Doktoratsstudium – PhD in the Arts
Übersicht
Das Doktoratsstudium verhandelt die Weiterentwicklung künstlerisch-forschender Praxis sowie die Theoriebildung zu künstlerischer Forschung bzw. zur Entwicklung und Erschließung der Künste in einem kontinuierlichen Diskurs und reflektiert Methodenvielfalt, Kontextualisierung und Erkenntnisgewinn. Prinzipiell wird das künstlerische Doktorat inter- und transdisziplinär angelegt.
Studium
Das künstlerische Doktoratsstudium an der Universität Mozarteum versteht sich als ein internationales Studienangebot und bietet Kunstschaffenden und -forschenden aus verschiedenen Bereichen wie Musik, Bildende Kunst, Theater, Tanz, Film, Medien, Design eine Möglichkeit der Weiterentwicklung selbstständiger künstlerischer Forschungspraxis. Das Doktoratsstudium konzentriert sich auf das Potenzial künstlerischer Prozesse, sich als Forschung zu artikulieren, und hebt ihre Fähigkeit zur kreativen und kritischen Reflexion hervor. In diesem Zusammenhang dient die künstlerische Praxis sowohl als Untersuchungsgegenstand als auch als primäre Methode, mit der Forschung betrieben wird.
Der PhD in the Arts bietet einen Rahmen für die Entwicklung individueller Projekte mit einem breiten Spektrum an Formaten, die von Einzelunterricht, Seminaren, Workshops, Vorlesungen, Exkursionen und einem offenen Raum für die Selbstorganisation der Kandidaten reichen. Das Doktoratsstudium findet in einem kollaborativen Forschungsumfeld statt, das den künstlerischen und intellektuellen Austausch und die Zusammenarbeit fördert. Es wird durch eine umfangreiche Infrastruktur unterstützt, darunter spezialisierte Räume, Geräte, Instrumente und Bibliotheksressourcen.
Das Programm ist auf mindestens 3 Jahre ausgelegt und wird in englischer Sprache durchgeführt. Alle Kurse finden in monatlichen Treffen statt. Ein Wohnsitz in Österreich ist nicht erforderlich, die Teilnehmer werden jedoch gebeten, an Aktivitäten in Salzburg teilzunehmen.
Das Programm arbeitet mit dem Konzept der Transversalität als operativem Prinzip, das sowohl einem vertikalen als auch einem horizontalen Verständnis von Kunst entgegensteht. Beispiele für transversale Praktiken, die das Programm begrüßt, sind unter anderem
- Praktiken, die sich mit post-anthropozentrischen Formen der Kreativität befassen (z. B. Reflexionen über die Interaktion zwischen Menschen und anderen als Menschen, Umweltbewusstsein, historische und neue Materialismen, spekulativer Realismus, posthumane Diskurse usw.).
- Praktiken, die abweichende und kreative Ansätze für Geschichte und kulturelles Erbe entwickeln (z. B. archivarische Praktiken, Überlegungen zu zeitlicher Linearität und Anachronismus, experimentelle Formen der Musikaufführung, Montagen von gefundenem Filmmaterial usw.)
- Praktiken, die hierarchische soziale und politische Strukturen in Frage stellen (z. B. in Anlehnung an feministische, queere, marxistische, dekoloniale und postkoloniale Diskurse usw.) sowie traditionelle Arbeitsteilungen auf dem Kunstmarkt (Komponist/Performer/Improvisator, Künstler/Zuschauer, Kunst/Gesellschaft usw.).
- Praktiken, die sich mit dem Imaginären und Spirituellen auseinandersetzen, nicht als marginale Nicht-Realitäten, sondern als Mittel zur Veränderung von Epistemologien und zur Neuerfindung von Ontologien.
Bewerbungen außerhalb dieses Themenschwerpunkts sind ebenfalls erwünscht.
Allgemeine Studieninformationen
Die Universität Mozarteum erweitert und vervollständigt mit dem künstlerischen Doktorat ihr reichhaltiges Angebot kunstuniversitärer Forschung.
Werkbegriff, künstlerisch-forschender Prozess und ihre Dokumentation werden hier als weiträumige, sich aufeinander beziehende und auseinander hervorgehende Kategorien betrachtet, deren Definition und Ausdifferenzierung selbst zum Gegenstand künstlerischer Forschung werden können.
