The Department of Visual Culture brings together comprehensive professionaland methodological competencies at the interface between contemporary art,architecture and theory. The central focus of our work is an extensiveengagement with the plethora of forms and practices with which culture isproduced, negotiated and put to use along historical, political, social andeconomic processes. Our interrogation of the different manifestations of theseprocesses combines the analysis of the political dimension of spatialproduction and pictorial representation with the investigation of visualconstructions of social phenomena. The starting point for this research is thelived and mutually shared practice of culture.
With a perspective orientated towards actual everyday experiences, the Departmentof Visual Culture opens up a repertoire of approaches, methodologies andtheoretical tools for the investigation of the great challenges of today interms of their historical contingency and malleability
- the increasing influence of digital technologies,
- different forms of global migration,
- growing levels of social and economic inequity,
- the increasing informalisation and precarity of work,
- the neo-liberalisation of the city and its institutions,
- new modes of political and social regulation,
- the worldwide effects of environmental destruction and climate change.
In all these areas we provide critical knowledge that brings togetherartistic, architectural and planning considerations with a range of historical,theoretical, experimental and interpretive approaches.
