An interview with professors Angela Bulloch, Simon Denny, Omer Fast, and Nora Sternfeld on artistic research at the intersection of institutions, responsibility, and social change

By Angela Bulloch, Simon Denny, Omer Fast, Nora Sternfeld and Sara Hillnhütter

Sara Hillnhütter: Since we began our PhD in Art Practice study program in April, we’d like to talk with you about how practice-based art, or so-called artistic research, contributes to collective knowledge production both inside and outside the academy. Maybe we can start with short statements from everyone. Very generally: What do you understand by artistic research, and what role does it play in your work?

Angela Bulloch: Well, I always consider myself to be driven by curiosity—basically speaking, having a researching, inquiring mind. For me, it’s as natural as breathing, this drive to ask: How does something work? How does it sit in the world? How does it affect me? Can I change it? Why does it look like that? That’s how I think about artistic research—it’s direct, intuitive, and just part of how I approach things.

Omer Fast: I have an ambivalent relationship to the notion of research. I don’t consider myself an artistic researcher, but I need to leave the studio and my computer to make my work. When I do that, I enter a liminal space, which brings me into contact with people whose lives or experiences I find interesting. These encounters result in conversations and documentation. It’s research in the sense of gathering material, bringing it back, looking at it again, and arranging it in a way that reflects not only the material, but my own response to it.

Simon Denny: For me, it’s as simple as input and output. Artistic research is anything that comes in—visual, cultural, contextual. That’s also how I see it in other practices I’m involved in. What comes in, what informs, is the research part. There are many people producing research, but it’s not always framed that way. For example, a painter might be doing aesthetic, political, or analytical research, but it’s not always recognized as such. So, for me, anything I take in is research.

Sara Hillnhütter: Nora, maybe you can wrap up this round?

Nora Sternfeld: I think the specificity of artists doing research today is that people are following their own questions—not ones completely defined by the scientific system. Art is never just what is commissioned. That brings a certain freedom, but also a drive to produce knowledge and forms beyond what’s asked for.

Sara Hillnhütter: Angela, your work Rule Series is a great example of what Nora just described. In that series, you often decontextualize rules, revealing man-made structures and how they control activities to maintain social order. You reflect on this in your work—making implicit premises explicit. How do you pick the objects you work with?

Angela Bulloch: It’s interesting you mention the Rule Series. I’ve just shown some of them in a group show. I arrive at certain rules by chance or by stumbling into odd contexts—things that stand out to me. I pick them like flowers. I collect rules, make a system, and then work with them in terms of output. I don’t just remove the context, I recontextualize them—playing with language and terms, reframing everything. It’s like rearranging building blocks within a language and systematic thinking. It’s intuitive, but often leads to surprisingly contrasting ideas. Looking at the way a framework appears in a new context can be a very powerful interrogation of the meaning of that set of rules. That’s part of my research: playing with recontextualizing ideas into different systems and places.

Sara Hillnhütter: Do you develop a new methodology for each object, or is there something continuous in your practice?

Angela Bulloch: With the Rule Series, it’s a linguistic system—and it evolves as my collection grows. That’s ongoing since the early ’90s. The works with AR Codes (Augmented Response), I’ve been thinking more from a human perspective, making machine-readable images more interesting for humans—sort of inverting the “usual” systems logic. It’s one way of playing with systems and aesthetics, which is also a form of research.

Sara Hillnhütter: Omer, how do you combine your visual practice with social criticism?

Omer Fast: Very carefully. Nora already spoke about freedom and Angela about decontextualizing material. Since I started leaving the studio to find material for my work, I realized that this freedom (or privilege) requires an ethical and social responsibility. But since I’m not a journalist or a scientist, where there are checks and balances, like peer review processes or fact-checking, the whole dimension of responsibility has to be somehow invented and incorporated into the artistic process. Still, whenever I represent something, I often find that the resulting work is more accurately a misrepresentation, or at least more truly represents my own preconceptions or prejudices.

Sara Hillnhütter: Nora, you use the term “un-learning” in your texts and work. What do you mean by that?

Nora Sternfeld: I see un-learning as a practice for understanding how knowledge is embedded in power. It means recognizing the power relations that make some people know and others not. Inspired by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, unlearning is a deconstructive process. There’s a specific deconstructive capacity in an artistic approach. Representation is always a negotiation between what is present and what is not, and artists work with the impossibility of full presence or representation. That’s what makes art interesting: the conflict between reality and its representation in the work.

Omer Fast: Yes, and especially in the last 20 years, with social media and the internet, we’re much more aware that we’re not just representing reality, but actively constructing it. We’re not just observers, but participants.

Nora Sternfeld: Absolutely. As an art educator, I tell students to see themselves as teachers through the eyes of their artistic practice. This reflexive knowledge—understanding one’s own position through working with representation—is something art can uniquely contribute.

Sara Hillnhütter: Simon, can you elaborate on technical apparatuses and how they shape our contemporary notion of knowledge?

