Departmental Research 2022

Toni-Areal © Regula Bearth
Toni-Areal © Regula Bearth

Department of Cultural Analysis, DKV

Briefly summarising the research-related activities pursued at a department with four very differently oriented research focuses and three PhD programmes is virtually impossible. Transdisciplinarity, aesthetics, cultural analysis in the arts and art education not only span wide-ranging research directions at ZHdK, but also all of ZHdK’s research approaches (artistic, artistic-scientific and scientific). This scope is also reflected by the DKV’s PhD programmes, whose considerable number of doctoral students make the department a central hub for cutting-edge research and the promotion of early career researchers at ZHdK.

The past year (for details, please see the research reports of the individual disciplines) was marked not least by a successfully completed transformation process, during which the DKV reoriented its performance mandates and placed teaching and research in new cooperative and collective settings within the framework of new rules of procedure. The newly established Institute of Art Education is responsible for overseeing the research undertaken in the discipline of the same name.

The same applies to the CAT (short for Cultural Analysis in the Arts, Aesthetics and Transdisciplinarity; German: KÄT), which will also have an institute of the same name. While ZHdK as a whole is setting important milestones in developing a future research organisation, the DKV has already begun implementing measures aimed at achieving this goal. While maintaining established research directions, structurally the department is seeking closer cooperation with teaching in order to promote and optimize knowledge and skills transfer in both directions.

The fact that this transfer fortunately also bears fruit in the interplay with the DKV’s non-university units is illustrated by the last exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich to open its doors in 2022: «Willy Guhl: Denken mit den Händen» (Willy Guhl: Thinking with your Hands) is based on a DKV research project that situated the designer’s objects, teaching and «exploratory, researching way of working» in the context of more recent theories of design research and design studies.

Dr. Andreas Vogel, Director of the Department of Cultural Analysis DKV, February 2023

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Department of Design, DDE

In 2022, the DDE made its research activities visible in particular through numerous symposia, exhibition formats and the publications of its design researchers. Exchange between design researchers is central to networking, scientific discourse and further developing teaching. The integration and promotion of early career researchers — through PhD positions in research projects or through start-up funding in the Junior Design Research Programme — enables students and mid-tier faculty to actively contribute to shaping research.

The DDE has defined how it intends to orient its design research for the next few years in its newly developed strategy, which envisages a clustering of focal themes. One important cornerstone of the first cluster, «Health Design», has already been laid. For example, the IDE application in response to the structure call issued by the Digitalization Initiative of Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH) was successful. Under the direction of Dr. Anna Lisa Martin-Niedecken, the IDE has been acting as the Leading House of the «Digital Health Design Living Lab» — an interdisciplinary hub for participatory design in digital healthcare — since October 2022.

The influence of digitalisation on today’s society and environment is occupying researchers in a wide variety of projects dealing with digital storytelling, serious educational games, immersive knowledge transfer, material and futurology research or artistic intelligence. This engagement was also reflected, among others, in the numerous DDE project applications submitted in response to DIZH calls for proposals.

As in previous years, the DDE continued its lively debate on the notions of design and research. Applied research focuses on design practice, while other approaches are based on theory-driven questions or aimed at creating spin-offs. What unites these different approaches is the critical understanding of research, which is harnessed to investigate the pressing ecological, societal and technological challenges and phenomena of our times.

The demands currently placed on the discipline of design were also outlined in the inaugural lecture by Dr Sophia Prinz, Professor of Design Theory and Design History. She explored both the need to expand design history along global and historical lines, as well as to ground design theory in cultural and social theory, in order to account for the interdependence of social and design forms.

Prof. Hansuli Matter, Director of the Department of Design DDE, February 2023

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Department of Fine Arts, DFA

In 2022, DFA research was marked by continuity and innovation. As in previous years, DFA researchers actively pursued numerous collaborations and externally funded projects. Extensive innovation processes were initiated at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR), whose leadership changed in 2022 for the first time since the institute was founded. IFCAR, founded by Christoph Schenker in 2005, is the driving force of and the coordination hub for research, cooperation and transfer at the DFA. It is now headed by Marcel Bleuler, who had begun conceptualising the PhD in Fine Arts already in the previous year, implementing the new venture as the Pre/doc Programme in Transforming Environments.

The integration of the Pre/doc and PhD groups with their practice-based dissertation projects into IFCAR is a substantial step towards achieving three central strategic goals: First, to strengthen artistic approaches in the department’s research profile; second, to promote early career researchers by integrating them more closely into DFA degree programmes; third, to include more faculty in research-related activities. The PhD programme is seen both as a bridge and as a catalyst for strengthening an artistic research culture at the department. Besides further qualifying young researchers, the programme enables establishing connections and peer exchange with both research and artistic faculty.

