René Stettler is a cultural researcher with many years of international experience. He is the founder of the New Gallery Lucerne (1987) and the Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics and Aesthetics (1994). Both institutions are supported by the City of Lucerne and the Regionalkonferenz Kultur Region Luzern (RKK), the Swiss National Science Foundation, and private donors. Major topics such as Brain–Mind–Culture (1995), Liquid Visions (1997), Frontier Communication: Human Beings, Apes, Whales, Electronic Networks (1999), The Enigma of Consciousness (2001), Consciousness and Teleportation (2005), and Consciousness and Quantumcomputers (2007) have been discussed a the Swiss Biennial by internationally acclaimed speakers such as the British mathematician Roger Penrose, the Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger and the German chaos theorist Otto E. Rössler. Together with Otto E. Rösser Stettler co-authored Interventionen: Vertikale und horizontale Grenzüberschreitung (1997) and is the editor of various publications, e.g. Zu einer neuen Quantenphysik des Bewusstseins. Gespräche an den Grenzen der Erkenntnis(2009) with Roy Ascott, Ulrike Gabriel, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Stuart Hameroff, Eduardo Luna, Josef Mitterer, Roger Penrose, Otto E. Rössler, Peter Weibel, and Anton Zeilinger. In 2003, he received the Swiss Art Award for his work as an intermediary between science and art. In the same year, he was also awarded a prize from the Canton and the City of Lucerne for his crosscultural and transdisciplinary projects.
Stettler holds a diploma in culture management of the University of Berne, Switzerland, and he is a Ph.D. candidate at the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK. In his thesis, he explores the potentiality for a renaissance of cultural work and knowledge in the global cultural economy. Stettler teaches at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The focus of his teaching lies on media theory, media art and culture management addressing the growing public concern about issues to do with scientific research and technological innovation, globalization, environment, social accountability, and procreation.
Research Project
The Politics of Cultural Knowledge Work - Die Politik kultureller Wissensarbeit (Thesis Working Title, School of Computing, Communication and Electronics, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth / UK).
Over the past 10 years as artistic director of the Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics + Aesthetics and the New Gallery Lucerne, I have developed a critical interest in today’s mixed and hybrid knowledges and the cultural settings through which they are conveyed to the public. In my doctoral thesis at the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK, I investigate contemporary problems, misunderstandings and misconceptions about the way we organize and utilize the hybridisation of knowledges in many societal contexts where knowledge is culturally (re)produced, (re)arranged and transferred. I am especially interested in the new forms of transdisciplinary knowledge work (and production) capable of pointing beyond the paradigm which can be exemplified by the term ‘Western science’—a form of rational knowledge that we have accepted as authoritative and universal, although it has created the probability of a nuclear winter, scenarios of biological warfare and global climate change.
In my seminars at various Swiss Art and Design Schools, I address the growing public concern about issues to do with scientific research and technological innovation, globalisation, environment, social accountability, and procreation. To cultivate the students’ ability to critically reflect cultural, scientific and technological developments has not been an easy task. A key issue of my methodology in teaching is the cultivation of dialogues and transdisciplinary research ideas in order to support creative processes and channel them into arts and design thinking. With these seminars I touch on a wide range of subjects—industrial and cultural ethics; the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature; the rethinking of the definition and constitution of modernity; the recognition of the connections between nature and culture—between our Western culture and others. I believe that perspectives fusing ideas and solutions are increasingly important. Not only because it is possible to recognize contemporary problems of rationality, reflexivity and transdisciplinarity more directly, but also in order to cultivate our awareness of a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.
With the Artists-in-Labs-Project of the Zurich University of the Arts conducted between 2003 and 2005, we have encouraged education, innovative processes and new methods of knowledge production blending the disciplines of art and science. This project was the first of its kind in Switzerland. It included Swiss Science Labs in a wide range of disciplines such as bio-chemistry, bio-technology, solar energy, the computational and information sciences, electron microscopy, micro-electronics, artificial intelligence research, ecological risk research, micro robotics, nano technology, physics and the environmental sciences. The artists came from the working fields of conceptual art, computer animation, documentary film, human computer interface (HCI) research, living sculpture, performance art, robotic theatre, sound and video art, as well as wearable computing.
Texts, Essays
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Artistic Director
