Hugarflug 2025 - Unstable Systems by Sigmundur Pall Freysteinsson

Unstable Systems Instability can be a creative force in art, design, and architecture. Artists, designers, and scholars work both with and against systems that are ever-changing, fragile, or unpredictable. Whether dealing with technological systems, ecosystems, social structures, or sensory experiences, instability is often a prerequisite for creation. Instability opens pathways for new ideas and processes, reshaping how we approach and redesign the systems that shape our lives. It can also refer to the creative act itself—one that does not follow predetermined trajectories or established norms. Art, design, and architecture serve as tools to disrupt stable systems and/or shed new light on systems that appear stable but in reality, they are not. No system is truly stable, and when we resist that instability, it becomes a problem. Instability is perhaps the only certainty we can rely on. Hugarflug 2025, the annual conference on artistic research, will take place on September 11–12. It will serve as a platform for research that engages with instability across various systems—from technological advancements such as AI and interactive systems to issues related to politics, society, and the environment. We will explore how instability functions as a tool for generating new possibilities while also fueling unrest and transformation within society and academia. The Iceland University of the Arts invites proposals of all kinds, including presentations of ongoing or completed research by our faculty, students, and collaborators.

Thursday, 11. september, 2025 - 15:30 - 17:00

3x20 min Presentation + 3x10 min Discussion

Moderator: Hulda Stefánsdóttir

Room:

Alexander Damianisch
Head of Department Support Art and Research, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Alexander Damianisch leads the Department Support Art and Research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He develops art and research projects, manages funding strategies, and supports postgraduate research. He serves on the executive board of the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Laboratory and the representative board of ELIA. He is active in teaching, writing, and consulting, and has initiated Special Interest Groups within the Society for Artistic Research. His forthcoming publication is Understanding: Proposing Pragmas Relating Poetics to Politics of Understanding (Springer, 2025). Damianisch co-curated exhibitions globally and engages in high-level international research policy dialogue.

Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research

11. - 12. September 2025

Iceland University of the Arts

Poetic Instability: A Condition for Transformative Understanding

Alexander Damianisch

In this talk, I propose a poetological concept of “good unstable transformative understanding” to explore how perception and creativity shape processes of insight. Understanding is presented as an active, circular, and evolving process grounded in transformative practices and informed by the dynamic interplay between poetics and politics.

Drawing from my forthcoming contribution to the volume Uncertain Curiosity (Summer 2025, co-edited with Lisa Stuckey), I will reference projects such as Shaken Grounds and The Art of Resistance that challenge conventional ideas of nature and culturally inherited concepts.

By linking artistic and scientific approaches through continuous reference to literature and philosophy, I highlight how methodical creativity and open-ended experimentation foster new interpretive practices. Artistic research, in this context, expands perception and offers unique epistemic modes.

This openness—rooted in empathy and flexibility—reveals the shared instabilities between art and science in research. I advocate for an ethics of shared knowledge and collective growth as a foundation for an empathic, research-informed politics.

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