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🦚 Our next Fantastic Wednesday is coming on Apri 15 at 6pm, with Emily Sarsam 🦚

We’ll meet at the PhD-in-Practice Studio (Room 201) at the Akademie (Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien). Join us!

"I live next to a park filled with peacocks. In it, there’s a zoo. Derelict playgrounds. Gigantic trees with airborne roots that look like elephants. At one point, a road was built around the park to take pressure off inner-city traffic. From my room, the park sounds like it’s humming. Except at night, when I hear the peacocks and lions howl again. I always wondered what would happen if, one day, the animals lost their voices competing with the hum. Would they find new ways of communicating or would they flee? Would they raise their voices or grow silent? What if, in silence, they discovered a way to communicate that was impossible to drown out?"

In "We hum together to re-member” we invite you to one of the “Re-Membering” faction’s hide-outs to experience the different ways noise and silence can conceal insurgence.

Featuring a performance by the New Choir.

…

Emily Sarsam is an artist and researcher who works with sound composition, creative writing, performance, and sculpture. Her research mainly looks at the impacts of colonialism and extractivism on commoning, farming and local cosmologies. She is particularly interested in how the creative process of fiction writing is influenced by sonic composition, and vice versa. She is a co-founder of Broudou, a research collective and publication dedicated to the future of food in Tunisia, and a team member of Tunis-based artist residency & project space, Mouhit. She is a candidate of the PhD in Practice program and currently lecturing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

🔩 Our next Fantastic Wednesday is coming on March 4 at 6pm, with İpek Çınar. 🔩

We’ll meet at the PhD-in-Practice Studio (Room 201) at the Akademie (Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien). Join us!

During the evening, İpek Çınar shares glimpses from her ongoing research into educational justice, participation, adaptation, and the many frictions that accompany collective effort. Grounded in her engagement with Orta Okul (@ortaokulinitiative), a nomadic art education platform, the presentation draws on experiences shaped through facilitation, negotiation, and long term collaboration.

Moving between displacement, dialogue, exhaustion, and the slow temporalities of working together, the evening opens with an informal viewing of selected materials exhibited through the logic of Orta Okul. Images, stories, and infrastructural components will be temporarily assembled in the studio. Over the course of the evening, the installation will be rearranged to make space for a reading from an evolving text that reflects on the process.

With contributions by Ece Gökalp, Burçin Tetik, and the women of the Berlin Turkey Women’s Association, and with the support of Aykan Safoglu during the event.

The main language of the event is English. Most reading materials will be in Turkish and German. We recommend that the audience bring a translation application with a photo translation function.

…

İpek Çınar (she/her) is a cultural practitioner working predominantly with participatory art practices that explore collective learning, facilitation, and shared authorship. She uses play, joy, and unexpected encounters as means of expression in her socially engaged works.
She loves the word “Orta” (Middle). She has been co-editor of Orta Format since 2015, alongside Şener Soysal and Eda Yiğit, and is a proud co-founder of Orta Okul together with Ece Gökalp.

🍄Our next Fantastic Wednesday is coming on January 14 at 6pm, with Haman Mpadire. 🍄

We’ll meet at the main hall of the Akademie, past the building’s main entrance (Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien), for a participatory physical lecture through movement with Haman Mpadire. Flexible/sportswear advised. Informal conversations and drinks will follow afterwards. Join us!

Mpadire’s ongoing project is invested in the manifestation of decoloniality, animistic practices as speculative phenomena beyond the (un)reasonable that influences how we understand space, energy, and presence. 

Haman Mpadire (totemic clan: MUSHROOM) is an artist, researcher born in Eastern Uganda, originally from Busoga tribe. His artistic practices are centered around the question of what it means to be a capable human being in the world where we’re almost forgetting to live.

𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲, 𝗔𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗮
𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗼 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀:

In advance of the PhD in Practice application process 2026, the program invites potential and interested applicants to an online information session where you will have the opportunity to meet the program leaders and professors Anette Baldauf and Renate Lorenz, learn about the program, requirements, the call for submissions and decision procedure of the PhD in Practice program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Application period: February 1st – March 2nd, 2026
Beginning of studies: October 1st, 2026

Info Meetings:
Wednesday, December 10th 2025, 5pm (CET)
Wednesday, January 14th 2026, 5pm (CET)

Zoom link (also in bio): https://akbild-ac-at.zoom.us/j/91986094936?pwd=WTdrQ0ZqekJIM1hGUi9HaGNzbTBOZz09
Meeting ID: 919 8609 4936
Passcode: 88$&#4

The program, as well as the info meeting, will be held in English. No prior registration is required.

