Our ambition with this Creator Doctus project (co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union) is to enable Higher Arts Education Institutions in all countries signed up to the Bologna Declaration to be able to independently enter into the 3rd Cycle level with an award recognised at the same level of, and equivalent to, PhD.

At the final conference in October 2021, the publication The Creator Doctus Constellation: Exploring a New Model for a Doctorate in the Arts was presented, including a paper by Prof. Dr. David Quigley and a case study on “Maritime Markers/Beacons” by Master’s alumna Caroline Meyer-Jürshof.

Project partners are: EQ-Arts, Athens School of Fine Arts, Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, Royal Danish Art Academy of Fine Art, École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, Glasgow School of Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts and Merz Akademie, represented by Prof. Dr. David Quigley.

In its research activities, the Merz Akademie is particularly dedicated to explore the interconnection and process of mutual exchange between design, technology, art, and scholarship, thus opening up a field for research and artistic practice that is meant to speak to artists and designers as well as to scholars in the humanities.

¡REMEDIATE! is an initiative of Merz Akademie, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart and Akademie Schloss Solitude in cooperation with the MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg and the Landesanstalt für Kommunikation Baden-Württemberg (LFK). In 2009 they got together to investigate the transition between film and new media.

Within the frame of Remediate II Merz Akademie and Akademie Schloss Solitude have realized different artistic research projects between 2013 until 2016 to work on the remediation of film, network, map and archive. All projects have been carried out by students and professors of Merz Akademie and fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

In the winter semester 2017/18, Ronald Kolb has been researching projects and activities from the last three decades with a research and intervention group on the occasion of the 100th anniversary in 2018 and has developed various teaching and event formats that were implemented in the course of the anniversary year. The aim was to reflect on the future perspectives of education, teaching and knowledge production and to relate these to the historical models that the Merz Akademie has gone through.

The research and intervention group organized workshops and a final conference in the winter semester 2018/19 under the title “learning for life” to highlight important aspects of current learning and teaching strategies. They should give impetus to reflect on current and future forms of learning and teaching.

RIG members were Hannah Horst, Jana Thierfelder (both graduates of Merz Akademie), Lukas Ludwig, Florian Model (both graduates of Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design) and Ronald Kolb (graduate of Merz Akademie).

Film and Video

Prof. Peter Ott’s interest as a filmmaker has focused in recent years on the political development of the Syrian/North Iraq/Turkey region. He realised his feature film “The Milan Protocol” (2018) there and is also an expert and advisor on the academic film training being developed there. His latest work is the feature film “Die Amitié” (together with Ute Holl, 2023).

Maria Mohr has been working as a filmmaker and film teacher for over 20 years. The core of her work lies in documentary – on the border to the performative. Her filmic portfolio includes numerous cinema documentaries, short films and image films.

New Media

As a pioneer of “net art” and the discourse around the Internet as a space that can be shaped by the user, Prof. Olia Lialina has had a successful international exhibition and work practice for many years. For some time now she has been working as an archaeologist and conservator of early websites and has published on digital culture.

Prof. Mario Doulis is particularly concerned with virtual reality and 3D modelling, which continue the conventions of 19th century chambers of curiosities and become places of innovative learning and playing. Since 2019, Prof. Doulis has coordinated the cooperation with the Centre of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to investigate artistic approaches to the presentation of scientific data.

Theory

Prof. Dr. David Quigley’s artistic practice deals with the range of identities and positions in which painting, photography, video technology, collecting, curating, exhibiting, combined with historical research, writing and teaching create the conditions for inhabiting and constructing a multitude of “art worlds” (as a plural of the term “art world”). As head of the Master’s program, he deals with questions of artistic research as a method and subject of artistic education.

Dr. Jürgen Riethmüller publishes extensively on questions of cultural theory, his current publication “Kalkül der Scham” is published 2020 by Kadmos Verlag.

Visual Communication

Prof. Anja Weber is photographer and video artist. In her artistic projects, she researches the topics of representation, identity and space, as well as questions of staging and assertion of reality in photographic images. In 2022, she took over the professorship for photography in the Visual Communication program.

Prof. Joost Bottema work as freelance designer/graphic designer and is also active as an author and writer.

Illustrator and author Florian Bayer has been a professor at the Merz Akademie since 2023. He is best known for his work in the field of editorial and book illustration, which has won several awards.