November 6th, 2025
Doing! Kurt Schwitters Symposium
The 11th Kurt Schwitters Symposium for Design Theory at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts will take place from November 6 to 7, 2025, at the Design Center on Expo Plaza. Dedicated to the theme “Doing!”, this year’s symposium explores the act of making as a central and unifying concept between theory and practice, reflection and production, thinking and doing.
Building on Kurt Schwitters’ interdisciplinary legacy and his understanding of artistic practice as an ongoing, process-oriented form of knowledge, the symposium examines how making can be understood as a mode of inquiry that transcends disciplinary boundaries. The conference aims to provide a platform for designers, artists, theorists, and researchers to discuss how material engagement, experimentation, and creative processes generate insights that cannot be captured by theory alone.
Over two days, participants will present projects and perspectives that position “doing” as an epistemic practice – a way of knowing through doing. The symposium seeks to illuminate how creative actions shape reality, how they performatively enact concepts, and how they intertwine with other fields. Within this context, doing is considered both a means of understanding and a method of intervention, equally relevant to design, art, craft, and activism.
The program includes lectures, talks, and discussions that examine the intersections of design- and arts-based research, practice-led inquiry, and embodied knowledge. By bringing these different arenas into dialogue, the symposium aims to foster a deeper understanding of how implicit and tacit knowledge emerge in practice and how such knowledge contributes to the development of design theory.
At the same time, the symposium acknowledges that the current enthusiasm for productivity and “doing” invites critical reflection. Can pausing, refraining, or not-doing also be understood as meaningful gestures within the creative process? How do stillness, contemplation, and reflection relate to the urgency of action? And how might practices of making remain open to slowness, doubt, and hesitation? Such questions will guide the theoretical discussions and artistic contributions of this year’s event.
Invited speakers include:
Vita Berezina-Blackburn (Ohio State University, OH, USA)
Prof. Dr. Tom Bieling (Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach)
Ludwig Drosch (University of Hildesheim)
Prof. Dr. Annette Geiger (University of the Arts Bremen)
Shoey Nam (University of the Arts Bremen)
Jan Neukirchen (Leibniz University Hannover)
Prof. Dr. Judith Siegmund (Zurich University of the Arts)
Further contributions will be made by members of Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts:
Prof. Luise Dettbarn, Alexandra Gomez Kaetz, Annerose Keßler, Prof. Timo Schnitt & Sylvia Bossenz, Prof. Nadja Schöllhammer, and Prof. Dr. Jakob Vicari. The symposium is hosted by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Weltzien and Dr. Carolin Scheler.
The Kurt Schwitters Symposium has established itself as a recurring forum for interdisciplinary exchange in the fields of design theory, artistic research, and design/art practice. True to Schwitters’ spirit, the event invites participants to engage in dialogue across disciplinary and methodological boundaries—reflecting on making not only as a form of production, but as a way of thinking, knowing, and being in the world.
