Research Catalogue

Is there a method to die?

 In the spring of 2009, I attended a course in aesthetic-based qualitative research at Stockholm University. My mother was becoming very weak at the time. As I set out to write on method and methodology within the course, she had to go to hospital for some days during which I kept her company as much as I could. Tests didn't prove anything wrong with her though, and she was sent back home. When she was lifted from the stretcher and gently put her back in her own bed by the transport team, she looked around her and smiled. From the well-known paintings on her walls and the books in her bookshelves, she turned her attention to at me. Still smiling, she looked into my eyes, saying: "And now begins a new and exciting phase in our lives."

Less than a month later, she deceased. 

 The day after her death, I took one of her carpets on the back of my bike and went to the shore of a lake to clean it, the way she used to do it when I was a child. Out of this situation, the question emerged. Absurd though it seemed, it echoed through my further reading, listening and thinking.

This study sets out from an artistic workshop designed to investigate light, colour and spatiality. During the original event, a number of participants joined to collaborate by means of painting, dialogue and movement. From a presentation of the workshop (as determined in time and space), the text argues that the character of an artwork is essentially unfinished; an ongoing ”truth process”. Adopting lines of reasoning from philosophers Vilém Flusser and Theodor Adorno, I gain a first understanding of how the artwork could be reconstituted within the limits of a scientific essay. Once more turning to the workshop's course of events, I find experiences within the actual situation relating to abstract concepts such as ”spirit”, ”quality” and ”freedom”. Next, the text pays heed to Ludwig Wittgenstein's observation that human knowledge is gained and mediated by language-games of various kinds. The selected concepts are consequently tried out in expanded ”studio talks”, involving artists from different fields such as painter Matts Leiderstam, writer Robert Pirsig and sculptor Joseph Beuys. The operation allows me to single out some specific conditions pertaining to artistic dialogue, from which I seek transitions to philosophical discourse. The text briefly reviews three contemporary, art-based projects offering such discursive exchange: haptiska blickar, Thinking Through Painting and Freikörperkultur. Against this backdrop, I seek to articulate an understanding of knowledge-making which embraces artistically as well as philosophically grounded practises. I find support from philosophers John Dewey and Hans Larsson – Dewey characterizing the esthetic and intellectual faculties as complementary movements within the human mind, and Larsson propounding intuition as the unifying and superior form of thinking. Assenting to their views, I conclusively suggest methodical introspection as another field for discursive interchange between art and science.

I include questions I was given at the Janine Antoni workshop, Toynbee Studios, in 2010, as feedback to my work, which I presented with my artistic pseudonym, Betty Nigianni. Much of Janine Antoni's art is about the female body and cultural identity. I address the participants by the first names they used to introduce themselves at the workshop. The questions were given in writing to each participant by the rest of the group, to offer material for thinking further their artistic practice in their own time. I include the answers I would give now, if I was asked the same questions. Artists, architects and designers give interviews about their work. Amongst them, architects tend to write more and publish more written work in relation to their practice.

This research explores the dialogue between the individual and natural phenomena through an artistic process that focuses on flow as a dynamic and generative element. The interaction between water, pigment and support-usually 50% or 100% cotton fibre paper-is configured as a field of visual investigation in which chance and physical forces play a decisive role. The work begins with the use of watercolour, the movement of which is influenced by both natural and industrial elements, such as stones or artificial structures, which alter the liquid's path and colour distribution. A fundamental aspect of the research is the investigation of the relationship between the flow of water and atmospheric events. The direct intervention of rain, wind and humidity introduces unpredictable variables that transform the painting process into an open and constantly evolving experience. The idea of flow is thus configured as an essential artistic element, capable of reflecting the changing nature of matter and time. From these experiments, the research extends to the study of gravity and its implications in the movement of pigment, drawing parallels with cosmological dynamics such as black holes and white holes. The action of the gravitational field and the tension between attraction and expulsion become visual metaphors that find expression in the creative process. In order to structure and document this investigation, notebooks, notes and parallel experiments are used, which are fundamental tools for outlining a method capable of reconciling individual technique with the randomness of external factors. The aim is to find a balance between control and unpredictability, developing a visual language that restores the interaction between artistic gesture and natural forces. In parallel, the project involves experimenting with materials other than paper, such as textiles, membranes and other porous or water-repellent surfaces. The introduction of these elements broadens the possibilities of interaction between water, pigment and support, generating new visual and tactile effects that amplify the dialogue between matter and physical phenomena. Set in an international context of artistic and scientific exploration, this research proposes an interdisciplinary reflection on the relationship between art, nature and physics, redefining the role of the artist as interpreter of the forces that govern our universe.

This thesis explores the link between colonialism, diaspora and displacement, analysing how these themes are addressed in contemporary art through the works of artists such as Belkis Ayón, Tania Bruguera, Coco Fusco, Binta Diaw and Dominique White. My research is developed around the concept of non-place (Marc Augé) and the space in-between (Homi Bhabha), understood as fluid territories in which identity is broken down and recomposed, suspended between memory and oblivion, between roots and transit. The analysis examines artistic practices that reinterpret the collective memory of diasporic communities, with a focus on processes of cultural and identity re-appropriation. Belkis Ayón's work reinterprets the Afro-Cuban mythology of the Abakuá as a metaphor for diaspora and marginality, while Tania Bruguera and Coco Fusco deconstruct the colonial gaze through performance and denunciation of power. Binta Diaw and Dominique White use the body, the sea and shipwreck as symbols of identity fragmentation and the construction of new spaces of belonging. The thesis integrates references to Paul Gilroy, Aníbal Quijano, Frantz Fanon and Enrique Dussel, highlighting how art can function as an archive of memories and an instrument of political resistance. Parallel to the theoretical research, my artistic project proposes a series of installations that evoke the non-place of dislocation, a space of transition and rewriting, where matter - sound, sculpture, performance - become bearers of forgotten histories and new possibilities of belonging.

Editorial: Sounding the Contradictions in and of the (Post-)Soviet Realm