Shifting Paradigms

The Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG Karlsruhe) and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe were founded and designed in the 1990s by founding director Heinrich Klotz as places of contemporary research focused on new media. With their combination of university and cultural institution, they offer excellent preconditions for networking artistic and scientific approaches, for which, however, a different framework is still needed in Germany.

An overarching postgraduate program is intended to bring together and utilize interdisciplinary expertise in order to explore the relationships between art, theory and design in a new way, thus building on the pioneering founding idea of the HfG and ZKM. At the same time, it is intended to respond to a larger paradigm shift that seems to be taking place in art and culture as well as in the scientific field and which is expressed on the one hand in crises of legitimization and on the other in new and creative forms of research and production of knowledge. The HfG Karlsruhe is taking this diagnosis as an opportunity to rethink hybrid formats of research and also to question the function of academic doctorates.

To present and discuss these programmatic considerations, the HfG is organizing a first symposium with international guests in cooperation with the ZKM Karlsruhe on December 5 and 6, 2024, which aims to create spaces and ideas for a transforming research practice.

With Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Matthias Bruhn, Filipa César, Constanze Fischbeck, Alistair Hudson, Susanne Kriemann, Armin Linke, Tina Lorenz, Monica Narula, Simon Sheikh, Joy Mariama Smith, Nina Zschocke and others.

To register for the symposium, please send an email to: shiftingparadigms [​at​] hfg-karlsruhe.de by Friday, November 15, 2024, stating your full first and last name, your function / institution if applicable and also your email address. The event starts on December 5 from 4 pm, on December 6 it will take place all day.

You can find up-to-date information on the symposium at hfg-karlsruhe.de.