Das Studienangebot richtet sich gleichermaßen an Absolvent*innen der Universität Mozarteum Salzburg wie an Absolvent*innen eines anderen fachlich in Frage kommenden Studiums an einer anerkannten inländischen oder ausländischen postsekundären Bildungseinrichtung.
Um in das künstlerische Doktoratsstudium aufgenommen zu werden, sollten die Doktorand*innen neben den formalen Vorgaben folgende allgemeine Voraussetzungen erfüllen:
- eine aktive, reich entfaltete und fortlaufende künstlerische Praxis;
- ein ausgeprägtes Bewusstsein für den Kontext der eigenen Praxis und ein ausgeprägtes Interesse, sich kritisch mit ihr auseinanderzusetzen;
- ein Interesse am kritischen und kreativen Austausch mit Kolleg*innen und mit einem Forschungsumfeld sowie Offenheit für die wechselseitige Veränderung, die in einem solchen Dialog entsteht;
- die Bereitschaft, sich auf aktuelle diskursive Praktiken einzulassen und mit der Entwicklung eines eigenen Diskurses in der künstlerischen Forschung zu diesen beizutragen.
Die Bewerber*innen werden in einem zweistufigen Auswahlverfahren (Antrag und Präsentation) zum Promotionsprogramm zugelassen. Darüber hinaus müssen Englischkenntnisse (mündlich und schriftlich) nachgewiesen werden.
Die allgemeine Universitätsreife für die Zulassung zum Doktoratsstudium wird durch den Nachweis des erfolgreichen Abschlusses eines facheinschlägigen Diplom- oder Masterstudiums oder eines anderen gleichwertigen Studiums mit mindestens gleichem Ausbildungsniveau an einer anerkannten in- oder ausländischen postsekundären Bildungseinrichtung nachgewiesen. In jedem Fall, aber nicht ausschließlich, gelten Abschlüsse in den an der Universität Mozarteum angebotenen Studien als geeignet.
Weiters muss die Aufnahmeprüfung bestanden werden, um zum Studium zugelassen zu werden. Alle relevanten Dokumente und Vorstudien müssen hochgeladen werden, um im Zuge der Online-Bewerbung geprüft zu werden. Ausgewählte Bewerber werden erst nach Prüfung der bisherigen Studienleistungen und der hochgeladenen Bewerbungen eingeladen.
Notwendige Dokumente zur Online-Bewerbung
- Die Bewerbungsmappe (in einer PDF-Datei von maximal 5 MB) besteht aus einem schriftlichen Teil in englischer Sprache, in dem das Forschungsprojekt skizziert und die bisherige künstlerische Praxis dokumentiert wird, darunter:
- ein Lebenslauf (curriculum vitae)
- ein Portfolio mit relevanten Aktivitäten (Ausstellungen, Konzerte, Kompositionen, Publikationen, Konferenzen usw.), gegebenenfalls mit Links zu Audio- und Videodateien und großen Bildern,
- ein schriftlicher Vorschlag für das künstlerische Forschungsprojekt, das im Laufe des Studiums entwickelt werden soll (Kontextualisierung der geplanten Forschung, Forschungsfragen, Methoden und ein provisorischer Zeitplan des Projektes, optional: Vorschläge für mögliche Betreuer*innen)
Der PhD-Projektvorschlag sollte 5 bis 10 Din A4 Seiten umfassen.
- MA-Zeugnis oder Abschlusszeugnis eines fachlich in Frage kommenden Studiums, falls das Studium bereits abgeschlossen wurde
- aktuelle Inskriptionsbestätigung, falls das Studium noch nicht abgeschlossen wurde (das Zeugnis ist bis zur Einschreibung nachzureichen!)
- Fächer- und Notenübersicht (Transcript of Records) des MA-Studiums
- Sofern weitere Vorstudien vorhanden sind, ist zusätzlich eine vollständige Fächer- und Notenübersicht (Transcript of Records) aller Studien hochzuladen.
- Nachweis der Englischkenntnisse, mindestens B2 gemeinsamer Europäischer Referenzrahmen GER 2001 (optional für die Online-Bewerbung aber verpflichtend für die Zulassung)
Form der Dokumente
- Die Dokumente können als PDF im Anmeldeformular hochgeladen werden.
