Doctorate School
Cultural Production Dynamics
The DSP-Kolleg CULTURAL PRODUCTION DYNAMICS (The Dynamics of Cultural Theory and Production) offers innovative and transdisciplinary doctoral training in the field of Production Studies. In the city of Salzburg, renowned for its first-class cultural institutions and theatrical festivals, doctoral students will acquire critical tools with which to address cultural-scientific questions with artistic, creative and cultural-practical approaches.
This Production Studies Doctoral Programme is run in co-operation with (predominantly Salzburg-based) cultural institutions ( PLUS Kultur) and against the background of the Austrian Research Network Cultural Dynamics (ÖFG), as well as international research networks. Students will receive the methodological skills required to reflect cultural, aesthetic and social processes on the basis of current cultural events, to make aesthetic practices, forms and strategies of art and culture productive for cultural science research, to produce innovative cultural knowledge and develop it for application-oriented activities. This work will create valuable synergies between cultural theory and cultural practice as well as between cultural education and the transfer of knowledge. Established research co-operation with many European partners and special programmes, such as the Salzburg Easter School, further promote the doctoral students’ integration into high-calibre scientific and creative communities. The associated doctoral students will receive a cultural-practical education through workshops, guest lectures and colloquiums with Europe’s cultural elite to familiarise themselves with various forms of aesthetic practice, to gain insight into the Creative Industries, and to implement theoretical positions creatively in rapidly changing occupational fields. At the same time, the combination of cultural-theoretical and cultural-practical approaches has great potential for developing new fields of research (including Production Analysis and Audience Research, Cultural Sustainability, Religious Aesthetics) and producing new knowledge for science. The situativity and interactivity of cultural dynamics provide ample opportunities to analyse current cultural practices in a theoretical way and to reflect them together with cultural creators. To name but a few concrete examples:
– festivals as theatrical and paratheatrical even
– street theatre and cultural transfer
– procedural artistic knowledge and the mimetic practice of rituals
– ritual as artistic and religious practice
– cultural and creative mechanisms of acceleration and deceleration
– diversity as a feature of theatrical multi-dimensionality
– cultural education and creative stewardship
– musical theatre and new concert formats
– cultural heritage at the interfaces of memorialisation, theatricalisation, visualisation, transmedialisation and commodification;
– historical shifts in the perception of cultural forms of expression – whether spiritual dance, contemporary, song movement, melodrama, science plays or speculative literature.
This exchange of analytical and procedural knowledge is an integral feature in the training of doctoral students and offers an opportunity to shape the cultural sciences in an application-oriented direction, especially in Salzburg. The scope of cultural offerings, the density of outstanding cultural institutions in Salzburg, the high quality of the artistic events and productions on offer, their international effect and broad media coverage guarantee the success of joint projects in the context of theoretical reflection, artistic production and cultural action.
Photo credits:
Top: © Brigitte Haid/Salzburger Landestheater (Schwanensee, 2013/2014) – © Bruno Schwengl/Salzburger Landestheater (costume design sketch Mythos Coco, 2015/16) – © Gregor Hofstätter/Schauspielhaus Salzburg (Dosenfleisch, 2015/16) – © Constanze Dennig;
Bottom: © Brigitte Haid (Atelier Gespräch Cavalleria rusticana und Pagliacci, Osterfestspiele Salzburg 2015) – © Lisa Rastl/Sommerszene Salzburg (Willi Dorners every-one, 2016) – © Christian Schneider/Salzburger Landestheater (Kiss Me, Kate, 2010/11)
