Event
Public Colloquium 2025
Searching, Knowing, and Making Knowledge in the Age of Light
Searching, Knowing, and Making Knowledge in the Age of Light
Public Colloquium of the Artistic Research PhD Programme (PhD in Art)
Convened by Miya Yoshida
We are living in the Age of Light – an era in which time and space are continuously measured, defined, merged, and shared at the speed of light. Light has become both a catalyst and a controller of contemporary life. Our episte-ontology dances and moves toward a new grammar of the world and world-making shaped by light.
Amidst this moment of profound transformation, what does it mean to engage in ‘doing and thinking’ in the context of artistic research? How can one fully inhabit their own artistic practice while simultaneously reflecting on it – finding their own language, vocabulary, and forms of articulation? In which way can we frame and contextualise the ephemeral, fluid, and sensitive states of artistic activity? What kinds of processes might lead us to search, to know, and to give a form to what may ultimately be considered (non-)knowledge?
The Public Colloquium 2025 brings together twenty presentations by doctoral candidates from the PhD in Art Program, the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Their works-in-progress – artistic research in development – will be presented and shared, making full use of the vibrant framework offered by the ZFF.
In response to these presentations, our four invited guests – Eva-Maria Stadler, Imogen Stidworthy, Margarete Jahrmann, and Simon Bayly – will offer reflections, critiques, and discussions. Together, they will explore the research questions, chosen methodologies, and the artistic and academic strategies involved. The public colloquium will be documented through photography and drawings by the artist Xiaopen Zhou.
The colloquium fosters thoughtful exchange, creative inspiration, critical imagination, and realisation among all participants.
Participants: Andrew Champlin, carrick bell, Conny Zenk, Corç George Demir, Imani Rameses, Jo O’Brien, Johanna Bruckner, Joseph Leung, Jošt Franko, Judit Navratil, Konstanze Stoiber, Lilla Szasz, Margit Busch, Marie Reichel, Olga Staňková, Oscar Gardea, Sanja Anđelković, Tamara Antonijević, Wolfgang Konrad, Žarko Aleksić
Guest critics: Eva-Maria Stadler, Imogen Stidworthy, Margarete Jahrmann, Simon Bayly
Drawing Artist: Xiaopeng Zhou
Guest Critics
Eva Maria Stadler (*1964) is curator and professor for Art and Knowledge Transfer and head of the institute of Art and Society at the University for applied arts in Vienna, where she also was vicerector from 2019-23. She was teaching at the University for fine arts in Vienna (A) and Munich (D) and at the State Academy for Fine Arts in Stuttgart (D). From 2012-2013 she was director of Galerie der Stadt Schwaz (A). From 1994-2005 she was director of the Grazer Kunstverein and from 2006-2007 she was working as curator in residence at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (A). From 2007-2011 she was curator for contemporary art at the Museum Belvedere (A)
Eva Maria Stadler lives in Vienna (A).
Imogen Stidworthy (Liverpool, UK) is an artist whose work engages with different forms of voicing and communication, how they affect sense of self-and-others and the realities they shape. Her sculptural sound and video installations and short films involve encounters between languages within the work and with its audiences. They figure people for whom verbal language is unstable or fails due, for example, to aphasia, trauma, linguistic or cultural difference, or who have no practice of language.
She completed her PhD in artistic research at Lund University) in 2020, Voicing on the Borders of Language, which focuses on relationship between verbal and non-verbal modes of being in context of non-verbal autism, and is currently a Reader in Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University. Imogen’s work has been exhibited in major exhibitions, including Survival Kit 11, LCCA, Riga (2020), Bergen Assembly (2019, 2013), Suzhou Biennial (2016), Sao Paulo Biennial (2014), Busan Biennial (2012), and Documenta 12, Kassel, DE (2007). Her solo shows include Museum Dr Guislain, Gent, BE (2022), Netwerk, Aalst, BE (2019), Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, DE (2018), Imperial War Museum, London (2015), AKINCI, Amsterdam (2013, 2009, 2005), and Matts Gallery London (2011, 2003). She curated two related group exhibitions at the Tapies Foundation, Barcelona (2012) and Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, (MuKHA, 2008).
Margarete Jahrmann is a ludic artist and researcher. As Professor and head of the department Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna she launched in 2024 The Psycholudic Approach: Exploring Play for a Viable future (Austrian Science Fund), building on ideas of Ludic Cultures and Non-human Agencies. IN 2023 she published a monograph on Kopfgeld and Other Ludic experiments on the conglomerate of nbeurosciencwes and art. In her collaborative and interdisciplinary artistic practice, she developed a LUDIC method of arts and artistic research, explores the human and non- human, cognitive, emotional linked to the ecological, democratic and political challenges. Her artistic focus lies on playable, performative and installation pieces that explore AI and role play, as expressed in the WWTF fundeded artistic research work ROBOPSY since 2025. She exhibited ludic art pieces internationally, for example at Biennale Habana, Kunsthalle Ulm, re:publica Berlin and AIL Vienna. Her awards include prix ars electronica, transmediale and as overall recognition of her work the 2020 Media Art Prize of the City of Vienna.
Simon Bayly is co-leader of the Postgraduate Research Programme at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, which hosts 70 doctoral researchers pursuing research projects across the fields of music, theatre, live art, moving image practices and art therapies. His research interests include participatory and ‘socially-engaged’ forms of art practice, the dramaturgies and choreographies of intentional communities, hybrid genres of performance practice outside of theatre and art contexts (such as forms of political protest and organizing) and the cross-over between performance and the practices of philosophy, psychoanalysis and anthropology. His book A Pathognomy of Performance was published by Palgrave in 2011.
Recent work includes co-editing the ‘On Meeting’ issue of the journal Performance Research (Feb 2024) and an essay collaboration with the artist and writer Ira Brand for the edited collection Rethinking Roland Barthes Through Performance (2023).
Xiaopeng Zhou (b.1985), Guangzhou, China
He currently lives and works in Berlin and Guangzhou. His works are rooted in prolonged observation and everyday interaction in different context. Zhou seeks to relate and reflect upon various life experiences between individuals through drawings, videos, and installations.
His work is rooted in long-term observation and daily interactions across diverse contexts. Through drawing, installation, and video, he explores the visual and ethical implications of human interactions with non-human entities, particularly geological resources.
His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as Kunstverein Friedrichshafen (solo exhibition, 2024), Para Site, Hongkong (2024), Taipei International Video Art Exhibition (2023), West Den Haag, The Hague (2023), He Xiangning Art Museum (2022), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2021), Kunsthaus Dresden (2021)