Simon Denny: Angela and I have discussed this. The historical divisions between virtual and actual—especially in the social media-saturated, online-offline world—are hard to draw now. The virtual becomes very real. This resonates with what Nora and Omer said about constructing reality and the tension between representation and just being or doing. It’s hard to separate online from offline, or virtual from real. I feel like I live in many places at once, and technology supports that. I wouldn’t necessarily frame that as a critique—I think it’s great to be a “multiple subject” across borders and identities.

Sara Hillnhütter: All of your work moves between different media—installation, video, browser art. Is materiality also a category for knowledge production?

Simon Denny: Absolutely. For example, I’m producing paintings now, but they’re not just paintings anymore. They circulate online and become network-based images. A painting is both an experience in a room and a kind of knowledge asset moving through a network.

Sara Hillnhütter: Omer, I remember your exhibition Reden ist nicht immer die Lösung at Gropius Bau in 2016/17 where you reflected on your experience at the immigration office. You installed a room resembling that office, which reminded me of many transitional structures we move through—airports, cultural thresholds. How do you reflect on these social thresholds?

Omer Fast: All of us who produce these works, we typically do so for exhibitions in these “temples” of art, right? The exhibition space is like a niche—an appendix to the rest of society. This goes back to Benjamin’s notion of the aura in a work of art and what value it offers. What I like about the “temple” and its rituals is that we know we’re looking at a facsimile. So, the question of representation is already front and center. In that particular exhibition, I remember feeling panicked when I first saw the space. There were seven rooms, and I thought, “Oh no, if these all end up being black boxes with films inside, not even my mother would survive this.” So, I wanted to refer to spaces outside the exhibition—places where power is negotiated, where you wait, cross thresholds, and enter systems of authority that govern your life. One of the most successful interventions in the show involved a group of recent arrivals from Syria—people who had dealt with the immigration office. They had all learned “Waiting for Godot” in German, a language they didn’t speak. They would enter the space and, without warning, shut down the artwork, and when the audience looked at them, the first thing they said was “nichts zu machen” (“nothing to be done”), which is how the play begins. They then performed this classic avant-garde piece and thereby disrupting the exhibition. It was so unexpected that, at one point, a security guard—who hadn’t been briefed—threw them out. In that moment, the institution itself began to police the intervention and the artwork. For me, that was the most real moment of the exhibition, because something actually happened in the “temple”—not just the ritual display of representation, but an actual event.

Nora Sternfeld: I think what’s interesting here is that the critique of representation is now almost taken for granted, so you can go a step further. But even then, you’re not completely in the immediate. Why is it interesting that some Syrians are kicked out of an exhibition? We know Syrians are excluded from many places all the time. What makes it interesting is that you enter a space where something can actually happen—and that you’re able to reflect on it as it happens.

Sara Hillnhütter: The art work questions and reflects on institutional rules. How can an institution—whether a museum, an art school, or a university—actually respond to this?

Nora Sternfeld: I think there’s a real achievement in moving from institutional critique to an institution’s own capacity for critical action. Like Omer described, it’s not just about critiquing the institution, but about the potential for representation to become post-representational—while also recognizing the power relations at play. That’s what a contemporary institution could and should be: one that takes critique seriously, not just by turning it into a museum piece, but by using it to drive change. Unfortunately, in many cases—especially under neoliberalism or even growing authoritarianism—institutions tend to absorb critique without changing for the better. So, the question is: How can critique within the museum actually have consequences for the museum itself, especially in a post-representational way? For example, what does it mean if a racist action—like throwing people out—becomes part of an artwork within the museum? What does that mean for the artwork, for the institution, and for the kind of knowledge that can address the reality that such actions are happening in the society right now, and we’re witnessing them?

Omer Fast: Even if they’re niche or privileged spaces, I’d say the “temple” and the theater are important because they’re spaces where we know we’re looking at representations. There’s a kind of safety in that: You won’t be harmed, nothing bad will happen to you, beyond having your assumptions challenged. That’s the privilege of these spaces, and it’s why we make work for them. I exist within this niche, privileged system, where artworks are commissioned for an audience. It’s an economic system, too—not just about representation or post-representation, but a small, specialized economy that traffics in representation.

Simon Denny: But is it really possible to keep these rarified systems separate from other economies outside of them today? Can you actually contain that economy as a singular unit, or does it inevitably interact with others? I’m just thinking about my own experience—when I’ve tried to deploy something strictly within a particular context, with a specific commissioner and an intended destination, I find it increasingly difficult to control how it circulates. Even if you don’t want your work published online, for example, or you’re not on social media, somehow it still finds its way through other networks and audiences. Personally, I find it almost impossible to control how things circulate now—and honestly, I don’t even want to. But even if I did, I think it would be extremely hard.

