On https://umbau.hfg-karlsruhe.de/ you can read exclusive contributions from scientists, artists, philosophers, designers and choreographers from the HfG network.

Artistic research, design, art studies and media philosophy are created at the HfG Karlsruhe in changing constellations of participating actors. This polyphonic dialogue between teachers, students and guests, which extends far beyond the walls of the building, is now made accessible to an international audience by the online journal UMBAU.

With bi-weekly contributions UMBAU presents contemporary projects from the fields of art, design and theory, framed within annually changing editorial themes.

The first issue of the journal - Political Bodies - asked about aspects of the political in relation to bodies: what do we understand by bodies and can they ever be neutral? The second one - Fragile Futures – launched in 2023, seeked to examine and re-imagine the haunted present of expired futures and lingering pasts.

The current and third Issue Chaining will examine the chains with which our world is interwoven and to forge new bonds; to abandon the hierarchy of the vertically hanging chain and explore its flexibilities, its ability to form new networks, and to question an overtly linear mode of narration and research. We will delve deeper into exploring the intricate connections between desire, power structures and the metaphorical materials of chains, untangling their historical and present realities.

In 1992, a time of major socio-economic and technological change, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design was founded as a “digital Bauhaus.” UMBAU, an architectural term roughly translatable as “remodeling” (to take a given structure and adjust it to contemporary situations) addresses this heritage and introduces a moment of destabilisation.

UMBAU welcomes trans-disciplinary modes of thinking through the situational, the unfinished, and the transitional.

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Current Editors: Charlotte Eifler, Paolo Caffoni, Livia Emma Lazzarini, Yannick Fritz, Jule Köpke.

Past Editors: Ariana Dongus, Friederike Schäfer, Katharina Weinstock, Isabelle Konrad, George MacBeth, Johanna Schäfer, Ebba Fransén Waldhör.

Click here for current contributions: https://umbau.hfg-karlsruhe.de/