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Anders Michelsen

Associate Professor

Research areas

Anders Michelsen is Associate Professor, PhD, Director of Studies at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen (2500 students/ 40+ scientific employees). 2002-2007 he coordinated the first master program in Visual Culture Studies in Denmark. 2007 - Director of Studies at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies.

Anders' research-topics and interests lie within the interdisciplinary field emerging from contemporary art and culture, design and technology, history and globalization, especially as related to visual culture, design, computer media, and creative imaginaries. His PhD thesis treats the ?imaginary of the artificial;? Confronting the imaginary of the artificial: from cyberspace to the Internet, and from the Internet to us, University of Copenhagen 2005. He is presently preparing a postdoc project (dr.phil) on "visual culture and the imaginary" - on creative imagination and imaginaries in collective and subjective forms.

Anders' work with visual culture has three focuses:

- Theoretical and philosophical research into the notion of visuality and visual culture, related to issues of human complexity, self-organization, and the imaginary.

- Analytical work with new forms of the visual ? viksual organizations ? across art, publics, design, economics, and media culture.

- Projects with partners outside academia in media and innovation industries, new media, and the global civil society.

Anders is Director of the platform PeaceWare which focuses on new creative innovation formats for ITC4D (Information and communication technology for development - UNs headline), in particular forms of social software related to conflict resolution and post-conflict development in areas like Somalia (Republic of Somaliland), Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. (http://www.peaceware.net/)

Anders participates in scientific networks on visual culture in Europe, as co-director of The Rio-Copenhagen Visual Culture Network, as a member of Nordic Network of Visual Studies (NordForsk), and participant in Discourses of the visible: national and international perspectives (DVNIP) (European Science Foundation - ESF Scientific Network). Presently he is the co-organizer of the internation symposium SocioAesthetics: A symposium on aesthetics, culture and social life. Copenhagen 2009: August 23-25 (http://socioaesthetics.ku.dk/) -- a joint venture between Monash University and The University of Copenhagen.

Selected Publications

"Autotranscendence and Creative Organization: On self-creation and Self-organization," in Peter Murphy & Anders Michelsen (eds), "Autopoiesis: Autology, Autotranscendence and Autonomy", Thesis Eleven Critical Theory and Historical Sociology # 88. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 55-75 

"Nothing Has Meaning Outside Discourse? - On the creative dimension of visuality," in Andrea Pinotti (ed), Art in the Age of Visual Culture and the Image. Proceedings of the workshop of the European Science Foundation
Università degli Studi di Milano, Palazzo Feltrinelli, Gargnano del Garda, 7-8 April 2005. Special Issue, LEITMOTIV. Motivi di estetica e di filosofia delle arti, pp. 89-114. 

Anders is the co-author of 2 books, he has co-edited 8 anthologies and journal issues (most recently Thesis Eleven Vol 88:1 - http://the.sagepub.com/content/vol88/issue1/), he has co-edited 3 art catalogues, and 2 websites. He has authored 63 papers published in Denmark and internationally, in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, USA.

Anders is co-editing a three volume colllection on the notion of visuality, Trans-visuality. Dimensioning the visual in a visual culture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2009- and a volume on design thought, Designfilosofi. Forskning og kreativitet [Design philosophy: science and creativity]. Copenhagen. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Publishers 2009.

In addition, Anders has written many catalogue texts, news paper articles, contribution to surveys and reports, reviews etc., most recently a text for Olafur Eliasson (http://gargoyle.arcadia.edu/gallery/archives/eliasson.htm). He has been advisory editor of Atlantica Revista de Arte y Pensamiento, CAAM, Gran Canaria since the mid-90s (http://www.caam.net/en/atlantica.htm) which has pionered art outside the West since the early 1990s. He is on the editorial board of the new Norwegian visuel culture journal Ekfrase: Nordisk Tidsskrift For Visuell Kultur.

Anders has a broad range of experience with teaching and presentations. Including experimenting formats with partners in creative education and the creative industries. He has lectured extensively in Europe, Brazil, USA, Sri Lanka (course teaching, paper presentations, visiting scholarships, seminars, workshops).

Since the early 90s Anders has worked as a free lance art critic and curator of art and design exhibitions, including the art exhibitions Welfare. 5 Pieces (with Morten Salling) Paris 1995 and Interzones (with Octavio Zaya), Copenhagen and Uppsala 1996, and Inspiration eller Plagiat? - om kreativitet i design, [Inspiration or Plagiary? ? on creativity in design] (with Martin Christiansen) Copenhagen, 2001-2002.