The Critical Media Lab is an integral part of the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel. It not only serves both as a physical lab space and a conceptual vehicle to develop a contemporary notion of criticality towards design, media practices and their cultures, but also aims for a playful and experimental proximity of practice and theory.

In a time when we are realising that the former new media have not lived up to their oftentimes promising radical power, the laboratory is a place where the potentials and limitations of old and new media are used in service of critical questioning and experimental thinking.

Critical practice intends a set of objects (physical and otherwise) more readily open to scrutiny, more available to thought. The use and reflection on the technological, the shaping of material complexes, ignites a potential for critique that is as fundamental and intrinsic as it is disruptive or incisive: the critical knowledge of a system, the critical moments of a process or critical states of a material; along with criticism of ideology or opaqueness in the world.

The Critical Media Lab’s facilities and programme are coordinated and curated by Shintaro Miyazaki.