Uncertain Curiosity in Artistic Research, Philosophy, Media and Cultural Studies
This open access edited volume is based on the premise that entanglements between current societal, political, technological, ecological, and cultural transformations cannot be sufficiently understood without transforming the modes, forms, and notions of understanding. Conceptually, “uncertain curiosity” is inspired by Helga Nowotny’s Insatiable Curiosity, as it maps trends in the history of knowledge on creative curiosity and its shifting relation to innovation-promoting institutions and societal notions of un/certain and un/predictable futures. This volume explores epistemic, infrastructural, and cosmological conditions under which the curiosity drive can flourish. Adopting an encyclopedic structure, the contributions engage with terminologies that echo transformation processes and conditions of change by foregrounding the ephemeral, the processual, and the desynchronous and address issues of insurability, vagueness, and ambiguity. This is achieved through a blend of case study research, critical terminological work, poetic engagement with language, and visual culture and discourse analysis through the lenses of artistic research, philosophy, media and cultural studies.
Lisa Stuckey is an art and cultural studies researcher and a senior scientist at the Institute of Arts and Society at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Stuckey pursued her doctorate in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with a junior fellowship from the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies. For her dissertation on “Investigative Aesthetics,” situated between arts and jurisdiction, Stuckey received the Austrian State Prize “Award of Excellence 2021.” It was published under the title Forensische Verfahren in den zeitgenössischen Künsten: Forensic Architecture und andere Fallanalysen (De Gruyter, 2022). In 2024, Stuckey was a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Alexander Damianisch heads the Department Support Art and Research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte), where he advances the development of art and research projects, manages funding strategies, and supports postgraduate research activities. He is a member of the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Laboratory executive board and the European League of Institutes of the Arts representative board. He engages in teaching, moderation, writing, and consulting, is an active member of the ELIA Careers in the Arts working group, and has pioneered Special Interest Groups within the Society for Artistic Research (SAR). He also facilitated high-level funding agency dialogues as a former SAR executive board member.
