Research Catalogue

Performance philosophy is still something of a ‘wild frontier’ where fundamental questions can be re-posed concerning the nature of wisdom and love, life and truth. For if love and wisdom are not co-extensive with verbal communication, then philosophy may be legitimately pursued by performative means. In this session the participants aim is to enact and unfold a set of trajectories rather than describe or 'define' their work in words alone. Passion and grief are disruptive currencies. Passion and grief not only seem un-necessary for biological life, they frequently threaten it. Yet a life lived without them would seem impoverished. Whether one views these turbulent affects as parasites, invaders, or as the engines of higher culture, they inhabit philosophy as an ineradicable black-market haunts all states and empires. We aim to consider this under-zone on its own terms, weaving theory with demonstrations of transferable techniques for cross-disciplinary research.

This page is under construction It contains material created for and in the context of the research project Gifts from the Sentient Forest at the University of Lapland. See https://www.sentientforestproject.com

This exposition forms part of the research project exploring the often-overlooked sensory and material facets of photographic production, challenging the traditional focus solely on the visual aspect of photographs. The research questions the prevailing view that understanding photography is limited to analysing the final image, suggesting instead that the process of making a photograph—its production in real-world environments such as laboratories, factories, and manufacturing spaces—holds equal aesthetic significance. The aim is twofold: to redirect attention to processes of photographic making, exploring the aesthetic dimension beyond the photograph itself, and to examine how this shift influences the overall understanding of photographic practice. Employing practice-based research across diverse photographic settings, this study uncovers the aesthetic nuances of C-type printing processes, including the tensioning, fogging, and tearing of photosensitive paper. It adopts an event-centric viewpoint, moving beyond the visual to explore multisensory handlings—listening, touching, and feeling—that are integral to photographic production, and acknowledges the contributions of more-than-human agency in photographic making. This approach allows for a multi-modal presentation of findings, combining traditional written analysis with experiential expositions to highlight the importance of non-visual outputs in photographic making. The contributions of this research are manifold. Firstly, it critically reviews the dominant focus on the visual analysis of photographs, advocating for a broader understanding that includes the tactile and auditory dimensions of photographic making. Secondly, by immersing in the physical environments of photographic production, it provides empirical insights into the everyday practices that remain hidden from view. Thirdly, the study pioneers an artistic research methodology that emphasises showing over telling, utilising a variety of exhibition formats to convey the embodied nature of photographic making. Lastly, through in-depth case examples, it uncovers the complex interplay of materials, technology, and both human and non-human agency, suggesting a more nuanced concept of photographic practice that surpasses the conventional visual-centric, human-centric and photograph-centric paradigm. By advocating for a comprehensive view that embraces the sensory and material complexities of photography, this thesis enriches the medium's aesthetic understanding beyond the photograph as centre.

A six-part polyphonic setting of the ordinary of the Mass survives as a unicum in the manuscript 1967 of the Biblioteca Central de Barcelona, Spain. Although it is clearly the most significative piece of the manuscript, it has received comparatively much less attention from specialized ensembles than the rest of the repertoire contained therein. There might be multiple reasons for this, but the fact that the manuscript gives no hint about who is the composer of the mass seems to be the main one. Moreover, this kind of situation is quite common when dealing with early repertoires. This research aims to problematize this situation and to offer several practical, performer-oriented strategies out of it.

The aim of this documented artistic research project is to investigate functions of directing within an expanded understanding of co-created performing arts. My main question concerns the following. What practices and principles of directing in co-created performing arts are revealed in the sample narratives, expositions and final productions of the thesis, and what do these say about transformations within different spatial and social contexts? The project process consists of four documented stagings and a final performance. It is this way I develop the concept “The Coteur” which stands for a directorial function combining a unique, biographical director function (The Auteur) with the openness of a co-created process formed around place, collaborators and contexts, where the development of an original work start without a script. Here I am interested in what I call ”staged absence” which I consider to be an artistic principle based on the removal of “the expected”. What happens, for example when the lead vocalist and the music are taken out of a popular song to leave behind a group of beat counting back-up singers, looking for their cue and a rhythm. Or when boxers are taken out of the ring and only the choreography of the referee remains. In my artistic research project I want to challenge the premises of co-creative performing art, and the director function, by also using forms for seminars and association meetings, to stage collective readings aloud, from manuscripts. This is combined with autobiographical and reflective writing, influenced by the principles for knowledge in practice, to uncover and develop artistic principles for a co-creative director function.

Informed by queer life practices, theories, and affinities, this documented artistic research project (doctoral thesis) draws from new materialist and post-humanist discourse in order to reconsider what role visual media play in the historical need to separate the human and the environmental. It asks, how do we challenge prevailing perceptions of film and photography as inexorably linked to ideas of progress and modernisation, to linear temporality, spatial separation, and to land-based thought? Based on the acknowledgement that we need to rethink our position as humans within the multiple habitats that make up the world, I investigate the ways in which the apparatus of film, rather than being an extension of human perception, attests to the material interdependences and co-productions that hold a potential for converging human and nonhuman perspectives. "Tidal Zones – Filming Between Life and Images" considers the cinematic space of the ocean alongside Jean Epstein’s film "Le Tempestaire" (1947); it follows early photographic chemical methods involving seaweed to both develop film and to examine the technical intra-activity of human and nonhuman regimes as part of photography itself. Within the scope of this research, I argue and demonstrate how film engages in a sensory and reciprocal involvement with the material world, one that addresses the ability to sense, not just with one’s eyes, but with the entire body. "Tidal Zones" are real locations, the habitat of a multitude of organisms, and the home of seaweeds. It is a place that is neither land nor sea but constitutes a zone with its own specific relationships and living conditions. In its refusal to be either or, it forms a (non-binary) temporal figuration between presence and absence, solid and liquid, life and death, dictated by the motions of spiral and circular time. This space, "Between Life and Images", is the chemical rockpool (the darkroom) out of which photography and film grew. The PhD submission consists of four film-works, "The Etna Epigraph" (2022), "Seaweed Film" (2023), "Coenaesthesis – It Is Not Even True That There Is Air Between Us" (2023) and "The Spiral Dramaturgy" (2019) along with the exhibition "The Tidal Zone" shown at Index - The Swedish Con-temporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, from 25 November 2022 to 12 February 2023 and at Havremagasinet, Länskonsthall Boden from 14 October 2023 to 11 February 2024. The films and documentation from the exhibitions are included in the submission, which also includes an “Opening Letter” and two texts called “Filming with the Ocean” and “Methodology of the Spiral”. This dissertation has been carried out and supervised within the graduate programme in Visual Arts at the Royal Institute of Art. The dissertation is presented at Lund University in the framework of the cooperation agreement between the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, and the Royal Institute of Art regarding doctoral education in the subject Visual Arts.