Initiated by Florian Schneider, "Imaginary property" started as a research project in the context of the exhibition project A.C.A.D.E.M.Y: Learning from the Museum (Van Abbemuseum 2006). It began with a week-long investigation into the question: "What does it mean to own an image?" which was asked to all the people who were involved in the most recent acquisition of the Van Abbemuseum, a so far unknown piece by El Lissitzky. The video recordings of this inquiry were presented as a video installation, realised in collaboration with Jan Gerber, Susanne Lang and Sebastian Lütgert.

Imaginary Property continued as a research project of the Design department at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. It aspired to explore new potentials for design practices and image production across various registers. The project is set up as a realm of experimentation; it is a laboratory where emerging concepts and terminologies are set to a series of tests. What challenges emerge from the paradoxes that research into ‘imaginary property’ has given rise to? How could these potentially generate new rules of production, bearing in mind that property relations are constantly exchanging meanings? Against this background: do we have to rethink and re-evaluate the notion of ‘design’ as such?

In autumn 2008 four researchers have been selected who were tackling fundamental issues and query conventions of disciplines such as film, multimedia, web design, networking and architecture. From 2008 to 2009 these researchers have been working on their individual research projects as well as joint projects in collaboration with Extracity, Antwerp, and Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven.

On its final stage the research will be presented as a networked film project based on the results of the PHD project under the same title by Florian Schneider at the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London.