The ICS is an international transdisciplinary centre for cultural analysis, cultural theory, and cultural history in the arts related to all topic areas of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). The transdisciplinary conception of ICS research questions the assumptions of disciplinary knowledge production and focuses on its inherent inclusions and exclusions as powerful cultural constructions. This perspective enables inquiries about whether and how the arts reflect and question cultural constructions. The institute aims to examine and further develop cultural-analytical approaches to, and discourses on, the arts. Its research also explores the reciprocal epistemological potentials at the interfaces between the arts and other knowledge cultures (in particular the natural and technological sciences).
The main research focus of the ICS is cultural analysis in the arts. The three principal fields of research are the politics of display, the politics of site, and the politics of transfer and translation.
The ICS also offers a range of further education and doctoral programmes.
Tasks
As a research platform of the Department of Cultural Analysis, the ICS cooperates with research institutes, museums, and other cultural institutions within and beyond Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Its conferences, lectures, publications, and exhibitions are aimed at teaching staff and students, experts, and the wider public.
The ICS initiates cooperative projects in the areas of research and exhibition practice, teaching and education, further education and services. The institute acts as a partner for universities, academies, and colleges within the context of cultural analysis in visual art, media, design, theatre, music, high and low culture, and mass culture. It encourages academic research and the further training of teaching staff and students in the field of cultural analysis. It provides manifold cooperations with universities and universities of applied sciences in Switzerland and abroad, thereby enabling ZHdK students to pursue doctoral studies and academic qualifications (Dr. phil, PhD). Based on stringent cultural theory, its mission is (to promote) the critical reflection on the teaching and production of art and design at ZHdK. The ICS positions itself within transdisciplinary research concepts and generates pilot projects.
History
The ICS was established on 1 September 2003 as Institute for Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design (founded as a department in 2000). Following the establishment of Zurich University of the Arts, the ICS has since been affiliated with the Department of Cultural Analysis. The ICS received formal approval from the Swiss Council of Universities of Applied Sciences in December 2010. The acting head of institute is Prof. Dr. Sigrid Schade. Since 2015 Prof. Dr. Sigrid Adorf is co-head of the institute.