Ass.Prof. Dr. Thomas Moser
Senior Fellow, April to September 2027
New Design University St. Pölten
- Assistant Professor of the Histories of Art, Media, and Design, with a focus on Visual Communication, at the New Design University St. Pölten
- Universitätsassistent at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), 2020–26
PhD in Art History from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2021; studies in Art History, Philosophy, and Architecture in Munich, Paris, and Vienna
Fellow projekt: ORBITAL ECOLOGIES: Visions of the future of the terrestrial environment, spanning space travel, the automotive industry and Afrofuturism
The project Orbital Ecologies investigates how the visual cultures of postwar American art rendered outer space perceptible as an integral component of a terrestrial environment. At its core is the argument that spaceflight, automobility, and future-oriented thinking in art, architecture, and design were not only aesthetically intertwined but also contributed to the emergence of a technologically mediated understanding of the environment. Against the backdrop of the Cold War and the expansionist technologies of American empire, the project examines four case studies in which spaceflight emerged as a cultural dispositif of Western modernity—from the automotive designs of the 1950s and infrastructurally imagined highway landscapes to astronomical visual cultures in mass media and advertising.