Research Catalogue

At this time of exception, in these extra-ordinary times there seems to be no limit to the limit: Once an extreme, excessive and acute experience, the limit has become an all-inclusive, continuous condition that coincides with a lack of language and other forms of expression and connection. Aiming to collaboratively inhabit and investigate this border experience, the objective of this project is to create contemporary vocabularies and related contextualizations of/for/at the limit. In order to do so, the project’s design for 36 months will develop 3 arts-based research programs exploring 3 select limit-experiences: The Unknown, The Beyond, The Abyss. Each of the interrelated programs includes a score of 5 formats: banquet, symposium, exhibition, podcast and performance collaborations with Saint Genet, Tianzhuo Chen and Marina Abramović.

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 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.

On drawing as a practice of the in-between in the sense of the Japanese concept ma. Using the Sketch&Draw method, it is shown that drawing is neither mere representation nor pure invention, but a dialogical process between perception, memory, hand, and world. Neuroscientific models such as Predictive Coding demonstrate that each line is a proposal by the brain of how the world might be, which is then fed back and refined in the process of drawing. The hand appears not as a mere tool, but as a thinking organ, tightly coupled with perception and memory. Referring to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory of Flow, it is shown that the immediacy of hand drawing – in contrast to digital procedures – is decisive for entering a state in which perception and action seamlessly merge. Philosophical perspectives from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Tim Ingold highlight that the line is not merely a boundary, but a resonance space in which the invisible can become manifest. Drawing thus proves to be a process of knowledge, one that unfolds slowly, comparable to a species-rich meadow: unplannable, yet not random. In the in-between of world and subject, line and gaze, a form of knowledge emerges that can be understood as Intelligens – a creative third way beyond control and helplessness.

Brennan RC

Greyson RC