The Research Focus in Transdisciplinarity (fsp-t) is managed by Professor Florian Dombois and a small team of scholarly assistants. Among other things, the fsp-t provides space for artistic and scientific production and reflection. The main objective here is to bring together various stances, practices and methods from the arts and sciences in order to enable encounters on an equal footing. Here, the focus is not on specific problems but rather on the empty space in which artists and scholars present their work and views and are thus able to mutually monitor their respective endeavours. More specifically, the fsp-t operates a wind tunnel lab whose core element and medium remain invisible until someone visualises the wind, and thus themselves.
A recurring theme here is that of a model – for example in the form of a test object in the lab's measuring area, and thus the question as to how verbal and non-verbal thought interact.
A recurring theme is scaling – for example with regard to the scale effect of an experiment, and thus the question as to how things and questions change when they are re-dimensioned in terms of space, time, energy or quantity.
A recurring theme is the wind – for example as a stream circulating around a body, and thus the question as to how we plan to deal with the temporality of knowledge. Where is the wind when it's not blowing?
The fsp-t is designed to accommodate a maximum of two to three projects simultaneously. This approach is based on the belief that the artistic quality being sought after here can only be achieved in a small setting. At the same time, it is the intention of the fsp-t that the concepts and approaches it employs, and the results it achieves with its activities, should be used to benefit other institutes and projects – i.e. that the work conducted at the fsp-t should be prototypical. Dombois and his team are dedicated to this principle, and to this end they utilise new forms of presentation, particularly on the Internet. At the same time, they repeatedly attempt to create situations in which researchers from the realms of art and science develop stories together – and thus move away from the systematic and into the episodic. Our goal is to tear open a gap in reality and to widen it, whereby one side of this gap is framed by the freedom that exists for such an undertaking and the other side by the freedom that is lost through the same. And when an opening forms between two formerly separate spaces, an equalisation of pressure begins to take place. Meteorologists refer to this phenomenon as wind.
To Research Reports:
Research Report 2022 (fsp-t); Research Report ZHdK 2022
Research Report ZHdK before 2022