Biography
Christoph Schenker is Prof. em. of Philosophy of Art and Contemporary Art at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). From 2005 to 2022 he has been head of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR), part of the university’s Department of Fine Arts. In the MA Fine Arts, Schenker held seminars and colloquia on practice based artistic research, and he mentored students especially with a research focus in their art practice. Schenker’s main research fields are artistic research as well as contemporary public art (art & public sphere). In both fields, he cultivates very close collaborations with artists. From 2015 to 2020, together with Gitanjali Dang (Mumbai, India) he conducted Draft, an interdisciplinary project exploring contemporary art that produces, contributes to or provokes public debate, including Teatro Ojo (Mexico City), CAMP (Mumbai), Chto Delat (St. Petersburg), Knowbotiq (Zürich), Jasmina Metwaly & Philip Rizk (Cairo), Samson Young (Hong Kong), Ju Anqi (Beijing), and others. While still a student (of literature, philosophy and art history), Schenker has learnt from his artists’ fellows that doing art has a lot to do with creating problems and producing a specific form of knowledge. As a consequence, he joined those adventures as accomplice, as writer and curator. Later, as a lecturer and head of the Studiengang Bildende Kunst at the ZHdK, he founded the Kunsthof Zürich (1993–2013), an outdoor art space, which he run in very close collaboration with art students and international artists. www.ifcar.ch
Publication
www.zhdk.ch/head-office-3852
zhdk.academia.edu/ChristophSchenker
www.draftprojects.info/home.html
www.stadtkunst.ch
www.artpublicplaiv.ch/