The Institute for Linear Research

instituteforlinearresearch.org

1. THE LINE is an arbitrary straight line traced across the globe. The Institute for Linear Research will focus its research on the particular geography defined by it. here is a map of THE LINE. 

2. The research will be conducted by walking on THE LINE. Walking allows engagement with the landscape that is unpolluted by outmoded theories or preconceived hierarchies of what is important.

3. The Institute for Linear Research is concerned with places that have thus far slipped any attention. THE LINE allows conducting a research into landscapes that we do not even know exist. THE LINE is not representative or complete if judged by taxonomies such as continents, climate zones or countries. Contemporary landscapes cannot be captured by distributing research in these categories. We believe that the random selection of spaces, that following THE LINE entails, will lead us to the unknown.

4. The Institute for Linear Research looks for project partners that are in physical proximity to THE LINE. With this guiding principle, the Institute aims to circumvent the obvious and establish new and unexpected relations between countries, museums, artists, researchers , art and architecture schools, and anyone with an interest in walking and landscape.

5. The collected research outcomes will be published as a book series under The Infinite Publication Series label. The books are not an end in themselves but rather a tool for involving people and starting a public discourse. The first volume focuses on Liechtenstein and will be available in Spring 2020. It will include essays and interviews with local experts.

The Line.

Exhibition, 2018

The Conquest of Remoteness in Liechtenstein
Opening: Saturday, May 26th 2018, 7pm
Exhibition: May 27th through May 30th 2018, 2 pm to 9 pm
Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice

THE LINE explores the shrinkage of remote territory in Liechtenstein in relation to corresponding architectural and infrastructural typologies.

Liechtenstein is characterized by a high proximity of urban centres, agriculture and remote alpine areas, resulting mainly from the extreme topography. THE LINE, a cross-section through the country, will be the framework to investigate the shrinking remoteness of FL, from disconnected and fragmented landscapes of the past to highly interlinked spaces of today. The principal method of research – walking, will provide the opportunity to analyse not only the formation of the country since its initial settlement 7000 years ago, but also the relation of topography and architecture.

The results of the project will be delivered through an exhibition at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi in Venice opening on 26 May 7pm. The exhibition will be open to the public from 27 May through 30 May 2018.

The exhibition will take place in Liechtenstein, opening on 5 June at Rathausplatz in Vaduz, and will be open to the public from 6 June through 29 June 2018 at the University of Liechtenstein. An accompanying program will soon be announced.

The exhibition is part of a research project conducted together with the students of Studio Venice at the University of Liechtenstein.

Organisation
Liechtenstein Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Education and Culture
University of Liechtenstein

Curators
THE LINE is curated by Luis Hilti and Matilde Igual Capdevila from the University of Liechtenstein with Ümit Mesci.

Participants
Ahmed Elsoudy, Alexander Sokolov, Eddie Sardeng, Enrique Hernández, Hanna  Hajda, Holger Dörner, Jin Yiran, Kateryna Dyma, Martin Mraz, Megan Quirey, Michelle Rheinberger, Nina Beck, Nina Meusburger, Philipp Entner, Rüya Hilal Aydede, Sami Akkach, Sofia Liberali and Tatjana Probst.

Supported by
Liechtenstein Cultural Foundation
Zumtobel
ProHelvetia
Roeckle AG
Hilti group

Thanks to
Bianca Böckle
Christof Frommelt
Anna Hilti
Alkistis Thomidou
Pavle Stamenovic
Sebastian Utzni

C.A.T. A Guidebook to Life Elsewhere

Book (2019)

From 2016–19 students of the Art&Science master course have been working on the implications of a contemporary academic discourse that aims at reframing our understanding of ‘nature’ through the annual topic ‘In the Woods – In the Wild’. Artistic imaginations concerning nature become markedly influenced by new insights of various scientific disciplines. In order to narrow down this rather broad topic, the research focused on the question of ‘what is a forest?’. Students were exposed to a multidisciplinary scientific discourse inspired by many new theoretical and practical silvicultural insights. These theoretical discussions regarding our relationship with nature were complemented by an experiential and experimental component where students could deepen their understanding on forests through practical on-site research. For this purpose, they stayed in the forests of Transcarpathia (Ukraine) for ten days in July 2017. Together with local stakeholders, visions and versions of what a forest ‘is’ were debated. In a second phase, the group returned to the Ukrainian forests in September 2018 to assemble its research findings, allies and questions around a plot of land in Nyzhnje Selyshche in search for a latent commons. The 48-hour happening, ‘The Landing is on Friday’, was an event of ‘speculative ecology’. It took place between trees and ruins and welcomed aliens that had emerged beyond our (knowledge)horizons. The guidebook produced results from the collective experience in speculative research.


Texts by: Brishty Alam, Guadalupe Aldrete, Golnaz Bashiri, Rosie Benn, Margit Busch, Valerie Deifel, Johanna Folkmann, Maximilian Gallo, Athanasios Gramosis, Matilde Igual Capdevila, Bernd Kräftner, Rafael Lippuner, Marko Marković, Frédérique Neuts, Marina Rebhandl
Editors: Bernd Kräftner, Brishty Alam, Valerie Deifel

Publisher: University of Applied Arts Vienna, 2019

Design concept: Matilde Igual Capdevila

Cooperation partners: Molotok (Khust rayon public organization), Bogdan Popov (Ecosololutions Forge), Rupert Seidl (University of Natural Resources & Life Sciences Vienna)

This book can be purchased from the Art & Science office and at the bookstore Walther König in Vienna. Please contact us on artscience@uni-ak.ac.at.

Inaccurate Map of the Landing Zone

A2 digital print (2018)

Realized during and after the event The Landing is on Friday.