- Sofern die genannten Dokumente nicht auf Deutsch oder Englisch vorliegen, muss eine offizielle Übersetzung mit eingereicht werden.
Termine & zeitlicher Ablauf
- Prüfungsanmeldung im Bewerbungszeitraum über das Bewerbungsportal Muvac
(ACHTUNG: Anmeldung nur möglich, wenn Dokumente vollständig!) - Das Ergebnis des ersten Teils des Auswahlverfahrens wird den Bewerber*innen bis Mitte Mai 2025 mitgeteilt.
- Ausgewählte Kanditat*innen werden zur Aufnahmeprüfung vor Ort in Salzburg zwischen 10. und 12. Juni 2025 eingeladen.
- Die Ergebnisse des Auswahlverfahrens werden Ende Juni 2025 mitgeteilt.
- Einschreibung in der allgemeinen Zulassungsfrist.
Abweichende Prüfungsmethode
Es wird darauf hingewiesen, dass die Universität Mozarteum Salzburg bei Vorliegen einer Behinderung bzw. einer chronischen Erkrankung verschiedene Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten bei der Zulassungsprüfung und während des Studiums anbietet.
Falls dies für Sie zutrifft und Sie eine Beratung in Anspruch nehmen möchten, dann wenden Sie sich bitte an Claudia Haitzmann: claudia.haitzmann@moz.ac.at oder +43 676 88122 337.
2. in MOZonline: Ausfüllen der verpflichtenden Statistik UHstat1 (Voranmeldung zum Studium) und Notieren der Antragsnummer (wird in der Bestätigungs-E-Mail mitgeteilt)
3. Erstellen eines Bewerbungsaccounts in Muvac
4. Ausfüllen des eigenen Profils in Muvac (in jedem Fall notwendig: persönliche Daten, Angabe der Expertise passend zum Studienwunsch, im Lebenslauf: aktuelle Beschäftigung sowie eine Angabe zur bisherigen Ausbildung)
im Bewerbungszeitraum:
6. Ausfüllen des Bewerbungsformulars in Muvac („Jetzt bewerben“) – im Formular ist an der entsprechenden Stelle die Antragsnummer (siehe Schritt 2) oder die österreichische Matrikelnummer anzugeben
Schauen Sie sich gerne die FAQs zur Anmeldung in Muvac an, wenn Sie bei einem Schritt nicht weiterkommen.
Die Kommunikation während des Bewerbungsverfahrens erfolgt je nach Studium über Muvac oder E-Mails. Bitte stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie während des gesamten Bewerbungsverfahrens unter der im Profil eingetragenen E-Mailadresse erreichbar sind und regelmäßig überprüfen, ob Sie in Muvac neue Nachrichten erhalten haben. Sie können in Ihrem eigenen Profil einstellen, dass Sie bei neuen Nachrichten in Muvac per E-Mail informiert werden (Kontoeinstellungen -> Benachrichtigungen).
Alle Kurse finden in monatlichen Zusammenkünften statt. Ein Wohnsitz in Österreich ist nicht erforderlich, aber die Teilnehmer werden gebeten, an den Aktivitäten in Salzburg teilzunehmen.
Der Abschluss im künstlerischen Doktoratsstudium besteht aus folgenden Teilen:
- Positiver Abschluss der Lehrveranstaltungen und Prüfungen inklusive Interim Review
- Abgabe der Dokumentation des PhD-Projekts
- Kommissionelle Abschlussprüfung: Final Review
Jedes Semester ist der ÖH-Beitrag und, wenn vorgeschrieben, der Studienbeitrag zu bezahlen.
Informationen zur aktuellen Höhe der Gebühren sind HIER zu finden.
Mit der Zulassung zum Studium PhD in the Arts ist kein Gehalt oder Stipendium der Universität Mozarteum verbunden.
Noch Fragen?
Hier finden Sie weitere Informationen zum Studienbeginn:
PhD Candidates
Drawing on agential realism and posthuman knowledge, my research builds a cartography of the implicit axioms and normative-perceptual structures embedded within aesthetic capitalism. As legal governance increasingly yields to AI infrastructures and market dynamics, regulation no longer operates primarily through law or democratic processes. Instead, it unfolds through algorithms, economic self-regulation, and affective economies, transforming perception itself into a site of governance—modulated by circulation, visibility, and emotional resonance.
