Aesthetic Transformation: Inspiration across Disciplinary Boundaries - Part 1

Elvira Hufschmid is a multi-media artist with a focus on Aesthetic Transformation processes as a methodology for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and learning. In a current project, she applies an Aesthetic Transformation strategy to investigate narratives of land enclosure as they relate to colonial property regimes of the Canadian settler society. As a collaborator in the SSHRC-funded art and science project ‘Leaning Out of Windows – Art and Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations’ (2016-21) and as an affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS), Berlin University of the Arts, Germany (2017-19), she co-investigates the ways in which metaphor acts as a common code between art and science. In a project at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, titled 'Understanding the World through Aesthetics' (2021), she hosted workshop conversations between artists and physicists about the possibilities of how inspiration may cross disciplinary boundaries, and in 2022 continued the discourse as a panel speaker at the University of Toronto Art Museum. Elvira holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, US, and she taught as a Visiting Artist at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC, as well as a Guest Professor for ‘Artistic Transformation Processes’ at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany.

Research interest: Aesthetic Transformation processes, relational aesthetics, trans-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, collaboration, participatory art making, conceptual drawing, enclosure, decolonization, research-creation.

www.leaningoutofwindows.org
https://mcdonaldinstitute.ca/events/understanding-the-world-through-aesthetics-a-panel-conversation/
www.elvira-hufschmid.de

Margit Schild is an artist, engineer, curator, film maker and author. She earned her PhD at the University of Hanover, Germany, and studied Landscape and Open Space Planning and worked as a lecturer and guest professor at various universities, including the Berlin University of the Arts and Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada. From 2016 – 2021 she has been a collaborator in “Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW) – Art and Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations”, a four-year SSHRCC funded interdisciplinary art and science project at Emily Carr University. In 2015, she directed her first documentary film “Drifting” on flight and migration. “Orten”, also a documentary, is her first full-length film. In addition to her work as a director, she is co-founder of the “School of the Provisional” in Berlin, Germany. In 2017, Margit curated a symposium on “Improvisation” at the HKW House of World Cultures, Berlin. She took on a “Vertretungsprofessur“ (interim professorship) for Aesthetic Practice and its Contexts, at the Institute for Aesthetic-Cultural Education, Department of Art and Visual Media, Europa-Universität Flensburg in 2021/2022. She lives and works in Berlin as well as in Vancouver, Canada.

Research interest: Aesthetic Transformation processes, relational aesthetics, trans-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, collaboration, participatory art making, conceptual drawing, enclosure, improvisation, research-creation.

www.less-art.de

www.schule-des-provisorischen.de