Master Projects
Cross-Disciplinary Strategies prepares Master level students for critical engagement with the major scientific, technological and social issues arising from an interconnected and contested global world. This engagement is informed by artistic strategies and art perception, which are a foundation for the shared disciplinary language of CDS. In project work, students train their abilities for trans- and interdisciplinarity using empirical and artistic methods and contextual knowledge with individual support from mentors and their peers.
The master’s programme is centred on trans-disciplinary projects in which students research complex relationships, make these visible, and embed them in cooperative processes. To support these projects, CDS facilitates contact with and encourages collaboration between master’s students and civil organisations.
Ich wurde neben einem Loch geboren
Friederike Teller
CDS MA thesis project, 2024
What traces does coal mining leave in a region? How can we confront a landscape that is full of holes? And what does it mean to live in a time when humanity is building its own landscape? In the Central German lignite mining area in eastern Germany, people have been digging coal out of the ground for many centuries. But soon even the last excavators will stop working. The landscape is marked by structural change and structural disruption, by the climate crisis and industrialization, by mapping errors and growing in ruins. The multimedia installation is the result of months of research into the temporal traces that manifest themselves in the fragile present of the open-cast mining landscape. Using materials from the edge of the quarry, interviews with contemporary witnesses and lyrical field notes, an attempt is made to approach the hole. A hole that extends far beyond the Central German lignite mining area and raises questions about the possibilities of living together in the Anthropocene.
Conglomerate Operations: CONGLOMERATE!
Daniel Hüttler
CDS MA project, 2024
Unlike other fossil waters, the ___ in the Aderklaa Conglomerate has been buried for 20 million years. It will soon be brought to the surface to provide warmth. Conglomerate Operations is a method and model for art production and knowledge circulation that welcomes ___. “CONGLOMERATE!” is a multisensory operation that is able to understand ___ not just as a natural formation or source of heat, but as a scientific-cultural and political event.
SubSight - Inquiries in the Subversion of the Attention Economy
Morgane Billuart,
Luca Hierzenberger
CDS MA term project, winter 2022/23
Subsight investigates the dynamics of the current attention economy and displays a variety of attempts toward a possible subversion. How do users consume online content? What is the trade operating while we spend time watching ads and videos? Who benefits from this economy and its monopolies? Are alternative models possible?
From Watch To Donate to generating Tabs for a Cause, our research unfolds concrete ways viewers can redirect their attention to participate in wealth and redistribution.
https://subsight.netlify.app/
Documenting life in the South Hebron Hills
Jana Weissteiner
CDS MA project, 2024
“Grenades in Maqluba” tells personal stories about the lives of people in the southern West Bank, Palestine. The documentary provides insights into a daily life that is not only characterized by agriculture and livestock farming, but also by ongoing settler violence and a military occupation force. With Ali, Buthania, Hamdan, Jaber, Khalil, Mohammed, Mahmoud, Mousa, Salwa, Wadha

© Roozbeh Golemi: land.is.land
land.is.land
Paula Bracker, Daniel Hüttler, Emma Hontebeyrie
CDS MA term project, winter 2022/23
Islands are acknowledged as isolated pieces of land. With their defined borderlines, one could understand them as finite. As such, their relation to other bodies is that of exclusion and immunity. land.is.land opens a discourse where islands are recognised as interconnected transition zones. We explored, sensed, mapped, and collaboratively analysed a specific piece of land and its connections. Flausch Island tells various stories. It has become a location of collective doing and a method to cross borders of scales and time – to unfold landscapes in cross-dimensional dynamics. By contextualising its #chemical; #cultural; #material and #mystical dimensions, we translated the island into a blueprint. As an ecological fugue, we transfer it to other spaces, other pieces of land: land.is.land.
© Anna Tenzer:
Cosmic Snakes & Global Citizens: An Intercultural Board Game
Yona Schuh
CDS MA project, 2024
“Cosmic Snakes and Global Citizens: An Intercultural Board Game” leverages game-based learning to facilitate intercultural learning and promote global citizenship education among high school exchange students. Partnering with AFS Programs and adhering to UNESCO and Austrian educational frameworks, it employs participatory action research for its creation. The board game promotes global citizenship and intercultural learning discussions, fostering critical thinking and empathy. Designed for self-directed learning, the project showcases the transformative potential of educational tools in cultivating informed, empathetic global citizens and shaping an inclusive, interconnected world.

de:contain collective
Lucian-Viorel Gheorghiță,
Luca Hierzenberger, Daniel Hüttler, Friederike Teller,
Jana Weissensteiner & Samo Zeichen
CDS MA term project, winter 2021/22
The sterlet, once one of the most present species of the Danube River, has gone almost extinct. The sterlet points to the Danube as the body of water that gave space to the development of Vienna, shaping it topographically, biologically and socially. River regulation projects formed the Danube and the city of Vienna into their current shape. The wild alluvial forests, constantly reinventing themselves with the river’s flow, were engineered into the Donauinsel with the Danube highway, UNO City, the remaining Lobau, and Donau-Auen National Park. The de: contain collective Master student projects have been inspired by a cooperation with the LIFE Sterlet Lab at the Viennese Donauinsel. The students approach the brief differently, exploring narratives from the river, its inhabitants and its neighbours. All projects work with collaborative formats and connect levels of knowledge. Students apply AI technology, storytelling methods, and acoustic environments and create a currency for the common good.
© Anna Tenzer:
Im Fluss
Yona Schuh, Anna Tenzer
CDS MA term project, winter 2022/23
Rivers are all around us. They are vital for transportation, drinking water, electricity production, and recreation. Yet, we are alienated from them. We forced them into canals and obstructed their flow through barriers.
The handbook ‘Im Fluss’ aims to help us reconnect with these bodies of water from an ecocentric, hydrofeminist perspective. Through interviews, workshops, and projects, a wide array of river care and connectivity approaches is created.
Download the full handbook: https://flusshandbuch.org/
Or get in touch: hello@flusshandbuch.org
© Morgane Billuart: Subsight credit
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