Omer Fast: I think you are right: The privilege of research in art is that the findings, whatever they are, are presented in a physical space—a social space where people come together to experience them. That surplus value the museum or gallery offers might seem old-fashioned or even outdated, especially since museums have tried to open themselves up to the internet and virtual spaces in recent years. But coming from my own context, I still believe the social contract that these spaces offer—the “temple,” the theater, the art gallery—is fundamentally important for understanding representation. These are social spaces embedded in systems of power and privilege, but precisely because of that, they provide a platform for understanding and mediation—something that’s harder to achieve elsewhere, alone, scrolling on your device late at night.

Simon Denny: I also value those environments. Much of my own work is still made for those situations. Just to clarify, I’m not questioning the value of those spaces—they’re crucial, and that’s why art schools, like the one we all work at, are important places to invest time and energy. They produce a specific kind of value in these unique settings. But at the same time, our work inevitably enters other economies and networks at the same time. Even as we create within these “temples,” our work takes on new roles outside our control. That doesn’t diminish the value of those spaces, but it does mean there are additional ramifications and layers—other economies circulating within, outside, and alongside them. Sometimes they augment or even transform the traditional spaces.

Omer Fast: And of course, exhibitions also happen outside museums and galleries, as they should. But for me, it’s about the act of seeing—of seeing together. It’s a simple but powerful observation: If I watch something I’ve just edited alone, I’m not as aware as I am when my wife sits down to watch it with me. The presence of another body changes the whole chemistry of perception. That’s why the ritual, the cinema, the exhibition space are important—they’re venues for mediating culture and knowledge in a social way.

Simon Denny: But socialization happens on many levels. There are intimate settings and less intimate ones, but there’s also this networked socialization happening simultaneously through online pathways. In teaching, we all stress how cultural value is produced socially—it only gains meaning when it’s socialized. Private expression is quiet; what resonates is what circulates. And now, there are so many expanding and unexpected channels for meaning-making that add to, or happen alongside, these more local or social experiences.

Angela Bulloch: Because so much is done online now, and so much research happens in digital spaces, I find myself drawn back to the museum—to physically encounter art objects and their values, with other people in the room. That spatial, bodily experience feels even more important now. I really feel the need to return to the “temple,” the museum, because I miss that physical reality. It’s crucial not to overlook that: measuring your own human scale against something in the room, surrounded by others. That’s an experience I hope we never lose.

Sara Hillnhütter: So, in many ways, producing art is also an experiment for you as artists. To sum up what you’ve described: You never really know where an image will end up or how it will be received. What role does this experimental status play in your practice?

Omer Fast: It’s both a risk and a privilege.

Angela Bulloch: An “experimental” practice is a necessary part of being an artist today. We, as artists need to be ready to take risks in our ever changing world.

Simon Denny: I think these unpredictable economies we’ve talked about here mean that any kind of output is experimental by context – one simply can’t imagine what a gesture does. To embrace that unknown by acting is experimental.

Sara Hillnhütter: The PhD in Art Practice program is titled Being(s): Artistic Research in Transformative Contexts of Health, in which we develop our discussion referring to the concept of “One Health” the WTO published during the first COVID-19 year. The idea is to see medicine as a broader issue that overcomes limits between humans and animals, but understands health as an holistic concept that concerns different social structures and beings on a planet in the Anthropocene. What contribution can artistic research make in this context in your eyes?

Nora Sternfeld: Well, I think again that art can reflect on and intervene in a situation in which life is at stake in many different ways. And I think that artistic research can be both more and less than what the logic of commodification of life would expect. And without knowing what the contribution could be, I dare to suggest that it might go—with its artistic drive to know and to understand differently—far beyond the scope of whatever the commission is.

Angela Bulloch: Human “self-understanding” has developed within the Anthropocene; these paradigm shifts of thinking of health as global, also to value the importance of all life on our planet and beyond, instead of only human life—these shifts in thinking do broaden and alter the context for artistic research profoundly. When the human is no longer the center of all considerations, then we need to change not only the way we think but for whom or what we are thinking. The fact that the research conducted is within and for the interests of human survival, can no longer be considered as “baked in” or as a given assumption as it used to be.

Simon Denny: Johannes Büttner, the PhD candidate that I am working with in this program, is following what supra-legal and extra-territorial spaces like network states mean for health. He is getting embedded in experiments like Prospera (which is a kind of startup state in an agonistic/antagonistic relationship with Honduras). His work is focused on seeing what people seeking to do experimental procedures that are outside of legal umbrellas of many existing states can look like in these new hybrid sovereignty environments. So, to me that speaks directly to which social and legal structures construct what kind of subject—urgent questions within the health context and beyond.

Angela Bulloch and Simon Denny are Professors of Time-based Media, Omer Fast is Professor of Film and Dr. Nora Sternfeld is Professor of art education at HFBK Hamburg.

Sara Hillnhütter is Artistic Research Officer at HFBK Hamburg and coordinator of the PhD in Art Practice study program.

This interview was first published in the magazine Lerchenfeld #75.