Ebru Kurbak

Within the framework of the “Focus on Gravity – Falling, Floating and Breaking away” the Departments of Art Theory and Cultural Studies jointly invite to this lecture of Ebru Kurbak.

Kurbak’s work critically examines the entanglements between art, technology, culture, and power. A central trajectory in her practice explores the implications of the historical, social, and spatial segregation of knowledges under colonial modernity. Her investigations have focused particularly on string and string-based technologies rooted in women’s, Indigenous, nomadic, and prehistoric cultures.

She is an artist born in Izmir (Turkey) and based in Vienna (Austria) and currently is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads the long-term arts-based research project “The Museum of Lost Technology”, funded through an Elise-Richter-PEEK Grant by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Kurbak’s work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at: Istanbul Modern (TR), NIROX Sculpture Park (ZA), Neue Galerie Graz (AT), and VIENNA ART WEEK 2025 (AT). Previously her work was shown at: ZKM – Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (DE), the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, AT), the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery (US), MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Vienna (AT), and the Istanbul Design Biennial (TR) (among others). Kubrak has held residencies at: La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, FR), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL), LABoral (Gijón, ES), NIROX (Krugersdorp, ZA), 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles, US), and Eyebeam (New York, US). In 2019, she received the LACMA Art + Technology Grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The interdisciplinary “Focus on Gravity – Falling, Floating and Breaking away” is a format developed by Florian Bettel, Liddy Scheffknecht and Anna Spohn. Together with guest speakers, we discuss the historicity of the concept of gravity in art, technology and science. Beyond a naïve re-actualisation of “force” as a conceptual foundation for artistic practice, art-based research, and studies in art or culture, we propose a critical discussion of forms, techniques, practices, metaphorical dynamics and discursive framings of “gravity”.