The question of how to combine the logic of externally funded projects with artistic ways of working has been discussed ever since IFCAR was founded. By launching internal start-up funding as well as grants for process- and practice-oriented projects, the IFCAR team took an important step towards addressing this challenge at the end of 2022. The grants, awarded by the newly founded DFA Research Board, will be announced twice a year and can be applied for by advanced students, mid-tier staff and faculty.

Dedicated to «Funding Formats for Research at the DFA», the DFA plenary session gave all members of the department an opportunity to provide feedback on the criteria and objectives of the three funding instruments: Small Grants, Seed Money, Outreach. The aim was to define criteria, in particular for Small Grants, that fulfil the basic requirements of a research venture while remaining open to approaches from artistic practice. The awarding, monitoring and evaluation of grants will be a key focus at IFCAR in 2023.

It is crucial that the new measures for promoting research at the DFA also ensure the continuity of high-quality project work, such as in the newly launched SNF project «Contemporary Art, Popular Culture, and Peacebuilding in Eastern Europe» (Director: Jörg Scheller, in cooperation with artasfoundation).

Prof. Swetlana Heger-Davis, Director of the Department of Fine Arts DFA, February 2023

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Department of Music, DMU

It is not unusual for the recent past to be threatened with oblivion more quickly than well-documented distant history. The resulting obligation to engage with the past is fulfilled by the historically oriented work being conducted at the two research institutes of the Department of Music. For example, how the compositions commissioned by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (German: SRG) have affected the life of music in Switzerland over the last ninety years is being investigated by a project at the Institute for Music Research using approaches from musicology, media studies and history. The analysis of more than 500 commissioned works, including their production and reception, promises insights into how music styles have been shaped aesthetically over time, as well as into societal contexts, in particular regarding the interaction between the commissioning body, creative actors and audiences.

The Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology is also filling a comparable research gap by dedicating a multi-year project to the live performance of electronic music and the conditions of its reproduction. The fact that «historical performance practice» by no means only concerns old, classical music may come as a surprise, but is easily explained in light of rapid digital change. In cooperation with an international network of specialised institutions, the project makes experiences, composer statements spanning several generations as well as technological aspects available as an open access resource. The project thus contributes to making the cultural past sustainably and vividly present.

Prof. Michael Eidenbenz, Director of the Department of Music, DMU, February 2023

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Department of Performing Arts and Film, DDK

Third-party funded projects, the promotion of early career researchers and future research organisation were the focal points at the DDK in 2022. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation, DDK researchers continued pursuing three research projects: (1) «Cinémémoire.ch expanded: Oral Film History(s): An Online Archive of Swiss Film History»; (2) «The Answering Machine: How will voice-enabled assistants change human-machine interaction and what will they enter our personal lives as?»; (3) «Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in Higher Education Development», a development project funded by the P7 programme DIEO in Art and Design Schools.

In 2022, the DDK hosted three international conferences: (1) «ZFICTION.22 Please Don’t Tell: Storytelling Beyond Magic Formula» (held biennially in alternation with Z-DOC). (2) «Perspectives: In_Between Spaces», the first annual working meeting of the Association of Performing Arts in Contexts (PAC), which brings applied theatre and related fields into dialogue. This year, the Research Academy Interventions, featuring Florian Malzacher (Germany), Dana Yahalomi (Israel) and Christina Zimmermann (HSLU), served as a prelude to the PAC. (3) «Live Performance and Video Games», an online symposium organised in collaboration with the universities of Lorraine, Lausanne and Paris 8.

In the reporting year, special attention was again given to promoting early career researchers and to developing a third cycle. Central to these efforts are the pre-doc programme PEERS and two PhD programmes funded by swissuniversities: (1) «Arts-Based» (in cooperation with Graz, Linz, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Stockholm and Gothenburg universities of the arts and design; (2) the Transdisciplinary PhD TAP, featuring numerous activities, workshops and conferences, among others, on collaboration in artistic PhDs. The department also contributed actively to the symposium «Konstellationen — Constellations: Forms and Formats of Presenting and Discussing Ongoing PhD Projects». Since May 2022, the Immersive Art Space (IAS) has been headed by Prof. Chris Salter. Together with his broad-based junior staff, Prof. Salter has actively contributed to DDK research.

As a further focal point, the department conducted and documented valorisation discussions for the first time. The results, which will be presented in a structural report, complement deliberations on a future research organisation at the DDK and at ZHdK.

Marijke Hoogenboom, Director of the Department of Performing Arts and Film DDK, February 2023