Center for Art/Knowledge Research (CAK)

The work of the Center for Art/Knowledge Research (CAK) focusses on the transformation of functions and figures of the visual arts in the knowledge- and science-based societies of the present. Deploying aesthetic strategies art and artists reflect and contest the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of a post-industrial environment. Doing this, they not only contribute to the imaginary of a social production and reception of knowledge and affects; they also investigate and analyse the very transformations which they ‑ as the avantgarde of flexibilisation and as role models of a post-Fordist creative industry - have shaped and designed themselves in significant ways. Given this context, the Center for Art/Knowledge Research explores symptomatic entanglements of artistic, scientific and social processes in a globalised, networked present, in order to organize research on the new forms of artistic and political practice emerging at the nexus of art and knowledge.