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@ Gregor Fels

Prof. Dr. Nina Gerlach

Aesthetics and art sciences / Rector

Ph. +49 251 83 61330 F. +49 251 83 61430
n.gerlach[at]kunstakademie-muenster.de
Office hours: thursdays, 16:15 – 18:00
Leonardo-Campus 2

Nina Gerlach (born in 1979) has been Rector of the University of Fine Arts Münster since 2021 and Professor of aesthetics and art sciences since 2015. Gerlach studied European art history, ancient history, media and communication studies in Heidelberg and Mannheim (M. A. in 2005) and, until her intermediate exam (2002), media art/film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

From 2005 to 2010, she completed her doctorate in European art history at the University of Heidelberg (Prof. Dr. Michael Hesse, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Müller/TU Dresden) and was a fellow at Harvard University/Dumbarton Oaks (2008–2009). Her dissertation, published in 2012 (Gartenkunst im Spielfilm. Das Filmbild als Argument. Wilhelm Fink Verlag), highlights the role of gardens as a visual argument in epistemological and moral philosophical discourses of feature films.

Gerlach was a member of the NCCR Iconic Criticism (Eikones/University of Basel) from 2010 to 2013. Here, she examined the integration of technological innovations in video art and their displays using the example of online video portals. The project introduces theories of interpictoriality and cognitive metaphors into contemporary art theory.

From 2006 to 2015, Gerlach was a lecturer at the universities of Heidelberg, Basel, Friedrichshafen and Cologne and a substitute professor at the University of Fine Arts Münster.

Nina Gerlach represents an art science that focuses on the central challenges of contemporary society.

  • Digitality, art/business and the social present (artificial emotional intelligence, big data, video portals, trans-/posthumanism, computerised painting since the 1950s)
  • Aesthetics, history, image and media theory (computer-based arts, film, garden art, video art)
  • Art theory and sociology of the 20th and 21st centuries
  • Visual discourses of contemporary art (ethics, epistemology, art theory, images of man)
  • Visual culture studies (including visual children & childhood studies)
  • Art and human rights/democracy

  • Rector of the University of Fine Arts Münster (since 2021)
  • Vice-rector of the University of Fine Arts Münster (2018–2021)
  • Member of the advisory council of the Art Law Clinic of the Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law – Civil Law Department, University of Münster and the University of Fine Arts Münster, chaired by Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren (since 2018)
  • Liaison lecturer of the German National Academic Foundation (since 2018)
  • Member of the commission of the German National Academic Foundation (2017)
  • Direction (together with Stefan Hölscher) of the colloquium “Open-Frame (Post-)Disciplinary Thinking Platform for Art Students” (since 2017)
  • Liaison lecturer of the University of Fine Arts Münster (2016–2020)
  • Member of the review board Studies in Communication Sciences. Journal of the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (2010)

  • Mentoring Deutschschweiz des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds und des Bundesprogramms Chancengleichheit (2012-2014)
  • Reisestipendium (JP) der Universität Basel, Reisefonds für den akademischen Nachwuchs (2013)
  • Druckkostenzuschuss der Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim/Stiftung für Geist­eswissenschaften (2011)
  • Druckkostenzuschuss der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Exzellenzinitiative, Graduierten­akade­mie (2010)
  • August-Grisebach-Preis des Instituts für Europäische Kunstgeschichte der Universität Heidelberg für eine herausragende Promotion (2010)
  • Preis der Freunde der Gesellschaft der Freunde der Universität Heidelberg (Gruppenpreis für das interdisziplinäre Forum der Universität Heidelberg, 2009)
  • Reader- und Fellowship der Harvard University/Dumbarton Oaks (2007, 2008-2009)
  • Promotionstipendium sowie Forschungs- und Sprachreisestipendien (CA,  GB,  US) der Studienstifung des deutschen Volkes (2006-2010)
  • Ulrich-Hahn-Preis des Instituts für Europäische Kunstgeschichte der Universität Heidelberg für besondere wissenschaftliche Leistungen im Fach (2005)

The contemporary art studies that Nina Gerlach represents aim to make the current social significance of art and its academic forms of analysis more visible. To this end, she focuses on central events and challenges in the current reality of life for a broad public. Digitalisation processes and leading social media are her media focus.

The project explores contemporary interactions between painting and computer technologies. It inquires after the influence that digital technologies such as printers, machine learning or graphics software have on the aesthetic traditions of the genre. Since contemporary computer-based painting partly refers to concrete examples and styles from the history of painting, the project also makes it possible to reinterpret these in the light of information technology terminologies and, conversely, to reflect on current technological developments as well as their social forms of use and narratives against the backdrop of historical painting.

The project takes a look at the new media situation of video art brought about by video portals on the Internet, applying approaches from image and art theory as well as from the sociology of knowledge and cognitive science.

