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Photography: (c) Brishty Alam, 2018

ROUNDTABLE

Future Master’s Project presentations | Master’s Project Groundwork | mid-semester presentations

Fréderiqué Neuts Leroy project is developed out of research focusing on urban rooms and demographic prospective within urban space. A major topic in her investigations concern ideas of non/empty/vacuum places, as it also was elaborated by John Cage and Yves Klein in the last century. Another reference and connection is the terminology by Michel Foucault and his work on heterotopics. These discussions and researches are not at least manifested via paintings. A virtual space of the exhibition shall be installed on Instagram: a virtual room within the exhibition room within another room etc.
 
Andrea Vezga´s work on Extopic Bodies deals with the evolution and future of the human body. The medias in research are divers as well as the used artistic medias: an online-survey (“How relevant is technology in your life?”) leads to generation of thesis, a secondary analysis of an online-survey concerning the future living circumstances under increasing influence of robotic technologies is discussed by examining the used terminology. The visual works (film, photos etc) focus on the human body, the sculptural character of the body and single or combined body parts. The narrations and conceptual basics relate to transhumanism and posthumanism debates, to Cartesianism and modernities, to surrealistic films etc.
 
The central questions interweaved in her doings are: How will the humans look like in the future?
Who will have access for this technologies?
What does this mean to personal identity and what is the physical essence of being human?
 
Barbara Macek´s research deals with human-wolf-hybrids. Her methods of research are divers and connected to discourses in zoology, anthropology, medicine, psychology etc. One of her fundamental thesis assume that four different strategies of data analysis lead to four basically different research outcomes. Within this hybrid method of analyzing data and generating theory, quantified and qualitative data is correlated to each other, case studies and pieces of evidence lead to scientific and historical narratives and are interweaved with stories concerning the homo lupus and humananimal hybrids. Social and historical processes of monster-constructions and othering are pointed out.
 
Gabriela Guadalupe Aldrete Hernandez a.k.a. Lala presents investigations on the structure of the DNA, the history of body-spirit-dichotomy, the philosophy of mirroring and reality. She creates a narrative analogy between the human DNA and a mirror. In the center of the research are for example questions like “Who am I and why do I look the way I look” and also questions concerning the conceptualization of the Self and the We. Lala points out similarities between molecular system of elements and human social systems, the visualization of her research shall also be shown as installation-work and performance.
 
Rafael Lippuner´s project work deals with the architecture of plants (trees, branches etc.), with scaling and labeling, with (de-)constructing meanings and ascriptions. His research and ideas are manifested in different artistic media: sculpture, conceptual photography (posters and magazine), (pseudo-) psychological interpretation of trees made out of Soletti-sticks by different test persons, textual scaling/systematization on blackboard etc.
 
Rafael connects personal narrations with theoretical research into biological, psychological and linguistic discourses and typologies. The branches are not at least referring to methods of digital data systematization and also to various shapes within the human body.

(c) Johannes Frauenschuh