Cultural Collisions offers pupils and teachers a completely new approach to getting to know and gaining insights into TU Wien, the mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology. Pupils are immersed in cutting-edge topics in the university environment through creative engagement. The insights and experiences enable a new perspective and individual planning of further school and professional careers.

 

The special thing about this project for us is the linking of science and art. The workshops and exhibitions ideally accompany the design process of transforming theoretical knowledge about climate change into a multimedia work of art. The pupils benefit not only in terms of content. They go through a development process as individuals and as a class. Through the final exhibition, they also experience special public appreciation for what they have done and their results.

Ulrike Schedl-Schrottmayer & Klemens Frick

BG/BRG Pichelmayergasse

Program elements

Your participation as a school class is obligatory for the following programme element "Interdisciplinary Exhibition for Inspiration" as well as the creation of an artwork in class. The workshops in the museums are optional, subject to availability.

Within the framework of a lecture, students of the TU Wien prepare technological topics scientifically and conceive an interactive exhibition for the pupils. At the same time, artists translate the technical problems into works of art, exhibit them and inspire with a different perspective. The inspiration conveyed stimulates the participants' own creativity and enthusiasm.

Cultural Collisions begins after the exhibition: pupils and teachers experience a scientifically and artistically prepared topic, take it with them and work on it further in the corresponding subjects. The participating museums provide support in workshops throughout the semester on the way to creating their own artwork.

Workshop at mumok 

Mumok, with its core competence in the cultural and intellectual history of the 20th and 21st centuries, has a substantial responsibility to discuss and reduce the discrepancy between everyday life and increasingly specialized and largely abstract professional and social demands.

Modern and contemporary art challenges existing rules and conventions. It often follows a transdisciplinary approach, which the mumok also pursues in its educational work focusing on creative learning. We invite students to realize their creative projects and present them in the museum. The participating schools are invited to an intensive program through the entire museum building. They will experience an interactive exhibition visit, a hands-on lecture on "What is art and what can art do?", brainstorming sessions on their own works in class, and a participatory workshop on design.

The final exhibition will be conceived and realized in the spirit of cocreation with a team of class curators on the mumok premises. It will be accompanied by a comprehensive program of guided tours, lectures, and publications.

Together with the students, we will turn the mumok into a dialogical place of education that brings together complex topics, thinks about science and art together, and makes the results that are developed together visible.

Workshop at the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology

In the workshop at the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology, we focus on something that is often not associated with science, but is very central to us humans in every respect - and especially in times of social change: our feelings. 

In the approximately 2-hour workshops, the pupils first experience an interactive and discursive tour through the exhibitions, in which various aspects of the project theme are illuminated in a youth-friendly way: How have technological developments contributed to climate change? What answers can innovative research and technology provide to current questions? How did society deal with the challenges of paradigm shifts in cultural and technological history in the past? What story(s) do the objects tell - and how are they different from art objects? And above all: what does all this trigger in me? At each station, we take time to notice our (climate) feelings and the needs they point to. We creatively implement these reflections and thus take a step towards our own message, which the students want to convey in their artworks at the end of the project.

This approach via emotional competence invites the students into a dialogue in which everything may be expressed - between fear and hope, resistance and indifference - in order to experience space for and dealing with one's own and other positions, and to create a basis for self-empowered and responsible decision-making - the basis for broad participation and co-creation in a common social process.

Once the project has started, the school classes work together with their teachers to create a work of art on the corresponding theme. There are no limits to creativity. From a painting to a sculpture, a poem to a dance performance - everything is possible!

Selected artworks will be exhibited in the mumok and can thus be presented to the public.

The project, which lasts several years, is accompanied and continuously evaluated by KPH Wien. Thus, the project can be adapted if necessary. Furthermore, methods and documents are developed by PH Vienna to support teachers in incorporating this methodology into their teaching.

As Cultural Collisions is an interdisciplinary project, it is necessary that two teachers from different subjects (e.g. visual education and physics, technology) are involved in each class: (e.g. visual education and physics, technical handicrafts and chemistry, etc.) to be available for questions from the students.

Focus on climate change

The content is dedicated to climate change. Among them are the following focal topics: 

  • Cities / Buildings
  • Energy
  • Production / Technologies
  • Resources / Materials
  • Mobility

Registration 

Registration is possible up to and including 30 April 2024 at culturalcollisions@tuwien.ac.at.

Confirmation from TU Wien will be sent by mid-June 2024 at the latest. After confirmation from TU Wien, your participation is binding.

Please provide the following information when registering:

  • Name of the school
  • Names of the participating teachers (at least 2) including email addresses
  • Class + number of pupils
  • Has your school or class already taken part in the project?

Declaration of consent

Since both photos and videos will be taken as part of the project, we ask that teachers to submit all signed photo, video and audio consent forms in advance to culturalcollisions@tuwien.ac.at. Participation will not be possible otherwise.
The corresponding form will be sent to you after the registration has been confirmed.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact culturalcollisions@tuwien.ac.at.

Background image: © brainpencil – stock.adobe.com, Lettering "create": cutelittlethings – stock.adobe.com