New professorships and tenure-track positions at the Academy starting Oct. 1, 2021

Nina von Mechow
University Professorship §98 for Scenography (IKA)

"With a stage design, I make a proposal for a place that wants to move something – not only on stage. And of course I have an idea of what possibilities this space should throw up, what we can get to see there, what can happen there, and so on. But the fact that these ideas do not materialize in this way, and that an evening is created that I had not expected, is the most pleasurable thing about the joint work. I find the temporary nature of stage sets relieving. We work on the theater beyond the laws that the market determines and artistically autonomous. Of course we hope to meet with interest from the audience, but there are also big evenings where it fails to materialize. Once a production is in the world, a new attempt comes, new luck."

Nina von Mechow studied stage design and costume at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television, and the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Since 1994 she has worked regularly at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. A close collaboration connects her since 2002 with the author and director René Pollesch, with whom she has worked, in addition to the Volksbühne, among others, at the Munich Kammerspiele, the Ruhrfestspiele, the Akademietheater Vienna, the Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart, the Warsaw Teatr Rozmaitości and the Deutsches Theater Berlin in numerous productions as costume and set designer.
In 2017, she did the set and costumes for Frank Castorf's last production at the Volksbühne, Ein schwaches Herz after Fyodor M. Dostoyevksky. For Martin Wuttke's directing works at the Berliner Ensemble, Schauspiel Köln, Burgtheater Wien, as well as at Neuhardenberg Airport ( The Persians and Solaris ), she created the stage and costume design.
She has also worked at numerous major theaters and opera houses, with directors and collectives. Among others with Novoflot, Sebastian Baumgarten. She has worked with director Johan Simons as a costume designer at the National Theater Ghent, Volksbühne Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, for the Avignon Theater Festival and Opéra Bastille, among others.
In 2018, she designed the costumes for Andrea Breth's musical theater evening with operas by Luigi Dallapiccola and Wolfgang Rihm Der Gefangene/Das Gehege , at the Brussels Opera House, La Monnaie/De Munt , and for Johan Simon's production of Penthesilea at the Salzburg Festival. She has worked regularly with Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito at the Stuttgart State Opera, for La Juive (2008), Katja Kabanova (2010), Die Glückliche Hand / Schicksal (2010), Tristan und Isolde (2014), Rigoletto (2015) and Fidelio (2016), Ariodante (2017), and in 2019, Freischütz at the Opera National du Rhin.
She made the costumes for Leander Haußmann's feature film Herr Lehmann , for the television series 24 Stunden sind kein Tag and the films Bad Decisions and Niagara by René Pollesch and the set design for the feature film Das traurige Leben der Gloria S and Der Tänzer by Ute Schall and Christine Groß.

Francis Ruyter
University professorship § 99 for Figurative Painting (IBK)

Francis Ruyter works with issues of style and recognition behind image-making, and connects this activity to social and technological forces driving contemporary experience and historical archiving.

The work that he is best known for takes the form of a very recognizable painting strategy indexed to photographic sources, using smooth and flat application of unmodulated color, restrained within a framework drawing consisting of uniformly applied black lines. While often described as a ‘signature style,’ he prefers to think of it as a representation of a medium, that is perhaps somewhere between painting and photography.

In 2008, he began replacing his own photographic source material with the Library of Congress’ FSA/OWI archive of depression era photographs, conceptually locating ‘the archive’ as subject matter, in place of depicting images sourced from his own lived experience.

Collaborative work with other artists has always been a high priority and an essential part of Ruyter’s artistic practice. He currently lives in Vienna, Austria where he has produced more than 30 exhibitions of other artists’ work since opening Galerie Lisa Ruyter there in 2003. He was a founder of Team Gallery in 1995/96 -2001. He has been a member of the board of the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession from 2017 - 2021.

www.theruyter.com

Doireann O'Malley
University Professorship § 99 for Gender and Space (IBK)

Doireann O’Malley’s trans-disciplinary practice unites collaborative methodologies, healing and reparative movement, writing, and theory with a strong technological emphasis on new media, VR and film.

