Micro Institute

Practice-based research is important to any artistic experiment. It touches on central aspects of contemporary art, such as the creation of work and development of methods, the role and economy of the artist, the public spheres of art, and questions of knowledge and experience production.

AHC’s micro institute is a unique format for practice-based research that consists of a two-year research residency for an artist or a curator.

The micro institute is based on the assumption that the artistic process creates an excess or surplus of aesthetic experience through a multifarious working through of knowledge, language, and materials, often in collaboration with others, including researchers, specialists, communities, and audiences. But not all the elements of this process are used in, or wholly represented by, the final form of the work and the artist’s signature.

The experiment with the micro institute therefore lies in making the artistic process itself – in all its multiplicity – the focus and pivot of a research framework, developed in close connection with relevant professional and social communities, partnerships, and publics, and thus contribute in new ways to the production of collective experiences. 

In the pilot version of our micro institute, running from 2022 to 2024, the artist Loretta Fahrenholz will, with her research project “The Post-Cinematic Condition,” investigate the seismic changes that have occurred over the past decade in our relationship with the medium of film, in the light of new digital platforms and media, and of the role they play in social groupings and activist movements.