Research Catalogue

In this artistic research I approach performance art as a language formed through the interplay of materiality, duration, and multiple forms of agency. I adopt a linguistic lens, not to reduce performance art only to language, but to use it as an analytical tool to render its characteristics, regularities, and modes of operation visible. A work of performance art emerges within relations between the performer’s corporeality, materials, space, and time. It weaves together visual, conceptual, and embodied thinking, privileging ephemerality and immediacy over permanence. The audience is integral to the work, as performance is an ephemeral art in which performer and audience share the experience in the same moment. Documentation, especially photography and video, enables the reshaping of temporal and spatial relations, as the camera frames, selects, and reconstructs the situation. My inquiry focuses on relations among human, more-than-human, and nonhuman agents. I situate my practice within the field of new materialist and posthumanist contemporary art, where works take shape through multilayered collaborative processes across diverse agents. Performance studies serves as one of the conceptual frameworks.

In her video performance Alphabet of Performance Art Leena Kela performs with the materials and objects that are typical for performance art. The work is based on over 15 years of research within the art form. She has selected 26 different materials and objects that form the language of the performance art and will perform them from A to Z. If A is an apple, what do you think P could be? Paint, paper, piss?

Hér má finna allar helstu upplýsingar um Research Catalogue (RC) og hvernig hægt er að nýta vettvanginn til að halda utan um og birta rannsóknarafrakstur við Listaháskóla Íslands. RC er opinn vettvangur fyrir akademíska starfsmenn og meistaranema til að miðla afrakstri listrannsókna á greinargóðan og aðgengilegan hátt.

This page gives a first impression of the content, functionality and design of the upcoming online publication ‘Sonic Inspiration Guide’. The guide will be published in Dutch in October 2025 and in English shortly after to make it available to an international audience.

Abstract The E(c)lect(r)ic Guitar in The Mechanical Forest is my investigation into how to expand my improvisational palette as an electric guitarist, by working with compositional techniques and concepts used in composed contemporary western art music. In my work, I have focused on incorporating movement, microtonality, as well as multimedia composition techniques and application of technology, both in the performance as well as in the creative process. A key focus of my artistic practice has been exploration of the transcorporeal nature of my relationship with the guitar. This has resulted in creative work which has grown from a deep focus on the materiality of the guitar and the visual, tactile (touch) and kinetic (movement) aspects of sound production. Research Questions 1 How can I use compositional techniques and concepts from contemporary composed western art music to expand my palette as an improvising guitarist? 2 How can I transfer musical techniques and concepts, which often are used in a strictly predetermined environment, to a musical situation where improvisation is an important element in the performance. 3 How can I reconfigure/extend the electric guitar, and how can the reconfigured/extended guitar reshape the way I create and perform music?

Digital dokumentasjon av utstillingen Minnekommisjonen