Research Catalogue

1º objeto: dispositivo para facilitar o ver e o sentir. 2º objeto: portal (ponte entre a cidade de Kuldiga e a floresta)

HEIMILDALEIKSÝNINGIN: FÚSI, ALDUR OG FYRRI STÖRF. UM VERKIÐ: Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf er heimildaleiksýning um Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson. Verkið var frumsýnt 17. nóvember á Litla sviði Borgarleikhússins og var sýnt frá haustinu 2023 til vorsins 2025. Í sýningunni fer Fúsi yfir ævi sína og valin atriði úr fjölbreyttu lífi hans eru færð í leik- og söngbúning með aðstoð leikara og söngvara. Verkið fór í leikferð til Leikfélags Akureyrar og var sýnt á 80 ára afmæli Leikfélags Sólheima á Sólheimum í Grímsnesi. Fúsi er húmoristi, fótboltaáhugamaður, leikari, söngvari og lífskúnstner sem minnir okkur á að lífið er alltaf þess virði að lifa því þó að stundum sverfi að. Hindranirnar í lífi Fúsa hafa eflt hann og hvatt hann til að lifa lífinu til hins ítrasta með fötlun sinni og njóta hvers einasta dags. Stundum er lífsreynsla þó þess eðlis að aldrei verður fyllilega hægt að komast yfir hana, sama hversu jákvæður og sterkur einstaklingur er. Sýningin byggir á viðtölum við Fúsa, sem Agnar Jón Egilsson frændi hans og leikstjóri sýningarinnar tók við hann á meðan covid faraldrinum stóð. Tilurð sýningarinnar er því samband frændanna Fúsa og Agga og samverustundir þeirra. Í samstarfi við sviðslistaframleiðandann Monochorme og MurMur Productions LEIKARAR: Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson, Agnar Jón Egilsson, Vala Kristín Eyríksdóttir, Þórunn Arna Krjistjánsdóttir, Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Bergur Þór Ingólfsson og Egill Andrason. Leikstjóri: Agnar Jón Egilsson Höfundar: Agnar Jón Egilsson og Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson Leikmynd og búningar: Svanhvít Thea Árnadóttir Aðstoðarleikstjóri: Ástbjörg Rut Jónsdóttir Tónlistarmaður. Egill Andrason Aðstoð við söng: Gísli Magna Framkvæmdastjórn: Davíð Freyr Þórunnarson fyrir MUR MUR Production. Tilnenefningar og verðlaun: Sýningin fékk Múrbrjótinn, viðurkenningu Landssamtakanna Þroskahjálpar árið 2024. Múrbrjóturinn er veittur þeim sem þykja hafa skarað framúr í að ryðja fötluðum nýjar brautir í átt til jafnréttis. Í rökstuðningi kom fram að verkið hlyti m.a. viðurkenninguna á forsendum þess að í Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf sé skrifað og leikið af leikara með þroskahömlun og að það sé í fyrsta skipti sem slíkt gerist í atvinnuleikhúsi á Íslandi. Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf fékk einnig hvatringarverðlaun ÖBÍ árið 2024. Hvatningarverðlaunin eru veitt þeim sem hafa með verkum sínum stuðlað að einu samfélagi fyrir alla og endurspegla nútímalegar áherslur um þátttöku, sjálfstæði og jafnrétti fatlaðs fólks. Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf hlaut tvö Grímuverðlaun árið 2024, leikstjóra ársins og Sprotann (hvatnigarverðlaun Grímunnar). En sýninginn fékk samtals fjórar tilnefningar til Grímunnar 2024, fyrrnefndar tvær ásamt Sýningu ársins og Leikara ársins í aukahlutverki (Agnar Jón).

This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities. The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing inter­disciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning. The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”). The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

This exposition examines the intersection of drawing, installation, and handmade objects informed by popular culture, spectacle, and visual symbolism. Central to the practice is the duality between physical materiality and virtual environments, a framework through which fictional realities are constructed and analyzed—often reflecting states of exhaustion, overload, and alienation characteristic of hyperactive contemporary culture. The use of low-budget materials and do-it-yourself methods introduces a deliberate tension between meticulous craftsmanship and intentional “amateurism,” while simultaneously subverting the capitalist logics of mass culture through the reuse and recontextualization of its visual language. Connecting introspective and social dimensions, the exposition offers not only an aesthetic experience but also a critical lens on everyday consumer routines, media-shaped reality, and processes of personal self-reflection.

The exhibition is deeply rooted in local history—the artist group explores the story of the white pigment titanium dioxide's industrial origin in Sandbekk, and how this world sensation from 1910 has influenced our world today. Titanium dioxide white pigment is a global color phenomenon. Ilmenite is transported from Titania to its sister company Kronos Titan in Fredrikstad, where it is refined into titanium dioxide. From there, the pigment circulates seemingly invisibly in a global network of systems. It is used in paint, plastics, paper, ink, cosmetics, medicine, sunscreen, and millions of products we use daily. This history is the starting point for the development project TiO2: The Materiality of White. Over the past two years, the artist group has visited Titania's mines and deposits, gathering materials from the local history. Just as geologists examined the areas in Sokndal over 150 years ago in search of valuable minerals, the group has wandered through the landscape, picking stones and collecting sand, clay, and rust-colored earth. These findings have been brought back to the ceramic laboratory at KhiO, where they have been processed through ceramic methods.

This exposition comprises textual fragments (both written and voiced) produced through the act of returning to (in turn re-activating, re-configuring, even re-imagining) conversational transcripts generated within the artistic research project Dorsal Practices, a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker. Initiated in January 2021, Dorsal Practices is an artistic collaboration for exploring how the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude might shape and inform our embodied, affective and relational experience of being-in-the-world. Conceived at the threshold between choreographic-movement practices and language-based artistic research, Dorsal Practices explores how the experiences of listening, languaging, even thinking, might be shaped differently through this embodied tilt of awareness and attention towards the back, moreover, through a practice of coming back, the act of (re)turning. The original transcript material that forms the basis of this exposition was produced through a practice of conversation undertaken within six interrelated blocks of exploration, taking place over 18 months between October 2022 and February 2024. Within this period of enquiry, we — Brown and Cocker — focused our attention on the act of returning within our shared practice, re-imagined as a "dorsal turn". Through the intermingling of two registers of language-based practice, that is, through the performativity of both the written and spoken texts themselves, within this exposition we attempt to make tangible how the dorsal gesture of the turn and the circling principle of re- become operative as a spinal thread within our shared enquiry. Deviating from the straightforwardness of a strictly linear text, we invite a form of dorsal listening-reading that might engage through loops and returns. We conceive the research artefacts generated through the practice itself as the central focus within this exposition, alongside a supporting text where we introduce the wider enquiry of Dorsal Practices, reflecting on how we conceive the act of turning and of re-turning therein.