Founded in March
2006, the Gender Art Laboratory (GAL) at the Angewandte is conceived as an “open workshop” at the intersection of art and
science, a laboratory for artistic-scientific research, production, and interpretation. The implications of the related fields
of science and art, concerning their treatment of gender-specific issues and the motif of the “norm” prescribed by society
itself, are critically addressed on equal terms. In the Gender Art Lab students, artists, and scientists analyse and discuss
the fundamental subject of gender and its meaning. The programme alternates between topic- specific lectures and public debates.
The results and reactions of this “groundwork” are artworks that encompass all disciplines, interpretative works by
GAL participants, individual solutions, questions, problem explanations, and statements in exhibitions and publications. In
the combination of practice and theory, art and gender, manifests the unique character of the GAL, with which the Angewandte
attains a pioneering position in its study programmes. The rapid transformations that our society and every social construction
worldwide are allegedly subject to are a recurring element of sceptical scrutiny, which the GAL strives to sustain.
