Critical Media
  • indispensable, crucial, decisive, life-affirming
  • of, relating to, or being a threshold, a turning point, an important juncture, having an agenda
  • what’s needed, what’s at stake.
Critical _

#computing #energies #archives #infrastructuring #publishing #prototypes #demoscenes #soundings #queerings #more-than-human_accountabilities #policy #film #processing #environmentalpractice #healing #access_tools #radicalkinship #intersectionalities

The Critical Media Lab Basel (CML) is one of the two central labs of the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. The CML is an idea, a set of activities and a community of students & researchers working at the intersections of design, media, arts & technology. It is a space of possibility where a plurality of processes, practices, and resistances are channeled towards collective projects.

Our practices depart from feminisms, queer theory, computation, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. “Critical” in this sense refers not to critique, but to articulating, imagining, altering, and configuring media and infrastructures for collectivity, solidarity, and abolition. We aspire to do critical work to strengthen the struggle against extraction, oppression, and exploitation, pursuing an agenda of justice and material equality.

Curricular & Extracurricular

The Critical Media Lab hosts research projects and provides students of the BA Process Design and MA Experimental Design with a space to practice and think. We organise workshops, guest visits, lectures, performances, publications, cultural and public events that complement the collaborative work of research and collective study.

A central public event, to which all are welcomed, is the CML Colloquium. The colloquium sessions typically happen on the first Wednesday of the month and provide opportunities to exchange and engage with students & colleagues across different fields and practices.

Where to Find Us

The Critical Media Lab is part of the Campus of the Arts, located at the Dreispitz area in the south of Basel, Switzerland. You’ll find us in the main building of the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, on the 3rd floor.

More details on directions and access.

Related
Professorship Transversal Design

Join us as the head of the new MA programme Transversal Design. Apply by November 30.

IXDM and transmediale partnership launch

Our institute and transmediale are launching a new partnership for the 2023 festival edition a model, a map, a fiction.

CML Lab Days

12–15 December 2022

We’ll come together for a week of exchanges and encounters at the lab.

With a film screening & discussion with Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, a book launch of “Volumetric Regimes” with Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting and Joëlle Bitton, the IXDM inaugural lectures, and more.

IXDM Inaugural Lectures

Wednesday, 14 December 2022

IXDM invites everyone to join us for the inaugural lectures by our new Head of Research Helen V. Pritchard, and Visting Professors Viktor Bedö and Budhaditya Chattopadhyay.

Dr. Helen V. Pritchard is the new Head of Research at IXDM
Visiting Professorships for Viktor Bedö and Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Funded by the Practice-to-Science grant of SNSF.

IXDM is growing

Critical Media Lab & HyperWerk join forces to form the new IXDM.

Introducing: The Lab Showcase