Aude Bertrand-Höttcke

Aude Bertrand-Höttcke is a Research Associate for the WittenLAB. Future Laboratory Studium fundamentale.

Research focus

Aude is an action researcher and lecturer at WittenLab. She operates at a crossroads between urban forms of life, contemporary cultures and futures studies. Her projects are often informed by immersive, contemporary artistic practices - especially media/net art and socially engaged/ community-based art.

Critical contemporaneity as a field of experimentation

In the course of its advanced 'dissolution of boundaries', contemporary art deals with many phenomena and challenges of our time - these include, for example, togetherness, testing new forms of dialogue and deliberation, experimenting with alternative value chains, dealing with the ecological question or the topic of subsistence. Last but not least, art-based research is also able to deal with the potential effects of digitalisation.

Art thus opens up an interesting space for experimentation - not only to reflect on our present, but also to make potential, liveable and desirable futures more tangible.

In the programme area of critical contemporaneity, the dialogue between art, science and practice unfolds and serves as a basis for the development of a potential new culture that can be experienced and shaped in projects.

Current Projects

Futures Club Witten (F.C. Witten)

A joint experiment with the Community for Critical Futures Studies (KZF) and the Plurality University Network (U+), Futures Club Witten is a place where we freely explore alternative futures (initially of higher education) in an open, creative, critical, and experimental manner, with a focus on experiencing, reflecting and playing, rather than just discussing.

Completed research projects

• "Post-Fiction - epistemological research as an artistic experiment" (individual research project)

Host institution: Institut ACTE (Arts Créations Théories Esthétique) Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne.

Institut ACTE | Labo - Institut ACTE

• "(T)RaumFabrik - living and working in the future" (working group)

Initiated after a field trip and workshop in Marseille in 2024, (T)Raumfabrik was an exchange group with practitioners and researchers from urban studies and cultural urbanism.

• Academy Third Space (social lab - 2023-2025).

The Akademie Third Space experiment was a social lab that was launched in autumn 2023.

It is based on an initiative by film director and cultural worker Ayse Kalmaz.

Its aim was to test and establish a third space (in the sense of Homi K. Bhabha) as a place of negotiation for a new understanding of culture and innovative art productions, and to ensure the non-reproduction of established power structures and dominant cultures.

Following a Studium Generale (Classe Préparatoire aux Grandes Ecoles) in Paris, Aude studied international economics at ESCP Business School (formerly ESCP-EAP) from 1999 to 2003 in Paris, Oxford and Berlin.

She then gathered practical experience in international consulting and contemporary arts.

She completed her dissertation in cultural studies at Witten/Herdecke University in 2022 and joined WittenLab. Zukunftslabor Studium fundamentale in 2023.

WORKING GROUPS

Network for Critical Futures Studies (KZF Berlin), Plurality University Network (U+ Paris), Institute/Collective Espaces Communs (Marseille). Member, Deutsche Gesellschaft für ästhetische Forschung (Fribourg CH).