through 'contentious images' and 'unruly practices'. The second question calls for a wider contextualization of visual protest repertoires. This takes into account discursive arrangements of visual regimes, historical and political conditions, as well as cultural patterns of seeing, acting and interpreting.
These research questions will be approached through four visual ethnographies of distinct visual protest repertoires in urban settings in Southeastern Europe. David Brown draws on recent historical experience to examine contentious public performances by football fans in the region, and their economic ramification. Angelos Evangelinidis explores activist media practices through political posters in Athens (Greece). Marija Martinović studies how the women's movement in Belgrade (Serbia) uses video activism as a performative practice for new subjectivities. The collaboration of the DOC-team benefits from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including history, economics, gender studies, political science, and anthropology.
The region of Southeastern Europe is characterized by its peripheral position, a long-term state of transition and high levels of contestation. Examining visual artefacts and practices from the protests that have swept the region in the past years the DOC-team will analyse the historical particularities of the region while also contributing to wider debates on the changing nature of political participation and social change.
Drawing on social movement theory and protest research the DOC-team research adopts a distinctly cultural approach to protest. In this way, the project will contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate on cultural aspects of protest and social movements. Its particular focus on visual artefacts and practices fills an important gap in this field. The introduced concept of visual protest repertoires will connect a central concept from social movement theory to the yet under-researched visual realm.