Invitation to Defense of Helena Schmidt
The Institute for Education in the Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna kindly invites you to the Defense of Helena Schmidt's dissertation project From the poor image to poor images. Digital didactics in art education.
The Examination Panel is made up of: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Elisabeth Sattler (chair), Univ.-Prof. Dipl. Biol. Dr. Katja Sterflinger (member of the curricula commission), Univ.-Prof. Mag. Ph.D. Elke Krasny (1st supervisor) and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manuel Zahn (external appraiser, University of Cologne).
The dissertation project Vom poor image zu den poor images. Didaktik der Digitalität in der Kunstvermittlung (From the poor image to poor images. Digital didactics in art education) focuses on digital images of the post-digital present circulating on the internet, mainly regarding their use, reflection, and potential in school-based art education. The dissertation is based on the concept of the poor image, which traces back to the artist Hito Steyerl: she uses it to describe the transformation of a high-quality, rich image into a poorly resolved, compressed digital image copy that has been circulating, edited and reproduced on the internet since the advent of mobile, inter-net-capable devices (Steyerl 2009). Following Steyerl’s theory around the poor image and contemporary digital visual transformations, this dissertation focuses on the field of tension between image and education. This is achieved, on the one hand, by means of a multi-perspective interdisciplinary analysis and contextualization of the term and, on the other hand, an empirical study that situates the poor image in a present and future art education, pedagogy, and didactics of digitality.
Helena Schmidt is an art scholar and art mediator in theory and practice. She teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she is completing her doctorate on the image concept of so-called "poor images" (according to Hito Steyerl). She also teaches and mentors at the Bern University of the Arts, where she was an assistant until 2019. Since 2020 she is co-head of mediation at Vienna Design Week. Main fields of interest: Digital imagery, critical art, and design education, poor image art education.
Please join us for the defense. The event will take place online.
Zoom Meeting Link: https://akbild-ac-at.zoom.us/j/3837117023
We are looking forward to welcoming you to the defense.