The landing zone was around Nyzhnje Selyshche, Ukraine. The landing took place on 21–23 September 2018, Friday 16:00 to Sunday 16:00.

Print materials, 2016

Different formats for the Art & Science Institute.

Histoire-géo (2015)

table, compass, wood elements, hand-drawn cards

hiding under the spotlight (2015/2016)

installation, 4,4m x 2,2m

Ein Raum im Raum, ein Ort anzuhalten, ein Ort, der uns an einen anderen Ort transportiert. Ein Vorhang unter einer Lichtkuppel fokussiert als zylindrischer Raum das Licht nach unten, und referiert somit räumliche als auch psychoanalytische Fragen. Der Vorhang schützt uns vor Blicken, und zieht durch seine Theatralik gleichzeitig Blicke an. Er schafft einen Raum, ein Versteck, das uns möglicherweise mit der äußeren Welt verbinden könnte und thematisiert damit diese fragile Beziehung. 

notebooks (2016)

ink, paper, digital color

and things happen (2016)

a publication + an installation. Diploma project.

first proposition
Science finds its limits when dealing with an object which cannot be comprehended within one single discipline. The urban question is such an object.Cities do offer “a problem in handling organized complexity”Even the description of a square and the understanding of its functioning, a simple task, a point of detail, is connected to so many fields of knowledge that it is impossible to carry out.The parts of the research lack connections and something is missing. What could it be? The everyday?

second proposition
Stories and sketeches, immediate representations of the square. A collection of obsessive field work attempting to grasp the everyday, the unnoticed, the nothings.
Some inventions, fictions to fill the gaps of observation.
Inviting a few dead authors, mostly french, mostly marxist, to discuss the city, the urban, the everyday, alienation and squares.

third proposition
An installation transposing the square somewhere else. A work in abstraction, reduction and translation.

0º. preamble
a. obsession
b. previous projects

0. introduction
a. program for the project
b. the structure of the text
c. fact, fiction, literature

1. squares

a. what is a square?

b. how does it relate to the urban?
are squares useless?
exchange value/use value
public space and consumption
revolts and feasts
occupying the squares

c. regarding kolonitzplatz
materials & animals
a tale of two squares
a letter describing kolonitzplatz as a friend to a friend

2. borders

a. what is a border?
physical borders
functional borders
spontaneous segregation

b. how does it relate to the urban?

c. regarding kolonitzplatz
elements
schedules
the story of the ice-cream shop
the story of Sinan and his friends

3. the everyday

a. what is the everyday life?

b. how does it relate to the urban?
time and space
nothing
what happens when nothing happens
the everyday, doing nothing and how to be an expert of the everyday
the square, doing nothing and the everyday
hopeful/ no ambitions

c. regarding kolonitzplatz
lost woman, lost cat, lost bag
some notes at the beginning of the project
17:10- 17:30 / 23.10.2015
29.10.2015
kolonitzplatz at 7 during a snowstorm. A report from a friend.

4. authors in conversation

a.Georges Pérec
b. Henri Lefèbvre
c. Michel de Certeau
d. Jane Jacobs

5. conclusions

a. doing something or doing nothing? doing nothing to do something afterwards?
b. list of ideas for the kolonitzplatz

6. and things happen (epilogue)

a. from hanging out to installing
b. transforming elements. sketches for an installation

7. references

a. references (names as i can remember of people who might have had an influence on this project)
b. classes attended in the last three years (relevant to the work)

a last quote

Cargo Control (2015)

Research-based installation.

Exhibition developed as part of a research project by the department of Art&Science, University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Schleifmühlgasse 12-14

Cargo Control consists of various wooden parts of a control room center, as we know them from utopian and futuristic Sci-Fi movies. These objects relate to both, the research regarding control rooms and their inherent technologies, as well as to a cult called Cargo Cult.
During the academic year 2014/2015 the department Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna was holding a research project on the future of control room centers. The participating students had their focus on topics such as control in human-computer interaction, history of control rooms in film and architecture, politics of interfaces and interface design - just to name a few.
Beside this research and development, the group started reflecting and combine their outcome through a, lets say so, more artistic practice, which was brought into the project by Peter Moosgaard, (artist and inventor of the Austrian Cargo Cult movement).
Based on this knowledge about the cult, as well as on the discussion and the supervision by Peter Moosgaard, the participating artists Matilde Igual Capdevile, Benedict Endler, Adrijan Karavdic and Sebastian Kienzl built their vision of a control room, based on the principles of Cargo.

Public Life- Towards a Politics of Care. Bodies. Place. Matter.

PhD Symposium, Vienna. 17/18 April 2015.

Collaborative organization & documentation of the event.

Urban cultures and public space serve as windows to enter the field of urban studies. They are not separate themes, rather dialectically intertwined, depicting urban space as space which encompasses both physical arrangements and social space. Moreover, urban studies have not only to deal with urban space as a special kind of place, but also as the process of production which involves multiple publics and political life. That is why the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space at Vienna University of Technology (SKuOR) finds it important to treat urban space research as a field in which theory and practice foster each other, where theory is often related to concrete spatial experiences and professional practice and where the relation between everyday life and generation of scientific insights are mutually affected.

The symposium was conceived as an exchange among disciplines and cultures. The concept itself derives from the cooperation in the organization of the event across different research fields and institutions. Under the common notion of Politics of Care, three focus points were defined to give room for each of the organizing parties (see above) to offer a perspective onto the topic. Bodies, Place and Matter can thus be understood as a set of starting points for a dialogue on what a Politics of Care can be. Accordingly, the symposium consisted of three panels, corresponding to these core elements, each followed by a general discussion.