The ICS Zeichenwerkstatt explores cultural constructions and the corresponding productions of social difference in the visual domain, i.e. the concrete (re)production of InVisibilities within the politics of representation. Work focuses on analytical and interventionist approaches in artistic practice that negotiate the zone between subject and collective, individual and society as a sphere of cultural transfer.
The ICS Zeichenwerkstatt was established as a research group at the interface between research and teaching to bring together MA-level practice, artistic projects, and theoretical reflections, to continue such work at postgraduate level, and to develop an independent position within cultural analysis. The Zeichenwerkstatt pursues the critical project of a semiology that, based loosely on the work of Roland Barthes, traces the “machinations of sense” and investigates how far “signs are a social force” (Umberto Eco) and how far their interpretation is not only subject to cultural differences, but also reproduces these. As Sigrid Schade and Silke Wenk maintain in “Studien zur Visuellen Kultur: Einführung in ein transdisziplinäres Forschungsfeld” (transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2011), “seeing, reading, interpretation” are intersecting practices, whose interactions should be conceived and deployed from a critical-analytical perspective.
The Zeichenwerkstatt purposefully situates the notion of the sign at the interface between word and image, speaking and exhibiting, while it also plays with the notion of the studio as a site of production. The group meets to read texts, to discuss the concepts of cultural analysis, to consider individual artistic-research projects, to undertake textual criticism, to provide peer-group feedback, and to hold workshops to further develop its aesthetic research.
Currently, four doctoral students are participating in the Signs Workshop:
- Negotiating In_Visibilites: Critical Art Education as Enactment (working title) [Un_Sichtbarkeiten verhandeln.Kritische Kunstvermittlung als Inszenierung (AT)], Simon Harder, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: March 2015 – February 2019
- Wandering Gestures: An Artistic and Cultural-Analytical Exploration of Migrating Images (working title) [Wandernde Gesten. Eine künstlerisch-kulturanalytische Untersuchung von Bildmigrationen (AT)], Irene Chabr, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: January 2016 – August 2017
- Images and Action: Audiovisual Re-Readings (working title) [Bilderhandlungen: Filmische Relektüren (AT)], Noëmie Stähli, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: January 2016 – December 2020 (including 12 months interruption)
- Re-Visioning Histories. Contemporary artistic practices of displacing history(ies) (working title) [Re-Visioning Histories. Zeitgenössische künstlerische Praktiken der Verschiebung von Geschichte(n) (AT)], Julia Wolf, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: October 2017 – July 2020 (including 10 months interruption)
The Zeichenwerkstatt provides participants a space in which they can review the current state of research in their field under expert supervision. It also offers a stepping stone to current debates and provides support through discussions, contacts within and beyond Switzerland, peer-group appraisal, and mentoring.