What is your role at Malmö Art Academy, and what is you background?
Since last year, 2024, I have been working as a tutor in the PhD Program in Fine Arts. By academic training I am an art historian with a focus on twentieth-century and contemporary art. But I have also worked for many years as a curator – especially in the field of media art and digital culture. This has given me many opportunities to work directly with artists in the different stages of the artistic process, from conceptualisation through production to exhibition. And then I have also worked for a few years at the intersection of university and artistic research, which has given me a sense of the similarities and the interesting differences between those two domains. I bring these experiences to the work with the PhD candidates, both in the joint seminars that we run regularly, and in the individual consultations and supervisions.
What are important aspects in the work of tutoring artists working on their PhD?
This question is not easy to answer, because each of the artists is different and the working relationship that we have is therefore also different in each case. But maybe that is already a beginning of an answer, namely that unlike at a university department, where the process of doing a PhD is more formalised and structured by the requirements of the institution and the academic discipline, in the case of the PhDs in fine arts the initial conditions and possibilities are set by the individual artistic methods and interests of the artist. The challenge for the PhD candidates and their supervisors is to develop this individual approach into an argument that contributes to the production of knowledge, learning and thinking, like any doctoral project should make such a contribution. Finding the right balance between theoretical and practical approaches, finding ways to think through and articulate the theoretical and conceptual significance of an artistic practice and the topics that it addresses, or works through – these are some of the aspects that play a role in the process.
How can artistic research contribute to addressing contemporary societal challenges?
I have to give an answer that might sound paradoxical. The best way for artistic research to do this is by not having to do it. What I mean is that there should be no such obligation, and no such "societal programming" of artistic research in general. Of course this can be different in certain cases, and an individual artistic project may have the very purpose of addressing a particular societal issue. But if you ask so generally about this utilitarian "how", then the answer I can give is that the best contribution that art can make to society is unpredictable, and to allow for freedom and unpredictability is the best way to achieve such contributions. Artistic research is not the type of academic discipline that has a certain angle on understanding phenomena, or solving a certain type of problems. Artistic research is a methodology – we can perhaps say that it is a way of thinking about how to do things, about how to ask questions, and about what questions to ask. The challenge in the PhD program in fine arts – and I would say this counts for all artistic research – is that this is not a call for methodological arbitrariness, but to the contrary, that each project has to develop its own methodology which is appropriate to the research project, both as a way of addressing the topic, and as a way of communicating it in the broader academic and societal context, and connecting it to existing research discourses.
Biography
Dr. habil. Andreas Broeckmann is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin. He is a Visiting Professor in the PhD Program at Malmö Art Academy, and he teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig (HGB – Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) where he holds an Honorary Professorship, and was Visiting Professor for Art History and Media Theory (2017-2020). He is a private lecturer at Leuphana University Lüneburg and is engaged in the research and documentation project Les Immateriaux Research (DFG-funded 2021-2024). Visiting Professor for Art and Media Studies at Oldenburg University (2016-2017). He was the Artistic Director of the Leuphana Arts Program (2011-2016), the founding director of Dortmunder U – Centre for Art and Creativity (2009-2011), and has curated exhibitions and festivals in major European venues, incl. transmediale and ISEA2010 RUHR. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK, and lectures internationally about the history of modern and contemporary art, media theory, and digital culture. He is the author of „Machine Art in the Twentieth Century“ (MIT-Press, 2016), and of „The Making of Les Immatériaux“ (Meson Press, 2025).