Bachelor Projects
The CDS BA programme progresses through two phases. In the introductory year, students practise basic skills and develop capabilities for interdisciplinary practice. These include principles of science and technology, quantitative and qualitative research methods, and insights into a range of specific topics, including human rights, sustainable development goals and politics.
In the three-year application phase, students uncover complex correlations and integrate them into cooperative processes of action and expression that are given form in annual projects. Students work on global challenges using computer science, social sciences and artistic methods and strategies. The main site for this work is the CDC Lab – an experimental and collaborative project space where students work together across various materials, perspectives, techniques and configurations.
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“Notes on Stage Set” is the product of an ongoing research project into the artwork “Stage Set” (1991/1996) by Donald Judd. The concept for “Stage Set” originated in Trisha Brown’s performance “Newark” (1987) and was later realized for an exhibition at the MAK Vienna. Today it stands as a gateway in Stadtpark steadily disappearing into plain sight. Note II tries to understand the imposing physicality “Stage Set” presents by replicating parts of it to scale. In changing the materiality, the installation breaks with the formal aesthetics of Judd’s Minimalism and questions the ideology of the autonomous work by removing it from the self-referential whole. Note III is a performative critique and transhistorical reactivation. Developed collectively (with Sophie Bartmann, Vale Essl, Mirjam Tsion Helminger, Lydia Kremshuber & Anatol Wetzer) it focuses on the underlying assumptions of space “Stage Set” holds in its current placement. Starting from bodily and sonic explorations at the site a series of movements and sounds translate its history and concept into different spatial contexts. “Notes on Stage Set” is the product of an ongoing research project into the artwork “Stage Set” (1991/1996) by Donald Judd. The concept for “Stage Set” originated in Trisha Brown’s performance “Newark” (1987) and was later realized for an exhibition at the MAK Vienna. Today it stands as a gateway in Stadtpark steadily disappearing into plain sight. Note II tries to understand the imposing physicality “Stage Set” presents by replicating parts of it to scale. In changing the materiality, the installation breaks with the formal aesthetics of Judd’s Minimalism and questions the ideology of the autonomous work by removing it from the self-referential whole. Note III is a performative critique and transhistorical reactivation. Developed collectively (with Sophie Bartmann, Vale Essl, Mirjam Tsion Helminger, Lydia Kremshuber & Anatol Wetzer) it focuses on the underlying assumptions of space “Stage Set” holds in its current placement. Starting from bodily and sonic explorations at the site a series of movements and sounds translate its history and concept into different spatial contexts.
Felicia Celine Gulda
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2023
Katla delves into the transformative power of the Fold as an artistic strategy, enriching our comprehension of the in-between experiences of migrant and diasporic communities. The research navigates the intricacies of in-betweenness and belonging within the Turkish diaspora by employing a distinctive 22-fold method, resulting in an installation of uniquely folded pieces. This artistic process is designed to capture the essence of the Fold and its profound implications for identity negotiation in the in-between space. Katla not only enhances our understanding of identity negotiation in the Turkish diaspora but also offers valuable insights into the personal transformations and narratives of belonging within this community.
Marianne Therese Cadiz
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2023
How do you say things without saying them?
-crypt is an exploration of concealment, cryptography, and the opacity of media. The work is completed in three large-scale prints.
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
Inspired by the audiovisual strategies of filmmaker and artist Harun Farocki in depicting labour and working conditions, the installation examines the working conditions of bakers. Through montage, it explores the relationship between representation, labour, and various production conditions, highlighting the interplay between media portrayal and the true production circumstances.
Lili Pick & Paula Netzl
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
The co-curated exhibition project explores the intersection of art, politics, and public health through the practice of exhibition-making, guided by principles of curatorial activism. Artistic approaches to sexual education are situated within the broader political discourse around public health. The project realization encompasses the genesis and consequent exhibition of three artworks addressing themes of sexual health in a contemporary setting. It culminated in an exhibition at the Queer Museum Vienna, now reshown in the context of the Angewandte Festival.
Belén Andrea Bini Bernadou
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“Not a Sister, not a Worker. Other.” explores the narratives of au pairs coming from Latin America and their experiences as female migrants in the global care chain, asking who is taking care of the caretakers when facing power structures intrinsic to postcolonial subjects migrating to the Global North. Which coping skills are they utilizing, and how can they counterbalance the power dynamics present in the au pair scheme? Through a series of interviews with women who have been in this position, this research tries to find insights and strategies that can benefit future au pair candidates.
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“Free Shots: Revisiting the International HPV Day” takes a look into the organization, conceptualization and planning of the International HPV Awareness Day 2024 (IHAD) by the Austrian NGO „HPV-Impfung jetzt!” and how it can be improved for future editions. HPV is one of the most widespread sexually transmitted diseases – about 80% of the sexually active population comes into contact with HPV at least once and accounts for a multiple array of illnesses such as different occurrences of cancer. The IHAD is used to raise public awareness, reflect on the current incidence and vaccination rates and if possible, take action against the disease. On the IHAD 2024, a total of 27.000 accounts were reached online, over 300 students were vaccinated against HPV and an extension of the existing HPV vaccination program has been announced. The project is a transdisciplinary guide and reference point with learnings and best practices for future organizers and patient organizations.
