Art and Time | Media

The Department of Art and Time | Media (formerly known as Art and Digital Media) offers students a program that explores and conveys contemporary concepts of art and artistic practices with a focus on media discourses, digital cultures, and the diverse forms of moving images, spanning cinema, video, and installations, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Our program analyzes both historical and current developments to foster a deep understanding of the connections between art, technology, and society.

At the core of study program is the development of artistic methods that emerge from an in-depth engagement with these various discourses and fields. Media and time-based cultures serve as central interfaces, from which artistic forms such as essayistic-documentary film projects, sound art, performative as well as net-based practices, and game cultures are targeted.

Additionally, we emphasize working with archives and media archaeologies, allowing students to explore historical materials and media artifacts and integrate them into current artistic contexts. Feminist perspectives are also central, as they promote critical reflection and the inclusion of diverse gender discourses in artistic practice. Moreover, the department focuses on an approach guided by the concept of Aesthetics of Investigation, coined by Forensic Architecture, which understands artistic methods as a form of investigative practice aimed at developing new insights and innovative approaches.

Our program functions both as an operating system and as an interface, can be seen as a kind of "mixer" that filters contemporary art practice through the syntax of digital cultures, new media, as well as the history of cinema and film theory, to produce new, contemporary "scripts." The department of Art and Time | Media critically engages with the socio-political and cultural contingencies of media technological developments as a crucial reference point for contemporary artistic practice.