My focus lies on the aesthetic and perceptible dimensions of these emergent assemblages, attending to how power and normativity are felt, embodied, and materialized—both in physical spaces and dematerialized domains such as institutions, data infrastructures, and entertainment ecosystems. In this context, I position myself as both observer and observed, tracing how such mechanisms inscribe themselves onto my body, thoughts, and emotions—shaping not only my actions and decisions, but my very becoming. Enmeshed in consumerism, I embody the ideal subject of aesthetic capitalism: too sensitive to remain untouched, too immersed to resist.
My practice centers on capturing what I call “patterns trouvés” through molding, casting, and other inscription techniques. Through experimental mapping and trace-oriented processes, I construct a situated cartography of these formations by identifying perceptible residues—cracks where latent structures surface. This cartography is unstable, contingent, and often born of fortuitous encounters. In these cracks, I trace the silence where power has passed—always ready to return and remap the same spot anew.
What forms of cartography are needed to critically engage with the dispersed mechanisms of control? How might these operations be made traceable?
- - -
I am Francesco Pizzocchero, a multidisciplinary artist living and working between Padua, Venice, Milan, and Salzburg. My practice involves a wide range of materials such as wax, iron, wood, ceramic, and plaster, as well as sound and natural elements. I work across various techniques, including sculpture, casting, drawing, coding, performance, and sound installation.
My academic background began with a degree in law, followed by several years of work as a legal professional. However, it soon became clear that I needed to dedicate myself fully to artistic research and practice. I therefore attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where I graduated with honours in Decoration. Since 2024, I have been admitted to the practice-based PhD in the Arts programme at the Institute for Open Arts - Mozarteum University in Salzburg, where I continue to refine my artistic practice and deepen my research.
EXCESS comprises a series of interdisciplinary collaborations and a dissertation text that focuses on the relation between excess and intractability. I do not consider this body of work to be a PhD project that is autonomous from the rest of my artistic practice; EXCESS and my practice are integrated. Rather, the defining contours of this PhD process have been shaped by navigating the meaning of artistic research within an academic institution, wherein the program that I applied for has shifted so drastically that it is unrecognisable from where it began. The rigorous education of this process has been through questioning how artistic practices conform to the legitimisation of this context, and whether this legitimisation allows for the radically undefinable and unknowable things that become art.
- - -
Rebecca Kressley is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sound. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
This research aims to explore the potential of sound as a tool within design process, understood as a structured system of values, principles, knowledge, and methodologies. It reconsiders the role of the musician as a possible interlocutor and mediator in interdisciplinary processes that operate beyond the boundaries of musical performance. Positioned between historical memory and contemporary perspectives, the project draws on a range of experiences - from the Venetian coro spezzato to contemporary sound installations - that demonstrate how sound does not merely occupy space, but actively contributes to its intelligibility, its experiential dimension, and its design methodology. From this standpoint, the research seeks to investigate a project culture that recognizes sound and musical knowledge and practice as generative dimensions, capable of opening new operational and imaginative possibilities. The project seeks to create a platform for reflection and experimentation through dialogue, documentation, collaborative practices, and case studies - allowing sound and musical culture to emerge as modes of thought, communication, and critical engagement. It aims to reconsider the role of musicians in the design of auditory spatial concepts, while simultaneously exploring the interrelation between aesthetics and design strategies, between space and sound.
- - -
Valeria Zane is a musician currently pursuing a PhD at the Mozarteum University. She holds degrees in harp from the Conservatories of Venice and Padua, and a specialization at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She earned an MSc in Management from Ca’ Foscari University and ESCP Business School. Co-founder of studio Pase, her work explores music and creative research projects and processes. She collaborates with the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation, is a board member of the UIA – Università Internazionale dell'Arte, and has worked with institutions such as La Biennale di Venezia, Oslo Opera House, and Opéra National de Paris.
