My current research revolves around processes of becoming and individuation in transversal practices between arts, sciences and philosophy. These interests evolve from a continuous dialogue with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The Inspiration I find in their work leads to further considerations about research and creation as the indivisible centre for novelty to emerge. How can we think of a relation as the centre for an emergence, the remarkable point where something new comes into presence. My philosophical readings explore these dimensions of a creative becoming through practices with the help of Gilbert Simondon, Alfred North Whitehead, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Isabelle Stengers, Didier Debaise and many emerging scholars in the field of philosophy focusing on transcendental empiricism and speculative pragmatism.



Artistic and Research Assistance at Zurich University of the Arts:

Since November 2009 I am working as an artistic and research assistant at the Department of Art & Media (DKM) at the Zurich University of the Arts. My work focuses on research concerning higher education developments of Masters and PhD programs in the field of fine arts. As part of a department that rests on a radically open yet intensive fundament my research will explore similar programs and their approaches world-wide. The new proposition that the department undertakes in its outline allows transdisciplinary research, in depth study of different domains (fine arts, photography, media arts, and theory), and a fair amount of self-directed autonomous student research. The current state of a thorough integration into Zurich’s cultural environment and a Swiss-wide network of art schools will be supplanted by a further international integration concerning studentship and exchange with other schools. For my personal thesis-research the opportunity to work for the department allows me to engage myself with on different models of research-creation on a conceptual and applied level. I am hoping to contribute due to my experiences and background and to gain further insights of what might be important to consider in light of developing new propositions for a “research-to-come.”



PhD-Thesis Abstract - Concordia University (always in flux until finished):

Relational Ecologies – Transversal Practices, Politics and Spacetime

My thesis project copes with processes of emergence through transversal practices of research-creation. Other than an inter- or transdisciplinary approach, the very notion of a relational model between different formats of practices and their actualizations (e.g. a piece of art, an architectural configuration or some sort of scientific knowledge) will be used as conceptual ground for a theory that emerges from the middle of a relation. In other words, how do things (such a as knowledge, architecture or an artwork) come into presence and create resonance without any predefined terms that would allow a shorthanded analysis of its presence as retraceable to any pre-defined terms and their relations? Following this ‘logic of the in-between’ transdisciplinary practices will be re-analyzed in light of their transversal qualities (especially the work of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Anarchitecture; Cage’s, Mumma’s and Tudor’s collaborative works; Parkour as altered way of encountering obstacles in an urban environment; and the territorial marking through sound with the help of high-frequency sound called Mosquito).

Transversality as vantage point allows processes of emergence to relate to a creative becoming that is always political and constantly shifts configurations of spacetime as collective assemblages of bodies and forces in movement. Thus, transversal practices might not only provide insights into processes of becoming but also foreground the novelty that arises from their research-creation. Tracing these transversal lines of becoming a vocabulary and approach surface that might not only foreground different modes of doing but also the very process of thought in motion as the creative force to think and practice differently towards the production of novelty. Research-creation as the centre of a relational nexus questions modes of inter- or transdisciolinarity and seeks not only alternative perspectives on creative processes and practices but might engender new modes of thought and the crafting of novel concepts.

MA-Thesis - Goldmsiths, University of London:

Music, Gender and Technology: The Potential for Difference in Ecologies of Electronic Music

Club Cultures have marked a significant field in the Music (and Pop) Cultural Studies. The specific relations between sound and its technologies, body and environment (ecology) are used to trace the conceptual notion of difference across these dimensions of Club Cultures. Other than the often-employed conceptions of the club as place for experiencing difference from the pressure of everyday discursive capture, the club here functions as part and parcel of a wider ecology of practices that forms the electronic music assemblage. Difference yields not a mere alterity but a conceptual and ethico-aesthetic assemblage. The assemblage in electronic music cultures (here mostly House and Minimal House) between music, gender and technology produces a field of resonance for difference as the very core of its cultural productivity. Conceptualizing sound as a process of differentiation from noise (as the omnipresent background) and regarding gender constellations as primordially different, technology plays the missing link between sonic events and their embodied perception. With the use of the example of the Robert Johnson Club in Offenbach am Main and an interview with the electronic music producer Ada, the dimensions of a potential becoming in difference through the sound-body-technology assemblage are contrasted with actual ecologies of production in electronic music cultures. On the one hand the opening potential of a primordial difference for creative processes to emerge are contextualized with the experience of a successful female producer. On the other hand the productive nexus of the Robert Johnson Club links its peers to a specific ethics of production and creation including the club’s close relation to the adjacent Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, and different micro-economies such as Airbag (a popular record-bag producer) or Ongaku (an important record label). The final argument therefore emerges from a re-conceptualization of the notion of difference to demonstrate a form of different becoming and creation that never lies outside the everyday but marks difference in a constant series of differentiations.