Ebru Kurbak
- Focus on Gravity – Falling, Floating and Breaking away
Organisers/Management
Date
- 05 December 2025– 10:00–11:30 Universität für angewandte Kunst in Wien, Wien, Österreich (Seminarraum 21)
Keywords
Fine Arts, Cultural Studies, Art Theory, Raumfahrt, Gravitation, Gravity, Technical History, Aerospace Engineering, Experimental Architecture, Spaceflight
Description
Ebru Kurbak is an artist born in Izmir, Turkey, and based in Vienna, Austria. She currently is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads the long-term arts-based research project The Museum of Lost Technology, funded through an Elise-Richter-PEEK Grant by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Kurbak’s work critically examines the entanglements between art, technology, culture, and power. A central trajectory in her practice explores the implications of the historical, social, and spatial segregation of knowledges under colonial modernity. Her investigations have focused particularly on string and string-based technologies rooted in women’s, Indigenous, nomadic, and prehistoric cultures. Kurbak’s work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Istanbul Modern (TR), NIROX Sculpture Park (ZA), Neue Galerie Graz (AT), and VIENNA ART WEEK 2025 (AT), and previously at ZKM – Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (DE), the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, AT), the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery (US), MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Vienna (AT), and the Istanbul Design Biennial (TR), among others. She has undertaken residencies at La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, FR), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL), LABoral (Gijón, ES), NIROX (Krugersdorp, ZA), 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles, US), and Eyebeam (New York, US). In 2019, Kurbak received the LACMA Art + Technology Grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Description
The interdisciplinary “Focus on Gravity – Falling, Floating and Breaking away” is a format developed by Florian Bettel, Liddy Scheffknecht and Anna Spohn. Together with guest speakers, we discuss the historicity of the concept of gravity in art, technology and science. Beyond a naïve re-actualisation of “force” as a conceptual foundation for artistic practice, artistic-scientific research or for cultural and art-scientific conceptualisation, we critically and transdisciplinarily question the forms, techniques, practices, metaphorical dynamics and discursive framings of gravity in art, technology and science.
Description
Caption: © Steve Boxall/ZeroG/MIT SEI. Ebru Kurbak, Reinventing the Spindle (2023)
Lecturer
Location
Address
- Universität für angewandte Kunst in Wien, Wien, Österreich
- Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2
- 1010 Wien
- Österreich
Associated Media Files
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