The PhD project explores how generative real-time media can evoke a felt sense of connection between human and non-human entities by staging ecological and temporal transformation as immersive, perceptual experience. It aims to create a performative “media-organism” that reflects the interdependence of living systems and challenges the separation between nature and human subjectivity. Through a series of audiovisual experiments, the research investigates how motion, rhythm, and real-time image-sound processes can generate somatic resonance—a bodily response to temporal and geological forces. The project intertwines generative animation, motion tracking, and code-based image production with fieldwork-based physical movement practices as methods of sensory data collection and embodied reflection. By emphasizing perception beyond language and linear narrative, the work seeks to reconstruct a sense of presence and ecological kinship. It reflects on how audiovisual media can move beyond representation to activate an awareness of vitality and interconnection within a shared biosphere.
- - -
Claudia Rohrmoser is a video artist working at the intersection of visual music, expanded cinema, and media scenography. Her practice explores the fusion of animation, live cinema, and immersive media, often in collaboration with composers and theatrical set designers. Her work includes audiovisual performances, and large-scale video installations for opera, concerts, and contemporary music. Her installations and performances have been showcased internationally at venues such as Stanford University’s CCRMA (Palo Alto, CA), the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, NY), and Teatro Real (Madrid), as well as at major music and arts festivals like MUTEK Festival Tokio, Salzburger Osterfestspiele, Ars Electronica, and Inventionen Festival Berlin. She is the founder of Cinema Vertigo, a platform for artistic research in media spaces. She has been awarded multiple prestigious grants and scholarships in the field of multimedia composition, including the Salzburg State Prize for Media Art, the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Award, and a scholarship-supported Banff Leighton Artist Residency. Claudia studied Computer Animation at FH Salzburg and Experimental Film and Media Arts at UdK Berlin. Currently, she is a Professor of Motion Design and Media Scenography at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSBI). Born in Austria, Claudia lives and works in Berlin and Bielefeld.
“Artistic Practice as a mode for Secular Ethics of Late Capitalism” is an interdisciplinary project that consist of the exhibition series, a musical and written thesis. The general aim of the proposed project is to research how—by implementing Marxist Critique and Lacanian Psychoanalyses onto the category of contemporary art—the notion of artistic practice could be considered as an emancipatory strategy that might generate new notions of freedom of subjectivity within late capitalist society. The practice that leads to production of the visual outcome of this project; the art-labor, which I’m forced to undertake simultaneously to my unpaid studies; as well as the enjoyment, which comes from the illusion of “freedom” of such a lifestyle—constitute of the case study for my theoretical thesis. What is important, the exhibition series and a musical are related to each other, too: The final installation of this series will become the movie set for the musical written by myself, which will be developed as a movie.
I build space around and inside shelters—which form an architecture of the uprooted—in which I place objects of a symbolic nature. The installation is inhabited by variety of organisms, such as plants, mycelium, or ants, which are captured without their permission. The idea of a shelter constitutes a narrative of the project and carries its impact, as well as it is utilitarian. The exhibition is foldable, can be displayed anywhere in similar form, and doesn’t take much storage space. The process of making the first half of the whole exhibition-set is the subject of my theoretical research, where every different hut becomes a representative of different chapter of the thesis: such as 'labor, beliefs and “nature”, enjoyment, materialism, history / immediacy.' The notion of a secular ethics understood both in the universal and individual context is the defining characteristic of this research.
- - -
Agata Cieślak – visual artist, researcher, author, curator. She works in various techniques and means of expression to try to deconstruct common tactics and strategies of artistic production, at the same simultaneously searching for the limits of agency in contemporary art. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute (MA Art Praxis) and then studied philosophy at the Graduate School of Social Research in Warsaw (2021). She is the curator and producer of the first edition of the secondaryarchive.org project – Platform of Artists from Central and Eastern Europe. She has collaborated with many institutions in Poland and abroad, including the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan Studio.
Since 2025, she has been a board member of the artists' association in Poland, the Civil Forum for Contemporary Art (OFSW). Despite many doubts, she still believes in the necessity of art today.
This research project will develop an artistic methodology that engages with organisational structures and planning processes within the built environment. The built world can be considered a material record of human affairs, as 'built documents' which are physical manifestations of the policies, economic incentives, displays of power and technologies of their time. Planning processes reflect material, real-world issues that simulateously carry an ideological and representational weight. By turning to fiction, mimicry and conjecture, the aim is to reveal underlying structures within these processes that would otherwise be inaccessible.