🚂 Our next Fantastic Wednesday is coming on December 10 at 6pm, with Tekla Aslanishvili. @tekelson

We’ll meet at the PhD-In-Practice studio (room 201) at the Akademie (Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien) for a lecture-screening presenting fragments from Tekla Aslanishvili’s work in progress. Informal conversations and drinks will follow afterwards. Join us!

Tekla Aslanishvili’s lecture guides through her ongoing attempt to make sense of the strategic restructuring of governance, knowledge production, and practices of self-organization around energy production and transit infrastructures in the South Caucasus. By disentangling and re-weaving the threads of spatially and temporally distant political processes, intimate biographies, conflicting emotional regimes, and cinematic imaginaries shaped by the Soviet Union’s industrialization plan, she examines how these layers of past fold into the contemporary enchantments with infrastructural development.

Tekla Aslanishvili is an artist and filmmaker based between Berlin, Vienna, and Tbilisi. Her work examines the shifting relations between states, people, and their land through the lens of infrastructure, employing interdisciplinary collaboration and experimental documentary methods to excavate the fragmented histories, technologies, and myths embedded within these systems. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and an ifk Junior Fellow. Her work has been presented in international exhibitions and biennials. She was a 2024–2025 Graduate School fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts, a 2019 Digital Earth fellow, a 2021 Ars Viva nominee, and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award (2020).

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

✨ 𝙄𝙣𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙝𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 🌋
Public Defense by Caitlin Berrigan, PhD-in-Practice
Friday 12 December 2025
14:30pm CET, Anatomiesaal
Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/phdinpractice

Examination Panel: Renate Lorenz (supervisor), Anette Baldauf (supervisor), Alena Williams (external appraiser), Christina Jauernik (Chair)

At the indistinct slit between life and nonlife and my body and yours and the body of the planet are two existents: the viral and the mineral. They are the costars of this cosmology that seeks to practice forms of relationality across an ecology of selves, matters, and others—both living and undead. This cosmology of artistic research is a prompt to question, expand, and make shimmer the contours of ontological categories. The works tend to our material-semiotic relationships in being-with them, and indeed how they co-constitute our subjectivation that make us of them. How can we understand, interpret, and be in relation to the inhuman world? How can we practice other ways of being a body? The practices within this cosmology bring the forces of the unseen, the micropolitical, the mineral, and the inhuman into the realm of the sensible. Unfolding in relation and praxis, these autotheoretical writings and artworks employ methods in technopoetics, queer phenomenologies, and counterinfrastructures.

Speculative worldmaking is a critical, imaginative practice towards emancipatory politics. These works’ protagonists collectively attune to “affective geologies” towards a cocreation of subjectivity with inhuman forces that is always in excess of the self: being multiple, being-with, being unbounded. This work asks: What could it look like to create alliances across different metabolic forms? Recognizing cosmological worldbuilding as both a craft and a philosophical framework, my work engages with the embodied forms and substantive politics of creating a world in which the human is no longer at the center. The insurgency of volcanoes and viruses vibrate throughout.

PhD-in-Practice Program:
𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐓𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐬

08.05. – 17.05.2025

Performances:
08.05.2025, 8pm
14.05.2025, 6pm

Can we resist liberalism’s desire for solidarity based on empathy and mutual understanding, and instead engage in contradiction, mistranslation, and incomprehension as generative forms to reshape solidarities? If so, what politics would emerge?

Through gestures of opacity, storytelling, and echoes of bodies and traces, this exhibition invites us to reimagine solidarity as an ever-evolving, contested, and imperfect practice.

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Können wir dem liberalen Versprechen einer Solidarität, die auf Empathie und Verständnis beruht, widerstehen und uns stattdessen auf Widerspruch, Fehlübersetzung und Unverständnis als Strategien zur Neugestaltung von Solidaritäten einlassen? Wenn ja, welche Politik würde sich daraus ergeben?

Durch Gesten der Opazität, Erzählungen sowie Echos von Körpern und Spuren lädt diese Ausstellung dazu ein, Solidarität als eine sich ständig entwickelnde, umkämpfte und unvollkommene Praxis neu zu denken.

Artists / Künstler*innen: andrea ancira @ohgrito , Tekla Aslanishvili @tekelson , Caitlin Berrigan @caitlinberrigan , Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun @mediarcheology , Gris García @perrosyarte , Pille-Riin Jaik @pilleriinjaik , Izidora I LETHE @lethe__i , Yen Noh @yen.noh , Vrishali Purandare @vrucelee , Emily Sarsam @3am3ali , Olia Sosnovskaya @no.nothing.never , Olga Zovskaya @zvskaya

Curators / Kürator*innen: andrea ancira, Gris García, Yen Noh, Vrishali Purandare and Olga Zovskaya, with support from Laura Birschitzky @laura.birschitzky

Graphic design by AN-CA-ZI.

