Interdisciplinary and future-orientated
Research areas of the WittenLab. Zukunftslabor Studium fundamentale
From new forms of art to planetary education
The research specialisations of the WittenLab. Zukunftslabor Studium fundamentale at Witten/Herdecke University are dedicated to the interplay between science and the arts. The aim is to develop and communicate new findings and narrative approaches for theory and practice through transdisciplinary work.
Digital arts and cultural mediation
The Chair of Digital Arts and Cultural Mediation researches topics, strategies and developments in the technology- and time-based arts since the mid-20th century and reflects on the formats of cultural mediation that have emerged from this. The focus is on the visual arts. Methods of art and media studies as well as visual culture are expanded in an interdisciplinary way to include artistic disciplines such as film, literature, music, dance and theatre. In addition, the researchers investigate the potential of digital applications for the presentation, mediation, archiving and musealisation of analogue and digital art.
Art history
The Art Studies research area is dedicated to the challenges posed by the large number of images in the arts, sciences and everyday life: Never before has it been as easy as it is today - in the digital age - to produce and disseminate images. Artistic works have become a minority. This development poses a lasting challenge to art history as an academic discipline: We ask about the distinction between artistic and non-artistic images, how art is handled in museums and how the individuality of images has changed over the centuries.
Phenomenology of music
How do we perceive music in different cultural and social contexts and how does it interact with other arts, mass media and philosophical concepts? The Phenomenology of Music research area sheds light on this and more. We assume that human consciousness can communicate through music without words, give temporal processes a spatial dimension, process acoustic stimuli into meaningful signals and supplement them with imagined images. The research department has been cooperating with the renowned "Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik" festival for many years.
History and philosophy of knowledge
In the research area History and Philosophy of Knowledge, we ask ourselves how knowledge is created, organised and disseminated. We are particularly interested in the history and philosophy of economic thought as well as everyday global processes of knowledge transfer.
History and Philosophy of Knowledge
Transformation
The "Transformation" research area in the WittenLab at Witten/Herdecke University researches and promotes social, cultural and ecological transformation processes. One focus is on the integration of collective trauma, using interdisciplinary approaches such as "Global Social Witnessing" to develop personal and social integration skills. At the same time, the area is dedicated to planetary education in order to develop narratives and educational approaches that do justice to the challenges of climate change and create a new awareness of our responsibility as co-creators of the future. A space for dialogue will be created in the "Academy Third Space" real laboratory, inspired by Homi K. Bhabha's concept of the "Third Space", which strengthens art and culture as transformative forces in post-migrant societies. This is complemented by the exchange space "(T)Raumfabrik", which examines urban, self-organised spaces in which art, work and philosophy are interlinked. These research approaches combine theory and practice to open up innovative paths for a sustainable and just society.
Research Area Transformation