A fictional enterprise, 'Public Programme GmbH', will serve as the site through which these forces and processes are accessed. Rather than identifying a pre-existing site and tracing its entanglements, this project uses a fictional framework as the site itself. This is an attempt to distort or invert the notion of site-specificity by moving away from particular site conditions towards an echo or reflection of the underlying issues. Within this invented context, the service phases of the building industry — the 'Leistungsphasen' or 'Plan of Work' — will be used to trace these world-making processes. These standardised guidelines, which are intended to organise outcomes and define the flow of information, will be reimagined as tools for speculative enquiry. The languages of planning will serve as an offbeat script from which to consider the built environment as man-made, not something that simply exists, but as an act of creation. Using artistic methods and processes that mimic or attach to the structured systems in place in the built environment, this research project seeks to models the conditions that shape our physical world.
- - -
Sunette L. Viljoen, (b. South Africa) is a visual artist living and working in Berlin. Her sculptural installations are frequently site-specific and informed by literature and architecture references. She earned her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2012. Viljoen was a participant at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, (2014-2015); a fellowship recipient at Braunschweig University of Art (2012-2013); and at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (2020-2021). She has exhibited at Sonsbeek 20→24 in Arnhem, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Goodman Gallery Cape Town, Die Raum, Berlin, and the 13th Dakar Biennale in Senegal.
This study rests on two premises. First, the conditions of contemporary composition are intrinsically post-human. This claim holds both from the “classical” post-human perspective—where digitality, embodied in code, networks and algorithms, challenges anthropocentric notions of subjectivity—and from the earlier media-philosophical stance of McLuhan, Clark and Chalmers, who regarded even inorganic tools such as notebooks or pencils as extensions of the human mind.
The second premise is that the post-human predicament created by these conditions foregrounds memory within the specific artistic practice of contemporary composition. Music still depends on memory and expectation of temporal structures, and post-conceptual composition, in which reflection on mediality is internalised, will continue, perhaps for a long time, to treat memory not as a problem to be dispensed with but as the primary locus where mediality is negotiated. Under post-human circumstances the question of memory is posed in forms such as: What shall we call memory? Who remembers? How is remembering enacted?
Grounded in these premises, this artistic research asks how musical temporal structures—how music exists as form in time—can engage the memory-related questions that arise in contemporary composition. Through the artefacts themselves and an autoethnographic
record of the working process, the project makes visible the tacit, practice-based knowledge it produces, aiming to contribute to both compositional practice and scholarly discourse.
- - -
Noh Seung Ju, born in Seoul, South Korea in 1997, is a composer currently based in Austria. His work has earned the International Stiftung Mozarteum’s Paumgartner Medal, selection for the Lucerne Festival Composer Seminar (leading to a performance in Ensemble Modern’s Happy New Ears series), and second prize at the Bartók World Competition. Among all musical parameters he is especially drawn to rhythm; influenced by 'pungmul-nori', he explores rhythmic textures and contrapuntal interplay. This focus has led him to the broader architecture of temporal form, a subject he is now pursuing in a doctoral artistic-research programme at the Mozarteum.
Re-enacting a Collection: On Art Brut, Sanism, and Mad Storytelling critically examines the persistent marginalization of artists associated with "Art Brut" who are labeled as mentally ill. Despite widespread recognition that art is embedded within societal contexts, works associated with this term are still portrayed as apolitical, isolated, and mystical—an outlook deeply rooted in sanism. The project seeks to challenge these contextualizations by developing counter-narratives grounded in Mad, situated perspectives that reclaim cultural and social memory of (ex-)patients.
Within the scope of the project, I will engage with historical artworks and archival material from the Prinzhorn Collection (established in 1919)—a key foundation for the collection and study of pathologized art in the European context. At the same time, I will critically examine the collection itself. The project employs strategies such as speculative storytelling, re-enactment, and exhibition-making. A central research question guiding the inquiry is: In what ways can engaging with the socio-political dimensions of historical artworks and archival materials enable the construction of (ex-)patient-led narratives that challenge the authority of archival and psychiatric power?
Rather than interpreting the artworks—and “mental illness” more broadly—as expressions of inner worlds detached from reality, they are explored as forms of artistic knowledge shaped by social, political, and institutional conditions. Influences from (ex-)patient movements inform the project’s aesthetic strategies, emphasizing collective storytelling, fragmentation, and deconstruction—proposing a Mad perspective as both critique and method.