This exhibition is a cooperation between Kunstraum Niederoesterreich and the PhD-in-Practice program of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

@phd_inpractice @akbild @kunstraum_niederoesterreich

🪨We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 2nd of April at 6pm.

This time we will meet at the PhD in Practice Studio (Schillerplatz, 1010, 2nd floor, room 201) for a lecture performance and insight to work in progress by Olga Zovskaya. Join us for the eve of talks, growing images, expanding stories, shared thoughts and drinks!

Fragments. Six stories from and around Shushi/a explores possibilities of narration in the context of Artsakh/Karabakh region of the South Caucasus - the place affected by long-lasting conflict, falsifications of history, and mutually exclusive national_istic narratives.

Olga Zovskaya is an artist and researcher with a background in architecture. She employs that as a lens to examine the legacy and effects of different power regimes, while exploring the role that built structures and urban spaces play in historical events, creation of dominant narratives and shaping collective memory. She is interested in ways architecture can be mobilized to challenge those hegemonies. Her works take the form of installations, sculptures, temporary situations and writing.

#fantasticwednesday #phdinpractice

🪨We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 2nd of April at 6pm.

This time we will meet at the PhD in Practice Studio (Schillerplatz, 1010, 2nd floor, room 201) for a lecture performance and insight to work in progress by Olga Zovskaya. Join us for the eve of talks, growing images, expanding stories, shared thoughts and drinks!

Fragments. Six stories from and around Shushi/a explores possibilities of narration in the context of Artsakh/Karabakh region of the South Caucasus - the place affected by long-lasting conflict, falsifications of history, and mutually exclusive national_istic narratives.

Olga Zovskaya is an artist and researcher with a background in architecture. She employs that as a lens to examine the legacy and effects of different power regimes, while exploring the role that built structures and urban spaces play in historical events, creation of dominant narratives and shaping collective memory. She is interested in ways architecture can be mobilized to challenge those hegemonies. Her works take the form of installations, sculptures, temporary situations and writing.

#fantasticwednesday #phdinpractice

We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 12th of March at 6pm.

This time we will meet at the PhD in Practice Studio (Schillerplatz, 1010, 2nd floor, room 201) for an exhibition and reading by Francis Whorrall-Campbell.

One day a rose grew from the ground and bloomed into a circus. Is it Wednesday already? Will there be martinis? On the floor there are only two rules: THROW THE DICE. CUT THE DECK.

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Francis Whorrall-Campbell (b. 1995) is an artist, writer, and sometimes art critic from the UK. Working across text, sculpture, and the digital, their work undertakes a materialist investigation of sexual subjectivity. Guided by research into the pasts and presents of gender transition, a relationship between making an artwork and making a (gendered) self emerges as a method of thinking critically about how identities and desires are formed in interaction with the world and narratives around them.

His work has been shown in recent exhibitions at Bologna.cc, Amsterdam (2025); CCA Derry~Londonderry (2024); Xxijra Hii, London (2024); National Sculpture Factory, Cork (2023); EACC, Castellón (2023), with recent performances and screenings at ZHdK (2024); Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre (2024); Modern Art Oxford (2024); and Nottingham Contemporary (2023). They are the author of ‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED: [in progress] A non-fiction- novel about Kurt Cobain, Twink Death and the History of the Trans Internet’, the first part published alongside an exhibition at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. From September – November 2024, they were a Laureate of the Principal Residency Programme at La Becque, Switzerland.

Fantastic Wednesday is an open form event, where PhD-in-Practice students show once a month their work in progress and experiment with different formats of auditory, visual and theoretical presentations.

@francis_w_c #fantasticwednesday #phdinpractice #wednesday #martinis

We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 15th of January at 6 pm. This time we will meet at Schillerplatz’s Innenhof for a lecture performance about banned audio cassettes and a rice chart by Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun.

I’m climbing up the staircases. I look, where the voice of Tahsin is coming up. I was saying ‘He’s gonna return one day’, did he really come back? As I’m moving towards the staircases, his voice is coming clearer. That’s really the voice of Tahsin. I arrived in front of the door, which is full of shoes. I entered the living room, looked at the guests. I was looking for Tahsin but I couldn’t see him. We had a small cassette player. I realised that the voice was coming from the cassette player. I looked at that. I wished him to sit and speak there.

Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun is an artist and filmmaker, lives and works in Karlsruhe and Istanbul. His practice focuses on the agency and the potentiality of truth making of the media, particularly of sound. After working as director and assistant in film, his current practice is mediating still and moving images, deconstructing metanarratives and decolonizing canonical history writing practices. After studying history and sociology at Boğaziçi University, he graduated from Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Media Arts, with a diploma about the soundscapes in Kurdish cinema. He is an alumna of Jan van Eyck Academie in Netherlands and currently is a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, looking for methodologies of how to open video archives from the 90s, asking the question repeatedly ‘How do moving images move us?’.

Join us for an eve of sounds, vegetarian food, warm tea, shared talks and thoughts!

We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 15th of January at 6 pm. This time we will meet at Schillerplatz’s Innenhof for a lecture performance about banned audio cassettes and a rice chart by Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun.

I’m climbing up the staircases. I look, where the voice of Tahsin is coming up. I was saying ‘He’s gonna return one day’, did he really come back? As I’m moving towards the staircases, his voice is coming clearer. That’s really the voice of Tahsin. I arrived in front of the door, which is full of shoes. I entered the living room, looked at the guests. I was looking for Tahsin but I couldn’t see him. We had a small cassette player. I realised that the voice was coming from the cassette player. I looked at that. I wished him to sit and speak there.

Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun is an artist and filmmaker, lives and works in Karlsruhe and Istanbul. His practice focuses on the agency and the potentiality of truth making of the media, particularly of sound. After working as director and assistant in film, his current practice is mediating still and moving images, deconstructing metanarratives and decolonizing canonical history writing practices. After studying history and sociology at Boğaziçi University, he graduated from Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Media Arts, with a diploma about the soundscapes in Kurdish cinema. He is an alumna of Jan van Eyck Academie in Netherlands and currently is a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, looking for methodologies of how to open video archives from the 90s, asking the question repeatedly ‘How do moving images move us?’.

Join us for an eve of sounds, vegetarian food, warm tea, shared talks and thoughts!

🟢We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 4th of December at 6 pm.

This time the studio will be filled with 90’s pop melodies, contradictory storytelling and disappearing images from the artistic research on political and poetic storytelling in Baltic landscapes by @pilleriinjaik

In her ongoing PhD research Pille-Riin Jaik follows different leads of post-colonial writers who deal with alternative ways of storytelling while also dwelling more directly on theory about landscape’s ethno-linguistic ownership paradigms, imperialistic aspirations and geopolitical tendencies of the Baltic region. She is curious of different historical attempts of re-contextualisation in the area (f.e Ethnofuturism, Estonian former president Lennar Meri’s new national origin story, different historic theme parks), but also about current political processes of neo-libreral capitalist nation state buildings. Her wish is to dismantle, hack and root out some common myths in and about Baltic landscapes and try to generate a more complex understanding of this area, but also reflect on storytelling as a political and poetic strategy. In the Fantastic Wednesday she wishes to share some thoughts and images she has been lingering on last year while following circular shapes, historical loops, Meteorite craters, imperialistic bears, limestone mines and 90’s pop songs.

Join us for an eve of performative stories, shared talks, thoughts and drinks!

#phdinpractice #fantasticwednesday #pilleriinjaik

🟢We would love to invite you to another Fantastic Wednesday on the 4th of December at 6 pm.

This time the studio will be filled with 90’s pop melodies, contradictory storytelling and disappearing images from the artistic research on political and poetic storytelling in Baltic landscapes by @pilleriinjaik

In her ongoing PhD research Pille-Riin Jaik follows different leads of post-colonial writers who deal with alternative ways of storytelling while also dwelling more directly on theory about landscape’s ethno-linguistic ownership paradigms, imperialistic aspirations and geopolitical tendencies of the Baltic region. She is curious of different historical attempts of re-contextualisation in the area (f.e Ethnofuturism, Estonian former president Lennar Meri’s new national origin story, different historic theme parks), but also about current political processes of neo-libreral capitalist nation state buildings. Her wish is to dismantle, hack and root out some common myths in and about Baltic landscapes and try to generate a more complex understanding of this area, but also reflect on storytelling as a political and poetic strategy. In the Fantastic Wednesday she wishes to share some thoughts and images she has been lingering on last year while following circular shapes, historical loops, Meteorite craters, imperialistic bears, limestone mines and 90’s pop songs.

Join us for an eve of performative stories, shared talks, thoughts and drinks!

#phdinpractice #fantasticwednesday #pilleriinjaik

PhD in Practice, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Info Meetings:

Wednesday, November 6th 2024, 17 h
Wednesdsay, January 15th 2025, 17 h

Application period: February 1–28th, 2025
Beginning of studies: October 1st, 2025

Join us today!
Join Zoom Meeting
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