"I would like to create a program which unites the different methodological approaches I use and to create a non-hierarchical space of exchange for students to explore the intersection of gender, trans* and queer topics with a critique of the institutional, social and political dominance of cis/het infrastructures. Over the past years, I have developed an original, interdisciplinary pedagogical concept for teaching expanded forms of live and media art that seeks to deconstruct my own and others’ artistic work through the lens of non-binary epistemology, post colonial discourses and Indigenous unpacking of digital tools, particularly AI. I believe the expanded media forms of AI, AR and VR have the potential to reflect and diffract cosmological projections which connect to representation and might even unravel tired, dualistic forms of art production and representation. Through my ongoing multi-dimensional practice I have built up a network of collaborators including researchers and artists in the fields of video, film, sound, 3D, CGI and VR, AR and AI. In addition I work regularly with somatics and live art practitioners, programmers, writers and theoreticians. In my studio at the moment, I am researching the interconnectedness of virtuality, gender embodiment and cybernetics, as part of a multiyear, multimedia work, Hyperbodies , which will combine film, VR and performance. I am presently excited by the opportunities and challenges of continuing to teach at the intersection of theory and practice, focusing on expanding formats and integrating collaborative methodologies further into my multidimensional practice."

They are currently a research fellow at the Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung 2020–2021 and were a participant of the Berlin Program for Artists (BPA). They are also a guest professor on the MFA programme at Nuremberg Academie of Arts 2021–2022. They were a guest professor at Zurich’s University of the Arts for the winter and spring semesters of 2020. Recent exhibitions, talks and screenings include, The Narrow Gate of The Here and NOW , IMMA,  Dublin, IRE; Protoclub, Shedhalle, Zurich, CH; Art Taaalksss, Art Institute, Basel, CH; Biennale Zielona Góra, PL; New Nature Vitrines at the Goethe-Institute Montreal, CA, Berlin Weekly, DE, feldfünf, Berlin, DE, goeben, Berlin, DE and the Goethe-Institute, NY, USA; Urban Video Project, Light Work at The Everson Museum Syracuse, NY, USA; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, DE; BPA Talks, KW, Berlin, DE; National Sculpture Factory/ Cork Film Festival, Cork, IE; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, SE; Stadium Gallery, Berlin, DE; Nordenhake, Mexico City, MEX;  Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Milan, IT; Rencontres Internationales, Forum des Archives, Paris & HKW, Berlin; Spaces in Between, Bozar, Brussels, BE; Mumok Kino, Vienna, AUT; Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Dublin, IE; Bobs Pogo Bar, KW, Berlin, DE; Berlin Art Prize, 2018, DE; Wild, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, DE. The catalogue Prototypes was produced by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane and co-published by Sternberg Press and Edith-Russ Haus für Medienkunst with essays by Lou Drago, Caspar Heinemann and Joel Kuennen.

DI Andreas Rumpfhuber
University Professorship § 99 for Architectural Design, Platform HTC - History Theory Criticism (IKA)

"My practice as an architect and architectural theorist is directly aimed at current issues in architecture and urbanism that span the fields of society, politics, technology, economy and ecology. In teaching, my aim is to convey architecture as a reflective, analyzing and intervening scientific activity, in which one also thinks beyond the discipline in the narrow sense. In short: I am interested in using architecture to positively shape social processes."

Andreas Rumpfhuber is an architect and architectural theorist. His work focuses on new forms of work and living.

He has held guest professorships at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel, the State Academy of the Arts in Stuttgart and the Vienna University of Technology. Teaching and lecturing activities at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, University of Applied Arts Vienna, TU Vienna, TU Graz, University of Innsbruck, AA School of Architecture, ETH Zurich, KTH Stockholm, CCA Montreal, among others.

Research projects include "Architecture of Organizational Cybernetics" (FWF individual project, P22447-G21) and "Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment" (HERA, EUR 1m, together with Prof. Jeremy Till). Since 2015 civil engineer with a valid license. Currently planning a subsidized housing project in Vienna 23 with a total of 71 residential units.

Author and editor of the books Architecture of Immaterial Work (Turia and Kant, 2013), The Design of Scarcity (Strelka Press, 2014, together with Jeremy Till, Jon Goodbun, Michael Klein), Modelling Vienna, Real Fictions in Social Housing (Turia and Kant, 2015, together with Michael Klein), Wunschmaschine Wohnanlage (Sonderzahl, 2016), Into the Great Wide Open (DPR Barcelona, 2017) as well as text contributions for AA Files, Arch+, Footprint, The Guardian, Der Standard, among others.

