Artistic Research PhD Programme (PhD in Art): Public Colloquium 2025

Presentations of the Artistic Research PhD Programme (PhD in Art) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Public Colloquium
13 – 16 May 2025
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna

Searching, Knowing, and Making Knowledge in the Age of Light
Convened by Miya Yoshida

We are living in the Age of Light – an era in which time and space are continuously measured, defined, merged, and shared at the speed of light. Light has become both a catalyst and a controller of contemporary life. Our episte-ontology dances and moves toward a new grammar of the world and world-making shaped by light.

Amidst this moment of profound transformation, what does it mean to engage in ‘doing and thinking’ in the context of artistic research? How can one fully inhabit their own artistic practice while simultaneously reflecting on it – finding their own language, vocabulary, and forms of articulation? In which way can we frame and contextualise the ephemeral, fluid, and sensitive states of artistic activity? What kinds of processes might lead us to search, to know, and to give a form to what may ultimately be considered (non-)knowledge?

The Public Colloquium 2025 brings together twenty presentations by doctoral candidates from the PhD in Art Program, the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Their works-in-progress – artistic research in development – will be presented and shared, making full use of the vibrant framework offered by the ZFF.

In response to these presentations, our four invited guests – Eva-Maria Stadler, Imogen Stidworthy, Margarete Jahrmann, and Simon Bayly – will offer reflections, critiques, and discussions. Together, they will explore the research questions, chosen methodologies, and the artistic and academic strategies involved. The public colloquium will be documented through photography and drawings by the artist Xiaopen Zhou.

The colloquium fosters thoughtful exchange, creative inspiration, critical imagination, and realisation among all participants.

Participants: Andrew Champlin, carrick bell, Conny Zenk, Corç George Demir, Imani Rameses, Jo O’Brien, Johanna Bruckner, Joseph Leung, Jošt Franko, Judit Navratil, Konstanze Stoiber, Lilla Szasz, Margit Busch, Marie Reichel, Olga Staňková, Oscar Gardea, Sanja Anđelković, Tamara Antonijević, Wolfgang Konrad, Žarko Aleksić

Guest critics: Eva-Maria Stadler, Imogen Stidworthy, Margarete Jahrmann, Simon Bayly

Drawing Artist: Xiaopeng Zhou

For more information, please visit:

zentrumfokusforschung.uni-ak.ac.at/news/public-colloquium-2025/