Research Catalogue

Building-Sound Compositions in (half-)public places: Starting from Graz, six vacant buildings in different European cities were researched as aural architectures and understood and experienced as an integral part of building-sound compositions. Techniques and strategies ​​were developed how sound art can react systematically to site-specific architectual conditions or how these environmental acoustic characteristics can become part of a previously non-existent composition.

"Expanding horizons" is an Artistic research project carried out between 2021 (August) and 2024 (November) at NTNU, Trondheim. The objectives were to contribute to knowledge on how different kinds of departure points can be useful for musicians when approaching 20th-century Western classical music through improvisation, an understanding of how one can navigate and negotiate the musical language of this repertoire, and insights into how the tension between different performance values can be navigated in this process. The research questions were: When applying improvisation to works of 20th-century classical music, 1. What role does the choice and preparation of musical representations play? 2. How can we navigate and negotiate musical structures such as melody, harmony and form? 3. How can we navigate the tension between fidelity to the work and creative expression? Based on selected pieces from this repertoire and practical explorations together with participating musicians, various approaches to creating improvisational frameworks were then explored. These included a wide range of scores, including lead sheets and indeterminate notation, as well as ear-based methods. From the perspective of integrating improvisation into the performances, approaches such as repeating elements, working with layers, creating transitions, and introducing open sections were examined. A key point was to use melodic material as a way of building strong connections with the source material, rather than relying on harmonic representations of the music. In terms of balancing respect for the original work with creative freedom, a “healthy dose of disrespect” pervaded much of the explorations, allowing deviations from the originals when they were musically justified. Throughout the work processes, an idea of focal points emerged, as aspects to focus on when reworking a classical work into an improvisational version. These focal points included the score, historical and performative contexts, expressive qualities, and the improviser’s personal voice.

Artist, actress and writer Nina Goedegebure conducts artistic research into the polyphony of a disease process at the Master Crossover Creativity @HKU, with two transdisciplinary projects; Fertility and 'Will You Carry Me?!' Starting from the question: How are we carried within a disease process? she investigates the effect of art during a disease process, and/or treatment. She is driven by the idea that in destruction lies creation. 'Through Research Catalogue I want to provide an open insight into this artistic process including my sources of inspiration, questions and finds.'

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

Alexander Holm have been developing the artistic research project 'Sworld' on the APD program at RMC in Copenhagen 2021-2024. The project seeks to explore how simultaneous experience of sounds with- and without a visible cause can evoke human experiences of ghosts, absence and lost memories. The project researches and expands on composer and theorist Michel Chion's audio visual concept of Synch Points, examined through a versatile compositional praxis including choreography, text, voice, walks and live performance.