This semester, process-oriented art practice refers to a historically charged location, today's public park on the grounds of the former Reichenau labor education camp in Innsbruck. The transformation of this place, now an everyday green space, into a memorial site highlights the tension between the present and the past. Through collective listening, observation, and lingering, the place can be experienced anew. Sounds, noises, and silence function as aesthetic means that relate materiality and memory. Listening becomes a critical instrument in dealing with historically contaminated places and opens up a space in which subjective experience, artistic research, and memory culture enter into dialogue with one another.In the context of the seminar, we will approach the relationship between subjectivity, memory, and place as a complex, processual structure. Central to this is the concept of “ear witnessing,” which understands listening as an ethical, political, and aesthetic act. This approach questions how cultures of memory arise, which voices are heard, and which are systematically silenced. Memory is not understood as a static archive or a closed narrative, but as an unstable process that is continuously reconstituted in the act of listening. Subjective perception plays an essential role in this and is given equal weight alongside historical facts.

The seminar begins in the summer semester of 2026 with a block workshop in cooperation with the ÆSR Lab - Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory * at the Rustenschacherallee branch.

The focus will be on recording technology and microphoning in relation to field recordings and recordings of voices in public spaces.

The educational concept for the Reichenau memorial site for workshops with schoolchildren, which began in the winter semester, will be implemented in the summer semester in collaboration between students of the University of Applied Arts and schoolchildren on site in Innsbruck.

1.) Participation in the KKP_FORUM on April 13, 2026, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

2.) Submission of audio-visual documentation of the artistic process (photos, videos, sound pieces)

3.) Independent or collective artistic project work

The Art and Process seminar will be held in blocks during the upcoming 2025/2026 academic year.

In preparation for the site-specific workshops with students and pupils in March 2026, we will start with a block introduction in collaboration with the ÆSR Laboratory at the University of Applied Arts (https://aesr-lab.uni-ak.ac.at/labs).

Key dates for arrival and departure:

Either on Monday, March 16, 2026: Westbahn: departing Vienna at 3:08 p.m./ arriving in Innsbruck at 7:34 p.m. or departing at 5:08 p.m. / arriving at 9:34 p.m. Alternatively: ÖBB: from Vienna 5:26 p.m. / arrival in Innsbruck 9:44 p.m. or from 6:28 p.m. / arrival in IBK 10:48 p.m. Last train from 7:28 p.m. / arrival in IBK 11:48 p.m.

Or alternatively: Arrival Tuesday, March 17, 2026: from Vienna: 5:28 a.m. / arrival in IBK 9:44 a.m.

Return journey: Wednesday, March 18, 2026: Westbahn: from IBK 6:26 p.m. / arrival at Westbahnhof 10:52 p.m. / ÖBB: from IBK 7:14 p.m. / arrival in Vienna 11:32 p.m. / last train: from IBK 8:16 p.m. arrival in Vienna 12:35 a.m.

Registration online & email: ricarda.denzer@uni-ak.ac.at

* ÆSR Lab is a collaborative project between the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Zentrum Fokus Forschung), the Artistic Research Center (ARC) at the Institute for Composition, Electroacoustics, and Sound Engineering (IKE) at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. ÆSR Lab is funded by the BMBWF and in cooperation with the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).