The focus is on the question of which art theoretical understanding characterises the online videos that were exhibited internationally from 2010 to 2012. The accumulation of image-relational references in these works, which refer to examples of the art-historical canon and the graphical user interface of video portals, brings an interpictoriality-theoretical analysis to the fore. It becomes obvious here that the online videos on display are based on a so-called post-medial understanding. In Krauss’ (2000) terms, such a conception of art does not presuppose knowledge of the medium used in the modernist sense, but refers to the necessity of the medium’s preceding processual production. In this sense, the exhibited videos self-reflexively produce insights into their own mediality, insofar as they aesthetically explore analogies and differences between online videos and older visual media.

Another focus of the project is the question of the conditions under which new exhibition dispositifs – in this case the video portal – are perceived by art history as exhibition spaces of art at all. The sociology of knowledge approach of cognitive metaphor theory was used for this purpose. The point of this approach is that in science in general, “new things” are attempted to be made metaphorically accessible with the help of comparisons with things that are already known. Since until 2010, research on video portals had not drawn any comparisons with artistic displays to understand this form of presentation, its use as an exhibition space for art consequently remained undiscovered. However, if one makes such a comparison with museological terms, it becomes apparent that in the Internet-based age, a museum convergence dispositive has been created with the video portal. Forms of exhibition are mixed there that were once temporally and locally separated from each other. Museums, galleries, democratised forms of the cabinets of wonder and artist-curated exhibitions form a hybrid media exhibition space.

The project focuses on the semantic and aesthetic appropriation and further development of historical garden art through feature film (since 1945). The (reception) aesthetic specifics of cinematic garden representation are first clarified on the basis of numerous examples from film history, applying intermediality and spatial theoretical approaches. In addition, the question is explored as to what extent cinematic representations of gardens are visually organised according to historical aesthetic ideals, such as the ideal of the picturesque.

The study also shows that film gardens are to be understood as communicative signs that not only convey historical images in historical film, but also popularise specific moral and art-philosophical positions. In postmodern cinema, for example, an increased artificiality of architectural garden art serves as a cultural relativist argument against a naturalistic aesthetic. The genre film, on the other hand, reduces the history of garden art to a bipolar stereotype of good and evil. It constantly places villains from agent and anti-war films in architectural gardens and combines private happiness in children’s and love films with naturalistic works. In accordance with ethical naturalism, the state of nature and the distance from it form the references for moral judgements in numerous Western feature films. Using various cultural studies approaches (including gender, queer, children & childhood theory), the project illustrates how, on this basis, racial ideological thinking, capitalism, working women, homosexuality and a scientifically oriented upbringing of children are presented as unnatural life practices.

The methods of iconography and iconology were revised against the background of a newly conceived visual deconstructivism for this research perspective.

Postdigitality, computers and painting

  • „Erkenntniskritische Datenvisualisierung – Vom Suprematismus bis zur künstlerischen Erforschung von Big Data". (in Vorbereitung)
  • „Malerei, das Malerische im post-(digitalen) Zeitalter". In: Kritische Berichte, Bd. 47, Nr. 1 (2019), S. 17–33 (englische Übersetzung: „A Brief History of Computer-Based Painting“. 2021, online auf ART-Dok).

Science fiction and artificial emotional intelligence

  • "Ex Machina (2015): All-over-Ästhetik Künstlicher Emotionaler Intelligenz oder unsere Zukunft zwischen Technikdarwinismus und 'Vertrauensfrage'". In: Marcus Stiglegger, Christoph Wagner (Hg.): Film, Bild, Emotion. Film und Kunstgeschichte im postkinematografischen Zeitalter (Zoom. Perspektiven der Moderne, Bd. 7). Berlin (Reimer, 2021, S. 386–417). online auf ART-Dok
    Informationen zur Publikation auf der Website des Verlags

(Online) video art, video platforms as displays and interpictoriality/intericonicity

Garden art in feature films, intermediality and visual moral and cognitive philosophy

Documentary film theory and animal film

  • „En prison / Im Gefängnis“ (Dr. Roger Mayou), Musée international de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge, Genf, 05.02.–18.08.2019 (Musée des Confluences, Lyon, 18.10.2019–26.07.2020) und Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, (26.09.2020–02.01.2022), Bericht des Senders Radio Télévision Suisse zur Ausstellung
    • Montage „Vollzug“ (gemeinsam mit Roman Podeszwa, 2018)
  •  „Gärten der Welt“ (Dr. Albert Lutz und Dr. Hans von Trotha), Museum Rietberg, Zürich, 13.05.-09.10.2016, Rezension in der Neuen Züricher Zeitung
    • filmwissenschaftliche Beratung
    • Katalogbeitrag "Der Trockengarten in Mizoguchis Genroku Chushingura (1941/42) und Ozus Banshun (1949) - Ein nationales Symbol im historischen Wandel". In: Albert Lutz (Hg.): Gärten der Welt. Orte der Sehnsucht und Inspiration. Köln (Wienand Verlag) 2016, S. 136-141. Publikation auf der Website des Verlags
    • Montage „Gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks“ (gemeinsam mit Roman Podeszwa, 2016)

Current dissertations (in German)

  • Malte Frey: „Cyberpunk Society. Posthumane Gesellschaft in visuellen Darstellungen von Postcyberpunk-Anime“ [Arbeitstitel]
    Kontakt und CV: www.maltefrey.de

Student and scientific assistants