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Peter Mörtenböck

Staff details

Peter Mörtenböck

Position

Lecturer in Visual Cultures and Professor of Visual Culture in the Architecture School at Vienna University of Technology

Department

Visual Cultures

Email

p.mortenbock (@gold.ac.uk)

Peter has research interests in the fields of networked cultures, other markets and worlds of matter.

Peter Mörtenböck is Professor of Visual Culture at the Vienna University of Technology and visiting researcher in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, where he has initiated the Networked Cultures project (www.networkedcultures.org), a global research platform focusing on translocally connected spatial practices.
Peter has held several visiting professorships in fine art, cultural and media studies and has lectured and organised conferences at numerous universities and art schools worldwide. His current research is focused on the architecture of the political community and the economisation of the city, as well as the global use of raw materials, urban infrastructures and new data publics. Together with Helge Mooshammer, he curated the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, which explored the theme of “platform urbanism”.

Academic qualifications

  • Habilitation Degree in Cultural History, Graz University of Technology 2002
  • MSc in Architecture, Vienna University of Technology 1996
  • PhD in Humanities, Vienna University of Technology 1995
  • MA in Psychology, University of Vienna 1992

Teaching and supervision

Peter has taught numerous BA, MA and PhD courses in visual culture, architecture, art, urban and media studies, as well as occasional workshops, colloquia and tutorials, at universities and art schools in Austria, Germany, the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom, including at TU Wien (1997-present), Goldsmiths College, University of London (1998-present), and University of Paderborn (2002). He also acted as Adjunct Professor at Linz University of Art (2002-2003) and Merz Academy Stuttgart (2007). He has initiated several new MA programmes in Visual Culture and has organised a number of inter-university teaching networks. Peter has also been external Ph.D. and professorial habilitation examiner in many universities and advisor for numerous student-led initiatives, including peer-reviewed journals and graduate conferences.
Lecture, seminar and studio courses taught include: Contemporary Culture, New Models of Art and Architectural Production, Methodology of Architectural Research, Design Studio, Introduction to Visual Culture, Network Creativity, Performative and Participatory Aspects of Visual Culture, Digital Culture, Morphology of Fine Art, Form and Desire, Introduction to Media Aesthetics, Special Seminar in Media Production, Theory-Praxis: Documenta, Virtual Realities – Real Virtualities, Transforming (Critical) Practices, Cities of Modernity, Technological Subjects, Electronic Media, Perception and Recognition.

Research interests

Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer's joint research is concerned with new forms of spatial production vis-à-vis current processes of planetary change and the dynamics that inform them: geopolitical conflicts, capitalist urbanisation, new technologies and associated socio-economic developments such as mediatisation, financialisation and informalisation.

Ongoing long-term research projects include 'platFORMed city' (2022-2026), 'City Layers' (2023-2025), and 'Incorporating Informality' (2018-2023), the latter being a follow-up project to 'Other Markets' (2010-2015). Other previous projects include 'Relational Architecture' (2006-2009), 'Networked Cultures' (2005-2013), 'World of Matter' (2011-2018), and 'Data Publics' (2016-2021).

Mörtenböck and Mooshammer have authored and edited numerous books, including, amongst others, Visuelle Kultur (2003), Cruising: Architektur, Psychoanalyse und Queer Cultures (2005), Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (2008), Netzwerk Kultur: Die Kunst der Verbindung in einer globalisierten Welt (2010), Space (Re)Solutions: Intervention and Research in Visual Culture (2011), Occupy: Räume des Protests (2012), the two-volume publication Informal Market Worlds: The Architecture of Economic Pressure - ATLAS & READER (2015), Andere Märkte: Zur Architektur der informellen Ökonomie (2016), and Visual Cultures as Opportunity (2016). Their essays have appeared in international journals such as Grey Room, Architectural Research Quarterly, Architectural Theory Review, Social Text, and Third Text.

Their most recent books incluce the edited volumes Data Publics: Public Plurality in an Era of Data Determinacy (2020), Platform Urbanism and Its Discontents (2021) and IN/FORMAL Marketplaces: Experiments with Urban Reconfiguration (2023). They are currently working on the forthcoming monograph Building Capital: Urban Speculation and the Architecture of Finance.

Featured publications

2023: In/formal Marketplaces: Experiments with Urban Reconfiguration
This book provides critical insights into formal-informal linkages in urban transformation.

2021: Platform Urbanism and Its Discontents
Platform Urbanism and Its Discontents discusses the fundamental transformation of urban space through platform technologies.

2020: Data Publics: Public Plurality in an Era of Data Determinacy
This book examines new data publics and the areas in which they become operative, via analysis of politics, geographies, environments and social media platforms.

2016: Visual Cultures as Opportunity
In this book Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck analyse the networked spaces of global informal markets, the cultural frontiers of speculative investments, and recent urban protests.

2015: Informal Market Worlds: The Architecture of Economic Pressure
Bringing into focus the contested spaces at the bottom of the world economy, this two-volume publication tracks the powers, currents and actors driving informal trade.

Grants and awards

2023: City Layers
TCS Grant (citizen science), Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

2022: Platformed City
PEEK Grant (arts-based research), Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

2020: Curatorship of the Austrian Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2021
Winner of the competition for the curatorship of the Austrian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Biennale Venice 2020 (postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic)

2016: Data Signs in Public
PEEK Grant (arts-based research), Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Publications and research outputs

Book

Edited Book

Edited Journal

Book Section

Article

Conference or Workshop Item

Audio

Digital

Project

Show/Exhibition

Research projects

2023-2024: City Layers
The project seeks to set up an innovative framework for city-mapping which centres on citizen experience of urban space.

2022-2024: Platformed City
This project seeks to visualise the networked interactions of “platform urbanism” through computer simulations, interactive cartographies, films, and animations.

2016-2021: Data Publics
Data Publics is an international research project that investigates the political, economic and cultural conditions of data generation and the shaping of new public spheres.

2011-2015: World of Matter
World of Matter is an international art and media project investigating primary materials (fossil, mineral, agrarian, maritime) and the complex ecologies of which they are a part.

2005-2009: Networked Cultures
Networked Cultures investigates the cultural transformations under way in Europe through examining the potentials and effects of networked spatial practices.

1998-2002: Imaginary Subjects in Architecture
This research deals with the transformation taking place in our spatio-temporal existence generated by the emergence of cyberspace as an integral part of the production of social and cultural order.

Media engagements

2021: Platform Urbanism
94 min., dir. Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer; screened, amongst others, at Biennale Architettura (Venice).

2007: Networked Cultures (Network Creativity – Contested Spaces – Trading Places – Parallel Worlds)
105 min., dir. Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer; screened, amongst others, at Whitechapel Gallery (London), santralistanbul (Istanbul), Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York).