Sabine Gebhardt
°2005
en
Dr. phil. I Sabine Gebhardt Fink, born 1966 in Öhringen, Germany, studied Art History, Philosophy, German Literature and Theatre Studies at the Universities of Munich and Basel (PhD-Thesis Transformation of Action, published Vienna 2003). After a post-doc position at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts, 2004-2008, and a locum tenens assistant to the Head of Department in Cultural Studies in the Arts at the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland, and a lectureship in Art History at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, 2009-2011, she received 2011 a professorship in Fine Arts at the University of Applied Arts and Design in Lucerne.
Her research fields – projects granted by the SNF - are: The Situated Body, Perform Space, Intermedia Conditions (Concrete Poetry e.g.), Exhibition Displays and Hermann Obrist and the Art Nouveau Sculpture. Currently she is working on Soundscapes/Public Spheres.
Relevant Publications: Is it now? Gegenwart in den Künsten, together with Sigrid Adorf et. al, Zurich 2006; Das Verhältnis der Künste, in co-autorship with Corina Caduff et. al, Munich 2007; Performance Chronik Basel, edited with Muda Mathis et. al., Zurich/Berlin 2011.
comments
Exposition: Motion Perception: Interactive Video and Spatial Awareness (01/01/2011) by Nell Breyer
The project intends to provide one methodological approach, which helps articulate how computation, video, projection, and interaction can direct and more fully explain our physical experience and comprehension of contemporary public spaces. This is a very interesting goal of crucial impact on research and artistic practice today. The project tries to combine a theoretical research goal with an artistic output. To use video as an instrument of aesthetical research is convincing, too. But the outcomes of the project can only be regarded as ‘first results’. The main cause of the ‘weak’ aesthetical form of the project seems to be rooted—first in the simple concept of bodies—not taking into account the discourses marked by eminent authors like Judith Butler and Amelia Jones. The reflection of contemporary critical media theory in relation to video art is too selective. References to important works such as Sigrid Adorf’s Operation Video (Bielefeld, Transcript 2008) or Georg Christoph Tholen’s Die Zäsur der Medien (Frankfurt 2002) are lacking.
The project should receive further funding and proceed in collaborations with international video-artists to sharpen the theories reflected upon and to improve the outcomes!
The impact on the project is possible in the fields of media-theory, philosophy (especially in the field of so called ‘New Phenomenology’), media enhanced performance art, technological devices to track movements and performance studies.
The submission contains a clear description of the research questions, which it wants to address. The author knows the state of the art in research on public spheres and concerning the tracking of movement in time and space. The submitted project enables a lot of new thoughts, either on the technical level of tracking and morphing or on the concept of bodily movements. Hélàs; the form or the aesthetical output is on a starting level or beginners state and should be developed further. Furthermore the debate on bodily styles, performative space and new media theories in Video art should influence the description-texts of the project, too. The submission provides—from my point of view—new tools for tracking bodily movements over time. This can lead to new insights if the critical reflection and the video-documents are reworked. The research process is consequent, and the methods in use are adequate and correct, but they should be clarified and strengthened.
The design and navigation support of the exposition are good. It is correct and feasible according to referencing. The readability of the submission is perfect.
The submission is worth to be published after a slight rework. The strengths of the project are: the contemporanity of the topic, the state of the art in research topics in art in public spheres and the interdisciplinary working concept of the project between artistic production and reflection. The author should rework before publishing their theory on bodily styles, media theory of the genre video art and the philosophy of time; he should seek also new collaborations with artists using camera-tracking such as Zilla Leutenegger or Douglas Gordon.