Research Catalogue

The SIG Facilitating took shape at the 2023 SAR Conference in Trondheim, after observing over an extended time how frequently artists, artistic researchers and even policy makers refer to facilitation when describing interactions with audiences, communities and research partners. Finding ways to examine such facilitating processes is crucial to the work under way. We know that facilitating practices exist widely in interactive and community based art, and in theater and the performing arts, for example using games, props and improvisation. There are intersections with pedagogy and professional facilitation and coaching, with at least the latter understood as prizing outcomes over processes. The SIG Facilitating asks: What does it mean to facilitate as part of artistic research? Why is this focus emerging now? How are we drawing on a greater web? Organized by Marija Griniuk, Postdoctoral researcher at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and director at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Norway; Janne-Camilla Lyster, Associate Professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts; and Adelheid Mers, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (coordinator). Contact: sigfacilitating@gmail.com

From the intersection between Sign Language and dance, choreographer Laisvie Ochoa, is exploring the feeling of loss. In a duet with Dennis Massar, and using material developed with Anneloes van Schuppen, the work presents a visual expression of movent that seeks to honor what her mother left her.

This research is an advanced research of Metamorphosis - Ethics and Aesthetics are One - from a Neuroscientific Perspective in 2024. I explore post feminist theory from a new perspective in the 21st century. Thereby I deal with spatiality between virtual reality and physical space theoretically and practically. Wittgenstein's "Ethics and Aesthetics are one" is the starting point of this research. "In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein states that 'the world and life are one', so perhaps the following can be said. Just as the aesthetic object is the single thing seen as if it were a whole world, so the ethical object, or life, is the multiplicity of the world seen as a single object". (Diané Collinson, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 25, Issue 3, SUMMER 1985, pages 266-272) Art transcends boundaries of race, nationality and gender. It is a creative act of unifying in the context of humanity, from the subject to the various topics, by asking questions. This point is the lack of "reality" (dealing with reality) from a sociological perspective. But it is impossible to define humanity and reality based on sociological statistics alone–is my perspective of Wittgenstein's "Ethics and Aesthetics are one". Thereby, I examine 'world and life' from the 21st century perspective.

In A place Like This sets out to investigate and expand the issues and critical discourses within Sandborg and Higgins' current collaborative research practice. The central focus for the research is concerned with how art, in this instance photographic and painted image making and text, can be used as an agent or catalyst of understanding and critical reflection. The research methodology is constructed through photography, painting, drawing and text. This utilises the form of an artist publication as a point of critically engaged dissemination: a place for the tension between conflicting ideas and investigation to be explored through discussion. The research question is focused on how the production of the image and the act of making images can communicate or describe moments of erasure or remembering in terms of historical and personal narratives with direct reference to moments of violence and place. This is seen not in terms of a nostalgic remembrance of the past; instead as one that is rife with complicated layers and dynamics where recognition is denied the ability to locate a physical representation. Embedded in this is an exploration of particular questions concerning the ethics of representation: the depiction of ourselves and other? In this sense it brings into question an examination of the act of remembering as a thing in itself, through the production of the image and text, contexts of knowledge and cultural discourses explored through the form of an artists publication.

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)

"Rotting Sounds – Embracing the temporal deterioration of digital audio" (https://doi.org/10.55776/AR445) was a multi-year research project that dealt with various aspects pertaining to the deterioration of digital audio. Grill, Schilling and Bovermann understand this decay and the resulting products as a new and welcome aesthetic. This occupation with decay ultimately led to all residual materials being collected during the research period: From yogurt cups and spray cans to hard disks, USB sticks, cables, and clothing. This heap of waste was finally shredded and transformed into paper. Formally and in terms of content, the book explores decay and dissolution, thereby challenging the traditional aesthetic of collecting and preserving. The quantity of paper produced also determined the edition size, which is only 20 copies. Each copy bears the traces of its origin by embedding the cycle of transformation in its fibers. Parallel to the physical book edition, a digitally eroding open access version is available for download via this Research Catalogue exposition. The text by Thomas Grill refers to some of the key points of the Rotting Sounds research project and celebrates the open-ended nature of the experimental research.