Research Catalogue

a lesson in the shadows of death entangled moment of frozen fragments embodying sacred movements through air, body, mind, mattering, voicing as if NOTHING

The purpose of this exposition is to collect data of what Performative Theology can be and become primarily within an academic research but also beyond. The expo will be a timespace nurtured by members the Network for Performative Theology, established 6 October 2022 in Oslo.

Art activism is powerful. Also known as activist art, protest art, visual activism, artivism and creative activism, it changes lives, situations and is and has been a powerful weapon across a whole spectrum of struggles for justice. Teresa Sanz & Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos(2021) relay that art activism has the unique ability to bring cohesion and diverse peoples together and it can, as Zeynep Tufekci notes, change the participants (2017). As Steve Duncombe & Steve Lambert (2021) posit, traditional protesting such as marches or squats are no longer as important as they once were. As a result of my own lived experience in activist activities, I very much agree with Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell (2012) that the reason people use art activism is that it works, by enriching and improving protest. In the past, when I lived in a metropolis and was not a parent, I used to be an activist. Now I no longer have immediate access to international headquarters at which to protest and I have to be concerned with being arrested, I am hindered from protesting. This project is an attempt to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism. By devising methods which include at least one of the following: that do not require on-site participation, that can take place outside the public gaze, that reduce the risk of arrest, that open up protest sites that are not “big targets”, that include remote locations, that involve irregular timing, my thesis aims to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism to those who are underserved by more mainstream methods of conducting art activism. Textiles have unique properties that enable them to engage in subterfuge and speak loudly through care and thought(Bryan-Wilson, 2017). They have strong connotations of domesticity, the body and comfort that can be subverted within art activism to reference lack of this domestic warmth and protection(O’Neill, 2022). Being a slow form of art-making, they show care and thought, attention in the making, so that the messaging is reinforced through this intentionality in slow making.

This exposition is an archival gesture emerging from the Dramaturgical Ecologies research-creation collective. Rooted in the entwined inquiries of Blacknesses and Dramaturgy, it gathers the dialogues, encounters and an artistic residency that unfolded through the SSHRC-funded Murmurations project. Between the viscous resonance of okra and the shifting flight of murmuring birds, this exposition shares choreokratic ecologies - a garden of study where movement, thought, and relation co-compose. Here, Blackness becomes a method, a lens, a refrain, challenging the neutrality of the performer-dancer body and inviting modes of collective creation that are relational, porous, and opaque. Murmurations attends to what forms in the formless - like a swarm of birds: a living archive of bodies, voices, and ecologies composing a landscape.

With the artistic research project Costume Dramaturgies we explore the dramaturgy that emerges when performance takes an unconventional starting point: a costume – a thing. By approaching dramaturgy as an assembly of things, we shift perspective from the human to the non-human, giving agency to costume, props, and light in performance. We argue that the dramaturgy of things remains an under-researched area in the performing arts. The one-year project is funded by Stockholm University of the Arts and brings together 12 researchers from costume design, dramaturgy, mime acting, LARP, film direction, theatre studies, scenography, and performance art. This multi-perspective, poly-vocal approach aims to generate a nuanced understanding of dramaturgy of things, and includes workshops based on devising methods—most notably the Costume Jam Session, where participants interact with costumes through chains of action, followed by reflection on the dramaturgy that emerges. The project is a continuation of the artistic research project Costume Agency.

The Opener - sharing the performer’s process was a one-year artistic research pilot project (March 2024 - March 2025) funded by strategic funds at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen. It was part of the Grieg Academy Research Group for Performance and Interpretation (GAFFI) together with external members from The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. The project consisted of 8 sub-projects and educational activities, involving different instruments: piano solo, violin, duos with voice and piano, clarinet, accordion and guitar. The term opener can in this project proposal symbolize a three-fold meaning connected to the music performance field. This project seeks to - see the performer as an opener of musical meaning in a performance (interpretation of musical intentions in scores and improvisation) - challenge ourselves as performers as openers that share his/her artistic work (getting insight into the creative process and methods) - finding openers as tools to reveal and show the creative process of performers (ways of showing the artistic process)