Research Catalogue

This exposition contains documentation of the artistic result of Magnhild Øen Nordahls artistic research PhD project Unmaking Abstractions. The exposition also contains the artistic reflection for the same project. On the exposition's landing page the reader can access its different components by clicking different sides of the unfolded cube. The rotating cube in the upper right corner will bring the reader back to the landing page.

Conceived and co-organised by Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, this Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group (SAR SIG) provides contexts for coming together via the exchange of language-based research. The intent is to support developments in the field of expanded language-based practices by inviting attention, time and space for enabling understanding of/and via these practices anew.

This research was conducted with a diverse group of dancers, varying in age, background, and dance experience, and was guided through somatic embodiment and artistic articulation. Through a somatic approach, the body was explored as both an archive of lived experience and an oracle for emergent knowledge, offering a strong gateway into authentic dance material. The creative process unfolded through four phases: somatic exploration and improvisation, composition, structuring, and refinement. Throughout, leadership shifted fluidly between an open, facilitative mode, amplifying the dancers’ voices, and a more directive mode, articulating the artistic vision. The methodology highlights how initial somatic explorations were gradually shaped into choreographic form, maintaining a dialogue between internal embodiment and external composition throughout the process. Key insights include that this process proved particularly effective within a diverse group context, demonstrating that, regardless of formal dance training, each individual, when guided somatically, can access embodied memory and, through compositional shaping, transform authentic movement into coherent choreographic structure. Both the research and the resulting performance, Equilibrium, do not seek to offer resolution, but rather to evoke recognition and the possibility of coexisting with tension.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Photography & Society Welcome to the TROPICAL TRAUMA MISERY TOUR. I invite you to take this tour through aroofless theater called media, the stage representing the farce and media opportunism ofthe Brazilian president and far-right populist, Jair Messias Bolsonaro—The Myth.In 2018, Bolsonaro was stabbed during a presidential rally campaign. Against a backdrop ofpolarization, micro-narratives, and misinformation,The Mythstarred in an online politicalcampaign where he had complete control over his narrative and self-presentation. This tourinvestigates how the ambiguity of the stabbing event exposes the network propaganda in theBrazilian political game.Through a speculative documentary photography practice, this piece overcomes the politicalillusions and dissemination of nonprogressive values of digital populists. The fictionalizationof the real is a form of resistance towards such ideological shams and manipulations. Itdevolves into a meta-play, a farce within a farce.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Photography & Society The "Trauma of Looking: Readings and Counter-readings of the representation of femicides in theGreek mainstream media" is a work that aims to decode the narrative strategies used by the Greekmainstream media to report sensitive topics related to gender inequalities and gender-basedviolence. In this work I explore the tropes and the effects of media cannibalism, a term which I havecoined and it will be explained further in the text, through the lens of intimate femicides - aphenomenon which has recently entered the wider public discourse in Greece. There is a need frommainstream media to commercialize such crimes and exploit personal dramas. They are treatingreal-life stories as a spectacle, as another true-crime series ready to be consumed by the audience.This globalized "life-as-spectacle" approach, which goes beyond Greece, transmutes our collectivemoral principles into a new culture where violence is always legitimized and thus is made acceptablein society.

Research Paper of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 MA Interior Architecture (Inside) Public space is defined as “ an area or place that is open and accessible to all people, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, or socio-economic level. These are public gathering spaces such as plazas, squares and parks”. Public spaces that bring together a great diversity of people are therefore designed as “zero friction” spaces, but when in use, people will experience friction. This research paper focuses on how one constructs territories within the public realm and how this can both foster participation for those who can identify themselves with the activities within the territory and others who do not -to depart from a space. This creates fear tendencies against the unknown and in order to maintain a certain behavioral control, objects are being modified, removed and designed to prevent certain behaviors and user groups from territorializing certain spaces from happening. One territorial action is found in the action of skateboarding. Skateboarders do not only foresee opportunities for action through the use of affordances within the public realm, but also territorialize the space through extractions, additions, and public interactions for their action to be possible. Skateboarding might be considered an action that excludes certain user groups from using the public space if territorialized by the skating community. Yet, on the contrary, skateboarders see opportunities for action within the public realm through affordances that might not be obvious to the naked eye and therefore creates another level of interaction and encounters which may alter the behavioral corollary within the space. If skateboarders see the user value of public space through affordances and claim elements within the space through action, does their territorialization of the space actually negatively impact the space? Or do they introduce a new user value of the space that furthers behavioral actions and introduces new encounters? Therefore, this research paper reflects on how a skateboarder's perspective of the public realm criticizes how we use space and reveal new design potentials for a multifunctional public space.