2001–2005 board member of the Austrian Society of Architecture (ÖGFA) and from 2007–2009 board member of the Royal Danish Doctoral Schools of Architecture and Design.

Diploma studies in architecture at the TU Graz, Bartlett School of Architecture (London) and SCI-ARC (Los Angeles). 1999 Diploma with distinction under Prof. Joost Meuwissen and Prof. Hans Kuppelwieser. PhD scholarship at the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. 2009 PhD on the Architecture of Immaterial Work with Prof. Juliane Rebentisch (HfG Offenbach) and Prof. Henrik Oxvig (Royal Danish Academy). 2005–2008 Guest member of Roundtable 1 at the Center for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College London (Prof. Eyal Weizman).

Aristide Antonas
University Professorship §99 Architectural Design Platform GLC - Geography Landscapes Cities (IKA)

Aristide Antonas’ work spans philosophy, art, literature and architecture. He published novels, short stories, theatre scripts and essays. His art and architecture work has been featured among other places in documenta 14, Istanbul biennial, Venice biennale, and had solo institutional presentations in the Swiss Architecture Museum, in Austria’s Vorarlberger Architektur Institut and in the French FRAC, Orleans. Three books were published on his work Aristide Antonas , (Libra, Rome, 2015) Archipelago of Protocols , (dpr Barcelona, 2016). Testing the ordinary , (Der Konterfei, Vienna, 2017).

Mag. Dr.i Sigrid Eyb-Green
Tenure Track position §99 Abs. 5 Conservation – Restoration with specialization on paper (IKR)

"I see it as my task as a restorer to preserve cultural heritage in its many forms, reinterpreting its significance for the present and preserving it for future generations. What I find particularly exciting about my subject is the variety of approaches we use to approach works of art and cultural assets. We work with methods from different disciplines in the natural sciences and the humanities in order to understand objects in the totality of their material and immaterial aspects and to develop conservation strategies from this. Therefore, I see the teaching of conservation-restoration methods and practice as well as their critical reflection as the focal points of my teaching activities. The central concern of my work at the IKR is to closely link my own research, publication, and organizational work with my teaching activities in order to not only provide students with the necessary professional competence, but also to integrate them into the scientific community and thus to promote and help shape professionalization processes in conservation-restoration."

Sigrid Eyb-Green studied at the Institute for Conservation-Restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1994–99, where, after a stay at the National Design Museum in New York and freelance work in the U.S. and Vienna, she has been a research associate in charge of the paper conservation department since 2002. One focus of her research was already established with her diploma thesis on a large-format carton by Gustav Klimt and continued in her dissertation, in which she examined cartons by Leopold Kupelwieser. Another of Sigrid Eyb-Green's research interests is the history and theory of restoration; to this end, since 2018 she has been investigating the development of restoration training at the academy and thus the emergence of a specific, interdisciplinary scientific culture as part of the project History of Restoration in Austria: Experiential Knowledge and Disciplinary Professionalization, which is funded by the Austrian National Bank. Based on her own research work, she stimulated a number of seminar and diploma theses in recent years that deal with 19th century cardboard art or the history of paper restoration at various collections, some of which have already been completed and published.

Beyond her teaching and research activities, Sigrid Eyb-Green has been active for many years in national and international organizations such as ICOM-CC or the Austrian Association of Conservators. In 2014, together with Ute Henniges, she took over the editorship of the international journal Restaurator - International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material.

Dr. Heike Derwanz, MA
Tenure Track Position §99 Abs. 5 for Didactics of Material Culture and Social and Ecological Sustainability in the Subject Design in Context (IKL)

As a scholar of culture and art, Heike Derwanz is interested in the social and economic practices of cultural innovators. Before a one-year substitute professorship at the Institute for Ethnology and Cultural Studies at the University of Bremen, she coordinated the project initiative Low-Budget-Urbanity at the HafenCity University Hamburg. On the Transformation of the Urban under the Primacy of Austerity. Her current research focuses on sustainable household practices and their impact on urban infrastructures. Since February 2018, she has been researching in the DFG-funded project "Textile Minimalism. Pioneers of Sustainable Practice?" the everyday practices of German-speaking minimalists, including the relationship between digital practices and material culture.