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.

Situated in the vast space between rigidly notated music and the realm of open improvisation, this research—embodied through a large ensemble for which I have written and conducted music—navigates the intersection of these two worlds in search of a sweet spot between fixed composition and creative spontaneity. Rather than treating the score as a static framework, the composition is approached as a living, evolving entity, where performers, conductor, and technology collaboratively shape the music in real-time. Throughout rehearsals and performances, musicians make interpretive choices, respond to cues from the conductor and their peers, and engage with interactive electronic elements, fostering an ongoing, dynamic dialogue. This process illuminates how variables such as individual interpretation, conductor influence, and rehearsal time can open new avenues for expression, allowing the written score to transcend its traditional boundaries. By embracing this fluidity and exchange, embodied through the term Comprovisation, the composition is continuously transformed, deepening the connection between musicians and the work, and unlocking new possibilities for artistic expression. Through some of my musical pieces as examples we will analyze how this experimental creative process was shaped.

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.

Autistic people have six senses: taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight, and then words. Words are a sense that cannot be compared to other senses but allows them to leak in. Words have taste and smell, they are tactile, scratch the skin, bulge in the kidneys, they look: the shape of the letters in different writing styles, they have sounds, sounds when they sound inside the brain and when they say themselves, they are a movement a dance. But all these qualities still cannot define the words. For the words are their own. Their own mind.

Taking back the museum -hankkeen tutkijoina tunnustelemme tässä vuorokeskustelukirjoituksessa, mitä olemme tulleet työpajojen aikana luoneeksi ja tutkineeksi yhdessä sekä mitä on kehkeytynyt tai kehkeytymässä. Kirjoitus lähtee epäilevistä ja itsekriittisistä kysymyksistä siitä, oliko yhteistyömme relevanttia/kyllin-hyvää/hedelmällistä/oikeutettua vai oliko kyse vain projektitapaistuneesta valtameriä ylittävästä matkustelusta. Tässä artikkelissa keskustellaan ja kosketellaan tai sivutaan erityisesti seuraavia teemoja: taiteellinen tutkimus, taiteen etiikka, yhteisötaide, alkuperäiskansojen taide, alkuperäiskansatutkimus, alkuperäiskansojen pedagogia, alkuperäiskansan itsemääräämisoikeus, tiedon omistajuus, yhteiskirjoittaminen ja silleen jättäminen.

Meksikossa asuvat wirrarikat kehittivät 1950-luvulla perinteisten uhriesineiden pohjalta lankamaalauksen, nierikan, tekniikan: villalangasta muotoiltiin kuvioita mehiläisvahalla käsitellyille puulevyille. Nierika esittää usein uhraamisen tilannetta ikään kuin ajassa pysäytettynä ja näyttää tilanteen vapaaehtoisen uhrin näkökulmasta. Antropologit, taiteilijat, keräilijät ja valtiolliset turismin kehittäjät edistivät nierika-genreä innokkaasti, ja se tuotteistettiin yksilölähtöiseksi taidemuodoksi, jota alettiin luoda ja esittää useammin kaupunkikeskuksissa kuin wirrarikojen yhteisöissä. Tämän eksposition kirjoittajat ovat yhdessä toisten tutkijoiden ja wirrarikataiteilijoiden kanssa järjestäneet yhteisöllisiä nierika-maalauksen työpajoja, joissa wirrarikataiteilijat ohjaavat osallistujia tarkastelemaan ja ymmärtämään maailmaa wirrarikojen tavoin vastavuoroisuuden ja uhrin näkökulmasta. Nierika-maalaus otetaan näin takaisin yhteisöjen haltuun.