Artistic Doctorate: Final Presentations

Date: 13–14 June 2025, starting at 19:00 each day

Location: mdw – Future Art Lab, Klangtheater, Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Wien

As the public closing event of the Artistic Research Lab in the artistic doctoral program, sixteen mdw students will present audiovisual contributions from their current artistic research projects. The spectrum ranges from new and sometimes transcultural forms of composition and interpretation to experimental approaches to creation, curating, media art, film and theatre to historically informed performance practice.

Applications for the Artistic Doctorate for the upcoming academic year 2025 are now possible – until 29.04.2025.

Further information: www.mdw.ac.at/ar_center/doctor-artium-program

Final Presentation by Brigitte Wilfing

Date: June 29, 2025, 5:00 PM
Location: mdw — Future Art Lab, Klangtheater, Anton‐von‐Webern‐Platz 1, 1030 Vienna
I have learnt that dancing, I can trust my thinking. In this auto-theoretical dance-lecture-performance, which emphasizes the corporeal dimension of thinking, I immerse myself once again in the fabulating milieu, in the potentia of the choreographic compositions, to interweave the already experienced, my sensorial, physical, analytical and poetic reflection with the yet unknown.

Final Presentation by Birgitta Flick

Date: June 27, 2025, 4:30 PM
Location: Bankettsaal (AW SEG23, Building S), mdw, Anton‐von‐Webern‐Platz 1, 1030 Vienna

This lecture performance aims to retrace the intertwined artistic and reflective paths of Birgitta Flick’s doctoral artistic research project in which she explored the multiplicity of entangled activities in which a musical composition is involved within her practice as a composer and saxophonist-improviser—thus examining some of the manifold transformations and relations that unfold between all participants of creating through their interacting.

feat. James Banner (bass)

 

Commission Members: Henrik Frisk, Monika Herzig, Maria Gstättner

Supervision: Tasos Zembylas, Samuel Grillusz, Annegret Huber, Fredrik Hedelin

Defence of Ivar Roban Križić

Date: 21 May 2025, 16:00

Location: mdw-Bankettsaal (AW SEG 23), Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Wien

The mdw Artistic Research Center invites you to the defense of the artistic dissertation Performing Reflection: Improvisation in Word, Thought, and Action by Ivar Roban Križić.

Commission Members:

Lucia D’Errico, Professor for Artistic Research, Mozarteum University Salzburg
Theodore Parker, Lecturer in Artistic Research, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
Maria Gstättner, Bassonist, Composer and Artistic Researcher, mdw

Supervision:
Burkhard Stangl, Peter Herbert, Tasos Zembylas, and Thomas Grill

SAR Conference 2025

Date: 7–9 May 2025

Location: i2ADS – Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, University of Porto, Portugal

The 16th International Conference on Artistic Research, with the theme of Resonance, invites engagement with the transformative character of artistic research as a unifying element that elicits a response and renders our experiences meaningful. Registration and further information: https://sar2025.i2ads.up.pt/

At the conference, Thomas Grill will give a lecture performance on Dirty Spaces, a series of performative works developed in the framework of Spirits in Complexity—Making Kin with Experimental Music Systems.

More info about the project: https://www.mdw.ac.at/spirits-in-complexity

Our doctoral student Ettore Biagi will be presenting the results of his research under the title “Phædrus – ecological actions of resonance through uncharted music” at this conference.

EPARM Conference

Date: 3–5 April 2025

Location: Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn, Estonia

This is an important platform for artistic research in higher music education, where artistic practice is central as the subject and source of research. Tian Fu, one of our candidates in the Dr. Artium program, will present his research on The Mutual Permeation of Rap Music and Contemporary Art Music.

Registration and further information: https://aec-music.eu/event/european-platform-for-artistic-research-in-music-eparm-2025/

Open Call: Sound as Score Composer Lab

  • Call open till: May 5, 2025
  • Duration: May 15, 2025 to May 14, 2026
  • First online meeting: May 15, 2025
  • Meetings: 4 – 5, appointment by arrangement
  • Language: English
  • Artist fee: € 3,000
  • Production costs: depending on the actual project
  • Host: mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

This composition lab serves as a platform for creation, interpretation, reflection, and analysis and (1) provides a platform for compositional experimentation with audio scores and their interpretation, (2) provides a space for interrogation into the methods and concepts underlying these audio scores, and (3) offers a forum for analysis and debate around the concept of mimesis as it applies to the perspectives of composers and performers. The aim of the composition lab is to experimentally explore and further develop the generation of audio scores.

For further information please visit: Sound as Score

Book Presentation “Fragments of Rotting Sounds”

Date: 27 March 2025, 18:00

Location: mdw Banquet Hall (AW SEG 23), Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna

Thomas Grill and the team will present the new book Fragments of Rotting Sounds with Mark Pezinger Publishing on 27 March at 18:00 in the mdw Banquet Hall.

This marks the final culmination of the Rotting Sounds research project (FWF PEEK AR445). Presentations and artistic contributions will illustrate the project and the elaborate book production.

Trailer: https://rottingsounds.org/public/media/Fragments_of_Rotting_Sounds.mp4

‘Trans-bodied Knowledge’ goes to World Expo Japan

The interdisciplinary teaching process, initiated by Christos Marantos (lecturer for piano in the ike mdw and artistic doctorate candidate in ARC mdw) between mdw and TU Wien, which discusses the topic of encouraging haptic design experiences in the digital age was selected to be exhibited, as an innovative education project, in the Austrian pavilion at the Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.

Under the theme “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, the Austrian Paivilion aims to communicate its ideas for ‘Composing the Future’ at the international Expo in 2025 in Osaka, Japan. Therefore, 140 innovative products and projects from Austrian companies, institutions and universities were submitted in the “Call for Innovations” organized by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich).

Within this framework, Christos’ project was selected to be presented in the category of ‘Research and Education’ pushing towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ‘High quality education’. From April to October 2025, a total of over 28 million visitors, 161 participating countries and 9 international organizations are expected to attend the Expo, where the discussed education project will be presenting, in the form of a video, the teaching process of the ‘Artistic project K: From Space to Wearables’, which took place in the summer semester 2024.

In the interdisciplinary context of synergizing artistic and scientific processes and within the framework of the artistic research project ‘Trans-bodied Knowledge’ funded by the FWF and led by Efilena Baseta, the above teaching was a collaboration between TU Wien/ Institute of Art and Design/ Research Unit of Three-Dimensional Design and Model Making and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw)/ Department of Composition Studies and Music production.

This interdisciplinary teaching has been possible through a diverse teaching team:

Teaching staff/Research team:

 

Efilena Baseta – Design and Fabrication (TU Wien)
Christos Marantos – Spatial experience through music (TU Wien/mdw)
Marco Palma – Design and Fabrication (TU Wien)
Eva Sommeregger – Discursive sessions (LMA/Latvia)

 

Guest teaching staff:
Grace Jun – Observation and Co-design (UGA/USA)
Georg Misch – Sound recording and Worldizing (mdw/Vienna)

 

Website of the research project ‘Trans-bodied Knowledge’:https://tbk-research.webflow.io/