CLEMENS WINKLER
Situating artistic, design, research practices on ephemeral and environing media (2015-now)
Clemens Winkler is a designer, scientist and artist based in Germany. In his vision, he opens an experimental stage for thinking, playing and learning on current socio-ecological scenario by investigating and experimenting with new forms of aesthetic experience in mixed-media. Designing playful utopia aims to provide a hands-on aesthetic impetus also to scientific and artistic research methods, especially in multidisciplinary gatherings.
In addition to his studio practice as a designer and artist, this impetus is currently leading him to work as a researcher at the Cluster of Excellence «Matters of Activity. Image Space Material» at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where his work relates the analysis and control of material systems on granular levels in aerial, meteorological and climatic terms.
As a result, materials are transformed from functional placeholders into performative protagonists, re-narrating and mediating the real and fiction. In a resulting alchemical theatre for playing, learning and sharing, Clemens brings clouds, code, machines and environments as protagonists to his three-year visiting professorship for Digital Media in the MA Studio «Spiel & Objekt» at University for Theatre Arts Ernst Busch Berlin, also in collaboration with various institutes, such as the Earth System Analysis Research at PIK Potsdam.
From here, he asks: What new aesthetics, agency and testimonies do we create in the contemporary world, making it habitable and tangible for us? What does it mean to give rights to nonhuman agents? What points of reference are there for social discourse by designing tools that are accessible to people? And how do we think analogue to analogue couplings anew in highly technologically mediated contexts and consequences in socio-material textures?
Between his current involvements, he was a lecturer at ZHdK University of the Arts Zurich in the Interaction Design department between 2013/19, as well as a research associate mainly on responsive materials in the Enactive Environments Research Group with the ETH Zurich, materialarchiv.ch, and EMPA. Clemens also taught as a visiting lecturer in computational materials since 2009 amongst Fine Arts&Architecture programme at UniKassel, the MA programme «University of the Underground», Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam and the MA´ «Material Futures», Central Saint Martins London. Prior, he studied Design Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, London (graduated 2013), Fluid Interfaces at MIT Media Labs, Boston (felllow 2012), graduating New Media at UdK Berlin and Multisensorial Design with a focus on physics&chemistry at the HKD Burg Halle.
list of selected exhibitions/ publications/ seminars
Research Studio address:
Sophienstrasse 22a, D-10178 Berlin at EXC MoA, HU Berlin
MA Studio address:
Zinnowitzerstrasse 11, D-10115 Berlin
mail[at]clemenswinkler.com
Digital Workspace on Instagram Flickr