Based on the concepts and theories of cultural and visual studies as well as cultural analysis, ICS research explores whether and how cultural signification practices, such as gendered, ethnic, and social constructions of differences, are effective within the arts. This involves concepts of (inter)mediality and transdisciplinarity and their aesthetic reflection. By trandisciplinarity, the reciprocal critical reading of epistemological potentials is intended. Such work questions the constructions of power within and through the historical and present-day practices of drawing disciplinary boundaries. From this perspective, questions are raised whether and how the arts reflect and challenge cultural constructions. Such work examines and further develops cultural-analytical approaches to, and discourses on, the arts. The ICS also explores the reciprocal epistemological potentials at the interfaces between the arts and other knowledge cultures (in particular the natural and technological sciences). This includes investigations into cultural developments and differences within communication and design processes in all areas of society and analyses of their forms, perceptions, and cultural, economic, and social meanings.
At the ICS, (inter)mediality and transdisciplinarity are considered the fundamental structures of artistic and design processes in western societies undergoing profound cultural, media-driven, and technological upheaval. The impacts of this radical change on the economic, social, and cultural structures of national and transnational communities and their processes of exchange have thus far been described only inadequately in terms of what is commonly known as globalization and interculturality.
The three research fields are Politics of Display, Politics of Site and Politics of Transfer and Translation.