Research Catalogue

877 Beaivvi (lohket) / 877 Days (Count them) er en kunstnerisk videoeksponering om samenes rettigheter, tid, dokumentasjon og repetisjon. Gjennom 360°-opptak fra Ginalvárri (Guovdageaidnu fjellet), protester (Oslo), språklæring (Guovdageaidnu) og kreftbehandling (Oslo sykkehuser) undersøker prosjektet forholdet mellom evidens, traume og kolonial makt.

With Apartment Portraits contemporary music ensemble Lemur and artist Ellen J Røed investigates the rooms we live in through a series of sound and video works for living environments, musicians, microphones, cameras and videographer. Through video art and contemporary music they explored three apartments in Oslo: The oldest of them is a 1970s apartment at Hovseter, the other two are more recent. One is located on Teaterplassen in Grønland, and was built in the early 2000s, while the last one is in Sørenga, built in 2016. In the resulting portraits of apartments, subtle and slow panoramic camera strokes through the apartments explores and portrays the relationship between performed sound and living environments. It tells the story both of the rooms, their owners, the performers’ actions as well as those the videographer. Leilighetsportretter is part study, part concert, part installation, part site specific intervention and part architectural field trip in Oslo apartments. The project is one of four elements in 'Samtaler om rom' – Spatial conversations, where Lemur works in and around the at The National Museum – Architecture´s exhibitions on Norwegian housing architecture. As such the work is part of an interdisciplinary effort to explore new strategies for the presentation of architecture. It is developed within the overlapping research framework Image as Site at Stockholm University of the Arts. Project is supported by The Swedish Research Council, Stockholm University of the Arts, and Norwegian Art Council. The project was presented at The National Museum – Architecture, Oslo in the framework of Ultima festival of contemporary music and Kulturnatt Oslo, at Bomuldsfabrikken Kunsthall and at SKH Research Week 2021.

KOMPASS is part of the artistic research project Image as Site at Stockholm University of the Arts in which Ellen Røed and Signe Lidén have developed a method for field recording that combines sound and image in a distinct form of attentional (aesth)ethics. They explore how instruments, time and movement are included in and affect the relationships between bodies, images and places, between experience and representation, in various forms of field recordings.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we, in our role as lecturers, conducted hybrid workshops with design and art students from ten partner institutions on five continents. Our goal was to explore soundscapes from different viewpoints, and we were deeply impressed by the outcome. The recordings and their accompanying images and conversations dissolved geographical borders along with social, cultural, and structural differences. We found that a re-sonance or con-sonance emerged from this collective work, in which sounds became manifestations of presence and agency; the sociality and simultaneity of the space we shared together remains with us today. With becoming soundscape, we attempted to bring the social resonance we had experienced in the workshops into the lecture hall.

Kunstens grenser. Prosjektet er både er performativt og diskursivt: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kirkerommets potensial som kunstarena og en utprøving av kunstens grenser og stedsforandrende kraft i kirkerommet som offentlig rom. Man kan si at kirken befinner seg i et estetisk vakuum. Dette eventuelle tomrom kan tenkes som et mulighetsrom. Kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet er samtidig en undersøklese av kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet innbefatter en ambisjon om å utvikle og utvide organistens rolle og utvikle en performativ estetikk for musikere, basert på egne erfaringer og kunstnerisk utvikling av rituelt musikkteater og liturgisk orgelspill. Utvikling av liturgisk musikk. Som del av det kunstneriske utviklingsarbeidet inngår samarbeid med et utvalg komponister- der vi i fellesskap vil utvikle musikalske material og konsepter, spesialskrevet for prosjektet og meg som utøver. Kunst og religion. Kirken var, en gang i tiden, stedet for kunst. Er det fortsatt slik? I lys av Reformasjonsjubileet i 2017, innehar prosjektet, på et overordnet plan, en refleksjon over spennet mellom samtidskunsten og kirkekunsten siden reformasjonen, i norsk kontekst. Parallelt er Kunstliturgien en undersøkelse og refleksjon over forholdet mellom tro og kunst, estetikk og religion. Prosjektet har også en spirituell og eksistensiell ambisjon: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kunstens transformerende dimensjon.

---

The Boundaries of Art The project is both performative and discursive: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of the church space’s potential as an arena for art, and an examination of the boundaries of art and its transformative power within the church as a public space. One might say that the church exists in an aesthetic vacuum. This possible emptiness can be understood as a space of possibility. The Performative Potential of the Church Musician At the same time, the project investigates the performative potential of the church musician. It includes an ambition to develop and expand the role of the organist and to cultivate a performative aesthetic for musicians, based on personal experience and artistic development within ritual music theatre and liturgical organ performance. Development of Liturgical Music As part of the artistic development work, the project involves collaboration with selected composers — together we will develop musical materials and concepts, written specifically for the project and for me as a performer. Art and Religion The church was, once upon a time, the place for art. Is that still the case? In light of the Reformation Jubilee in 2017, the project carries, on an overarching level, a reflection on the tension between contemporary art and church art since the Reformation, in a Norwegian context. In parallel, The Art Liturgy serves as an inquiry and reflection on the relationship between faith and art, aesthetics and religion. The project also holds a spiritual and existential ambition: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of art’s transformative dimension.

Having departed from the idea of exploring the subject of “childhood politics” and memory (topics that both Anja Suša and Dejan Kaludjerović have been interested in and invested in through their own artistic practices in theatre and visual arts, as well as in this collaboration), they soon found themselves caught up in the discussion about artistic mandates and the potential artistic format as the output of the research project. The discussion became so intense that it entirely changed the focus of the collaboration—from the content of the project to collaborative protocols—and finally landed in what is best described by Claire Bishop as the “Grey Zone,” which can also be understood as a liminal space between contemporary artistic practices in the fields of performing and visual arts. Coming from the ideologies of the Black Box and the White Cube, which have been further reinforced by many years of institutional practice that still revolves around the idea of formal artistic education and artistic mandates, the artists soon realized that they wanted to embark on the journey of reinventing themselves in the artistic field of the “other,” despite the lack of formal training or any previous experience. They tried to explore the possibility of entering each other’s art fields based solely on artistic experience, and not on any particular art training.