- - -
Elina Saalfeld is an artist-researcher. Her interdisciplinary, lens-based practice explores power structures in image and narrative production. After completing her B.F.A. at HFBK Hamburg in 2020 (class of Broomberg & Chanarin), she receivedearned her Master’s degree in Art in Context at the UdK Berlin in 2023. Since 2018, Saalfeld has been a member of the Young Valley Soil artist collective.
Her individual and collaborative works have been exhibited at, among others, M.1 of the Arthur Boskamp Foundation (2024), CCA Berlin (2023), the Triennial of Photography Hamburg (2022 and 2018), and the Museum of Photography Berlin (2021).
PhD Candidates 2024
Johanna Binder:
Natur aus zweiter Hand deals with the displacement of plants and the power-political systems and entanglements that are archived and reflected in the flora. With the arrival of Columbus in the Americas in 1492, transoceanic plants became protagonists, alongside humans, of European exploration and investigation, of conquest and cupidity, of (literal) uprooting and long sea voyages on which only the most resilient survived. Today, the descendants of these well-travelled plants live among us, and most of us have a piece of "exotic paradise" in our homes, or: a piece of colonial history.
But the fate of some plants has changed: they have gone from being displaced to becoming invasive themselves, transforming ecosystems and endangering endemic plants. With these plants—invasive neophytes— hegemonic power relations, at least in nature, seem to be renegotiated, as they propose a different distribution of habitat, land use and resources other than (neo)colonial politics and economy might pretend.
Natur aus zweiter Hand aims to reveal what different narratives of world-making and history might be told by the (invading) plants themselves, and to scrutinize the anthropocentric gaze and interests on established and emerging ecosystems. In doing so, a particular focus is placed on the political and economic aspects of these interests. The world-making narratives unfold in a series of exhibitions and writings in which the neophytes are acknowledged to have agency and are both the main protagonists and narrators.
Aline Braun:
What is commonly seen as a "choreography" is very often a final performed production: "the piece." How can one perceive a choreographer's true labor by seeing only its finished product? As only the end of the process is shared, the entire chronology of the real choreographic praxis is erased and its true labor remains invisible to the audience. From a solo research and conceptualisation, to bodily collaborations in a dance microcosm, to a product shared with the public, the complete labor of choreography remains invisible while being essential to the creative work and its comprehension.
"The invisible path of choreographic creation" challenges the view of the choreographer as reduced to the creator of set or improvised movement phrases transmitted to the dancers, and reveals the constant choices he/she/they must navigate in order to create a movement piece as well as his/her/their invisible labor and responsibilities. Contrasting a monolithic identity, the project tries to create a hybrid figure where the tasks of the choreographer, artistic director, curator or performer are intertwined. Navigating the artistic creation and the industry affecting it, how can one unveil the invisible labor of the choreographer in its artistic process? What does the unfolding path of creation encompass in its unseen labor? By showing the invisible, "The invisible path of choreographic creation" exposes the dynamics of the notion of ethics from the point of view of the creation and questions the intertwined responsibilities and constraints linked to the creation of a choreographic process.
From conceptualisation and the first ideas of a work in progress, to the research phase and the production of the piece that will be documented through different artistic methods, "The invisible path of choreographic creation" explores the chronology of the making of several pieces made alongside the research project. In this exploration it might perhaps emerge that the piece itself is not the most important element of a choreographic process. Perhaps the choices made and all the elements that happen around its production process are the real piece. The piece seen as a process allows for a redefinition of the word "choreography" and puts into perspective the choices made during the creation that may be more significant than any artistic product. Which methods of documentation are relevant to unveil the choreographer’s labor? In an alternation of methods and materials, the broader documentation of choreography and the accessibility of invisible labour question the limits of the notion of a "piece" and suggest a redefinition of the work of the choreographer and its figure as an entity. The piece thus becomes a space for physical, systemic, industrial and artistic negotiations from the point of view of the creation.
Renato Grieco:
While the socio-technical alliance enshrined between industry and users is geared exclusively toward a market model adhering to a very stereotypical audience, Audio Erotica represents an unreleased and under-explored platform for implementing adult content in an inclusive and fluid domain, constructed with permeable languages.
