Research Catalogue

MA Seminar – Reflection and Method in Artistic Research This MA seminar explores how reflection and method intertwine in artistic research. Through a series of presentations and discussions, the seminar examines how artistic processes can generate knowledge and how this knowledge may be articulated and shared. Invited speakers – Marsha Bradfield (Central Saint Martins, London), Sergej Tchirkov (University of Bergen) and Jostein Gundersen (University of Bergen) – each present distinct approaches to artistic research, spanning visual art, music, and interdisciplinary practice. Their contributions highlight the diversity of methods and the critical importance of situated reflection within creative practice. The seminar concludes with a collective panel conversation focusing on how artistic research can balance openness and rigour, intuition and analysis, collaboration and individual voice.

A 2-part module by the MA Transdisciplinary Studies of ZHdK, Department Kulturanalysen und Vermittlung. Held by Anna Rubi & Eirini Sourgiadaki. Autumn 2023-Spring 2024 Colour perception varies, so do the semantics of colour terminology, for both sighted and blind individuals. The questions around colour perception from ophthalmology or neurobiology perspectives to cognitive and artistic ones, are infinite: Is there a universal human experience of the blue sky, the green grass and the brown soil? How is colour perceived in the brain, how is it translated into a communicable concept and how does it affect our perceived world, our mental and physical state? What is the role of colour in synesthesia? And most importantly, does colour have to do just with vision? In this module we work with the generation of blue colour on print, using the major light source available, the Sun. The Island of Amorgos is often referred to as “Le grand bleu” after the famous french film was shot at location. Its ancient name is “Melania”. “Melani”, the Greek word for ink, (“Melano” for dark blue, cyan) as it is said that in ancient times the place was covered with dark green flora. Our investigation begins exactly with this deep tint. We pay a visit to the famous monastery and the water oracle, walk the trails to observe the sensual -not only vision-based- shades of blue. In the spring term, we participate in local activities such as beach clean-up initiatives of the remote bays by local fishermen and their boats. We visit bee-hives and herb-distilleries, we work with the most basic bits and pieces of the island to capture its essence.

The Birdsong Trilogy is inspired by the playing and singing life of birds. Teater Fot has created three worlds of birdlife, Sparrow, Nightingale & Woodpecker, where the children are allowed, in different ways, to take part in the theatre, dance and music. Verbal language is not in focus, rather the language of listening, movement and music. Audience participation is adjusted to the needs of the different age groups and their specific play culture. This does not always mean bodily interaction, but rather that contact and communicative musicality is attended to. The questions of social relations and interactions in art and with children have been discussed throughout the whole project. The Birdsong Trilogy was coproduced with the regional theatre Trøndelag Teater in 2012, and Sparrow have toured internationally (America, China, South Africa, Italy, Finland). Teater Fot has been one of five companies to take part in the artistic research project SceSam - Interactive dramaturgies in performing arts for children (scesam.no), from 2012-16. Read more about The SceSam artistic research project, including The Birdsong Trilogy: Nagel, L., & Hovik, L. (2016). The SceSam Project – Interactive dramaturgies in performing arts for children. Youth Theatre Journal, 30 (2), 1-22. doi: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08929092.2016.1225611 Hovik, Lise (2015). Din lytting skal være din sang. Om inntoning, lytting og interaktivitet i scenekunst for små barn. I Strømsøe & Hammer (red.) Drama og skapende prosesser i barnehagen. Fagbokforlaget. (193-209).

This exposition centres around the fieldwork and shooting process of my documentary feature film, 11 Underground (Chico Pereira, 2024). 11 Underground is a reenactment film project based on a mining strike that happened in Almadén in the summer of 1984, in which 11 miners locked themselves in at 650 meters underground to protest their precarious working and social conditions. After 11 days of enduring the dark and toxic underground galleries, the Almadén Mining Company finally accepted the miners’ claims and the miners came out of the dark hole, received as heroes by their neighbours. As a local filmmaker belonging to the first non-mining generation in over 2000 years, I thought of the premise of making a reenactment film in town: what if 11 people locked-in in the underground mine for 11 days now to pay homage to the 1984 strike? Out of this rather strange proposition there was a desire to create an event -partly social, partly artistic-, that could help to collectively reflect -or re-imagine- our present by reenacting a collective action from the past. On the one hand, 11 Underground can be presented as a loose reenactment that reproduces the form and duration of a past strike: 11 people confined inside a mine for 11 whole days. On the other hand, the speculative character of this what if scenario (what would happen if..), opens these 11 days to the unexpected, to new actions and directions that might emerge from the implementation of that speculative scenario into the town’s present reality. The intrinsic relation of reenactment with the past, together with the future-oriented nature of what if scenarios -as ways of engaging creatively with possibilities- are, in fact, representative and metaphorical of the current situation of Almadén, which tries to construct a future from the remains of the mining past, while deeply struggling with the negative consequences of the lack of structural plans after the end of mining. Overall, the way this artistic research approaches reenactment is by using the historical referent (i.e. the past mining strike) as a documentary scenario and performing it in the current socio-political conditions, opening the possibility to intervene in the present and collectively imagine possibilities for a better future.

The artistic research project TiO₂: The Materiality of White (MoW) is led by Associate Professor Marte Johnslien, Department of Art and Craft, Oslo National Academy of the Arts. The project builds on her PhD project White to Earth, completed at the same department in 2020. MoW is funded by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) through the Programme for Artistic Research for the period 2022–2026.

The artistic intervention "Foot Baths for All" (2024) emerged from an ethnographic exploration of collective forms of life on wastelands in Switzerland. Ethnographic insights regarding self-organized care, occupation, informal infrastructure, gift economies, and the shared use of water and electricity were fictionalized and recontextualized in the inner city of Zurich, in order to explore new forms of appropriation and participation in urban life. This exposition aims to share the results and experiences of this research through multiple formats: a video documentation, a how-to guide, and a text that offers insights into the ethnographic research and its translation into an artistic intervention, conceptualizing "Foot Bath Urbanism" as an artistic method for city-making from below. This project is situated in the field of artistic urban research. It is based on an expanded notion of art that moves beyond institutional contexts to intervene directly in public urban spaces through installations and performative practices, following approaches such as “New Genre Public Art”. The how-to guide is connected to instruction-based art, challenging conventional notions of authorship while emphasizing accessibility, participation, and interactivity, rooted in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Fluxus movement.