Practices of Experimentation

At the Department of Art and Media at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), which comprises the undergraduate specializations of fine arts, photography, media arts, and theory along with a master’s program anchored by two research institutes, experimentation lies at the heart of creative research and teaching. The fourth yearbook of the department explores how practices of experimentation are implemented in one of the most renowned arts departments worldwide and investigates how the various fields – of teaching, research, theory, and practice – interlace, inspire, and inform one another. 

In seventeen essays by theorists and artists inside and outside the department, as well as through images, this work considers how practices of experimentation unfold and how they affect artistic creation, the relationship between art schools and society, the production of knowledge, and the particularities of inter- and trans-disciplinary teaching and research in the arts.