Raky Josefine Wane
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
As part of the bachelors thesis project “The Black Female Body: Reconstructed Representations of Black Womanhood in Wangechi Mutu‘s “A Shady Promise“ (2006) I engage in a confrontation with my own Black female body. Pictured in a state of transformation I find myself in a process of ‘becoming-aware’ of racialised and sexualised images that have informed and distorted my perception of my body. I recognise the stages of shapeshifting my body has undergone and how this has led me on a path to self-definition. It is a vulnerable endeavour to shed myself from harmful ideas from the outside and deal with what’s beneath. “You’re so worth it, Baby!” is an intervention in the world of image-making that attempts to irritate dominant gaze regimes.
City as Self-Portrait
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“City as Self-Portrait” explores personal geography against the backdrop of the urban landscape, addressing how spaces can be both private and public. This project investigates this duality through a cinematic lens. An analysis of Chantal Akerman’s experimental film “News from Home” is central to this exploration. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s insights from “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) and Michel de Certeau’s “Spatial Practices” (1980), the project engages in a theoretical dialogue. Following five months of research and experimentation with filming, editing, and writing, the resulting self-reflexive short film tracks the filmmaker’s journey through various neighborhoods in Vienna. Reflecting on notions of space and gaze in cinema, the work and its documentation or staging overlap, embodying the “in-the-making” process that defines the artwork.
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“A Catalog so Deep, it’s Dangerous” investigates the possible impact of cloud-based music creation platforms on the accessibility and democratization of contemporary music-making practices. The thesis examines the social practices and affordances present on the most dominant platform, Splice. Furthermore, it uncovers the influence of Splice on shaping social norms, cultural capital, and accessibility regarding music production within the sociological framework of practice theory.
Yana Zhelyazkova
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
“Large Knowledge Disruptions (LKDs)” is an investigation into the ever-changing status quo of common digital knowledge practices under the influence of the widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs). LKDs highlight the gap in research regarding the drastic change in the ways knowledge is perceived, generated and retrieved in the digital commons after the Chatbot turn. The technologies discussed are critiqued and situated not as isolated entities but as part of a broader socio-technical assemblage.
Philipp Miksch
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2024
What happens to information when it is translated from one medium to another? What is analog, and what is digital? These questions have been the start for the Bachelor Thesis Project “TOTAL MEDIA LINK: translating between ANALOG and DIGITAL”. With this interactive installation, the user translates messages through different forms of media. The setting brings media forms from different centuries to life. It allows an understanding of media theory that is more intuitive but not less interesting than a merely text-based approach.
Milou Gabriel
Johanna Teufel
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2022
How can students be empowered to work artistically on a complex topic like sustainability? “witr tua“ is a collaborative project that explores how sustainability issues can be tackled by applying cross-disciplinary methods within the framework of five school workshops. Methods to establish spaces of resonance like those defined by Hartmut Rosa, strategies for uncovering hidden knowledge, and different approaches to make complex research visible through artistic strategies were applied between March and May 2022.
Theresa Hajek
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2022
Human Substance is a cross-disciplinary project dealing with the accessibility of blood donation. The project gives an insight into the history of transfusion medicine and highlights that technology reflects on human-made social structures. Via sound, the audience is invited to perceive the process of transferring a bodily human substance within the socio-political discourse. The project triggers a bodily reaction, to demonstrate the power relations of sharing a substance and the diverse roles that bodies encounter.
Matthäus Mayr
CDS BA Finalist Project, 2022
What happens to information when it is translated from one medium to another? What is analog, and what is digital? These questions have been the start for the Bachelor Thesis Project “TOTAL MEDIA LINK: translating between ANALOG and DIGITAL”. With this interactive installation, the user translates messages through different forms of media. The setting brings media forms from different centuries to life. It allows an understanding of media theory that is more intuitive but not less interesting than a merely text-based approach.
Pandemic CDS Lab
2020 and 2021
When the pandemic started in March 2020, CDS changed all teaching activities to distance learning. The cross-disciplinary teaching format “Cross-Disciplinary Capabilities (CDC) Lab” translated into a blog, production and development studio. It also showcases the results of other courses.
“Fact is Fiction” presents the annual projects of 2019/20, which connect to Donna Haraway´s The Camille Stories in Staying with the Trouble (2016). The project brief included working with a future scenario, choosing scientific and artistic methods, and deciding on using empirical methods and themes from our subject groups.
During the academic year 2020/21, our annual theme referred to “Du Contrat Social” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In this key work of the Enlightenment, published in 1762, Rousseau explains the development of modern democracy based on the argument that all power must aim for the common good and certainly not for God’s grace. More than 250 years later, we took his writings as the starting point for our deliberations.
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