Renato Grieco is focusing on a mediarchaeological compositional praxis that can be put at the service of all scholars, producers, activists, and consumers oriented toward the ontological exploration of the format of Audio Porn, Audio Erotica, and ASMR as a poietic and political medium.
At the same time, from the speculative point of view, Renato is documenting with scientific rigor the research with the aim of sharing the artistic perspective of those who actively employ and rethink media and technologies for a scientific community of researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as Porn and Media Studies, Organizational Studies, Media Archaeology, Radio Art, and Poetry.
Francois Lemieux:
My phd research and project at Salzburg's Mozarteum University explores the intricate relationship between Haiti and Québec (Canada); language and the open geographical, political and cultural imaginaries that connect the Caribbeans and the valley of the Saint-Laurence river. This process, in general terms, asks how can solo and multiply authored artistic projects be envisaged such that they register, in their ways of making and enacting, the legacies and effects of colonialism. Currently, my research engages the colonial, migratory and cultural ties between Haiti and Québec as a general starting point for writing, exhibition and film making.
I am interested in the fluid boundaries between fiction and reality, probing the past and present ramifications between space, language and power. Often resisting classification, my work uses the fugitive vocabulary of art to experiment with the ambiguous relationship between documentary observation, modes of address and representation, emphasizing the plasticity of narration. This process develops in a post-disciplinary perspective, informed by collective study, publishing, conversation, image making, text, performance, exhibition and film making. With my artwork, my work and research, I ask how stories and images may be told, collectively processed, re/composed and shared today.
Rebecca Kressley:
'The Excess of Cacophonies (E)' is studying how the modalities of excess arrive in and as art and life, via desire, survival, ecstasy, uselessness and disorder. The project works with text, sound and interdisciplinary art work through a series of collaborations, wherein aesthetic practices are combined with what is otherwise unfigured, and unpredictability is used as a technique for staying with intractability. The collaborations have public presentations and a continuum between them. E is proposing an outcome that flexes with the work itself.
The project's discursive work is interested in where and how 'excess' is used as a device in writing that holds a place for what is otherwise intractable, in a way that differs from the use of the term that applies directly to 'excess' or 'surplus' as philosophical categories. E is asking how this use began as a writing technique and is tracing its development through the present. From this questioning, the project is exploring whether this development can provide some insight into the project's broader study of ecstatic surplus as a simultaneous relation and reaction between art and the quotidian, as it is generated by and becomes within them. The art created throughout 'The Excess of Cacophonies' is in dialogue with but not determined by the project’s discursive framework; space is kept for the art work to move past it. Throughout, E engages with the relations between intractability, excess and possibility, and the paradoxical connections between art, the accidental and ecstatic surplus.
Agata Cieślak:
“Artistic Practice as a mode for Secular Ethics of Late Capitalism” is an interdisciplinary project that consist of the exhibition series, a musical and written thesis. The general aim of the proposed project is to research how—by implementing Marxist Critique and Lacanian Psychoanalyses onto the category of contemporary art—the notion of artistic practice could be considered as an emancipatory strategy that might generate new notions of freedom of subjectivity within late capitalist society. The practice that leads to production of the visual outcome of this project; the art-labor, which I’m forced to undertake simultaneously to my unpaid studies; as well as the enjoyment, which comes from the illusion of “freedom” of such a lifestyle—constitute of the case study for my theoretical thesis. What is important, the exhibition series and a musical are related to each other, too: The final installation of this series will become the movie set for the musical written by myself, which will be developed as a movie.
I build space around and inside shelters—which form an architecture of the uprooted—in which I place objects of a symbolic nature. The installation is inhabited by variety of organisms, such as plants, mycelium, or ants, which are captured without their permission. The idea of a shelter constitutes a narrative of the project and carries its impact, as well as it is utilitarian. The exhibition is foldable, can be displayed anywhere in similar form, and doesn’t take much storage space. The process of making the first half of the whole exhibition-set is the subject of my theoretical research, where every different hut becomes a representative of different chapter of the thesis: such as 'labor, beliefs and “nature”, enjoyment, materialism, history / immediacy.' The notion of a secular ethics understood both in the universal and individual context is the defining characteristic of this research.