The Institut für WERKstoffe is an independent competence center that focuses on artistic research and education in the domain of art materials and WERKstoffe.

Institut für WERKstoffe

The Insitut für WERKstoffe is an independent competence center that focuses on artistic materials research, and on art materials as such. It operates in the context of art, and uses a broad pallet of research methods and instruments, as it embraces scientific and artistic research approaches.

The Insitut für WERKstoffe was established in 2016 by artist researcher Anke Zürn. It is a virtual institute, which has the goal of strengthening artistic materials research in order to perform successfully in a research landscape embossed by scientific research concepts. The institute is open to private donations, to support artistic materials research in Switzerland and world wide.

The Insitut für WERKstoffe is in many aspects unique in the landscape of research institutions. The artistic materials research at the institute combines fundamental and application-oriented aspects, has topic oriented practice based approach, and applies methods from artistic research as well as scientific research, to approach different aspects of material and their properties, with a special focus on materials aesthetics and possible meanings, as well as on materials research, respective artistic research as such.

The Insitut für WERKstoffe embraces all sort of inter-, trans-, non-, and anti-disciplinary approaches to explore materials and their properties. It questions FELT KNOWLEDGE and SENSUOUS KNOWLEDGE as the center part of a research approache to materials ans "WERKstoffe" as the basis for the successful execution of complex research projects which transcend the boundaries of traditional scientific disciplines, and which aim to include also uniqueness, aesthetics, as well as ambiguities and contradictions in results.

The Insitut für WERKstoffe works hard to make relevant contributions to materials research and to society as such, and to become a leading competence center for fundamental and application-oriented artistic materials research.

Howto Support the Institut für Werkstoffe

The Insitut für WERKstoffe as a virtual institute is looking for collaborations with universities and other research institutes, to allow for the applications for research projects, to access research funding and related findung instruments. Please contact us, if you plan research projects on artistic materials research and topics related to research processes, FELT KNOWLEDGE, SENSUOUS KNOWLEDGE.