Research Catalogue

Happening, 2016. Participant's research, including improvised full recorded interview with first generation Albanian immigrants to Greece, images, and thematic text. The research was conducted for the workshop, "Logics of Worlds", organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016. I used play as a method to facilitate improvised discussions. People share and respond more freely when participating in structured, but playful interactions, such as those a game involves. Albanians speak three languages, Albanian, Greek and Italian, so I wasn't able to translate parts of the conversation. Avlona is an English now obsolete name for Vlore, an Albanian seaport and former ancient Greek colony Aulon. Notably, the workshop was slightly interrupted by a performance art student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating refugees. For this exposition, I include an essay by Pantelis Boukalas, in Kyriakos Katzourakis, O "Dromos Pros Ti Dysi" (The Way to the West), 2001, as well as Kyriakos Katzourakis' introduction in English. The exposition also aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible. 2023: The outcome of this project is that "I" have been on UK police databases as a disabled 18 year-old Albanian transvestite; maybe married to a Swedish neo-Nazi.

A cross disciplinary artistic research project that departs from, and investigates several encounters and alignments between Contemporary Art and Archaeology. Its primary goal is to create a broad selection of autonomous and collaborative artistic, poetic and scientific expressions and responses to Prehistoric Art and its contemporary images. It will seek to stimulate a deeper understanding of contemporary and prehistoric artistic expression and the contemporary and prehistoric human condition. The participating artists and archaeologists will create autonomous projects, but also interact with each other in workshops, seminars and collaborative artistic projects. The secondary goal of Matter, Gesture and Soul is to establish an international cross disciplinary research network at the University of Bergen and strengthen the expertise in cross disciplinary artistic and scientific work with artistic research as the driving force. The project is financed by DIKU and UiB and supported by Global Challenges (UiB)

key words: climate crisis, anthropocene, art & anthropology

The exposition focuses on the question of ‘distanciation’ that at-once both distances and furthers one’s understanding of the self through being drawn into a work of text – here taken in a broader sense to include also the visual-material – and geographical and temporal distance. The latter interpretation of distance relates to the artistic research project that contextualises the article, which is in response to a call for drawings on the question of genetics and identity, hosted by i3S (Institute of Investigation and Innovation in Health, Porto University). As part of this author’s response, and as an example that may, through its reading, cause some expansion of one’s notion of self, the novel ‘The Inheritors’ by William Golding is discussed. From the point of view of genetic ancestry, Golding’s novel involves incongruous recognition between a family of Neanderthals and a larger group of Homo sapiens, and a more psychological use of the term ‘other’ for foreignness and one’s negotiation of such initial reaction by oneself. The conjoined question of distanciation and other is considered through reference to a large drawing of the author in progress as part of the ancestry project at the time of writing, and through theoretical reference to the work of Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Lacan and Bracha Ettinger that helps elaborate on distanciation, the psychically interpreted other, and a maternal matrixial idea of pre- and post-natal I and non-I of the self in contiguous relationship not only with psychoanalytical theory, but also with global ancestral mitochondrial DNA.

An interactive, mixed-media artistic research process – using somatic experience, dance, listening, storytelling, and visual arts to ponder on the topic of distance in research practice. The focal point of this research process has been the somatic feeling of distance and entanglement and exploring those through movement - captured on film, inspired by and enriched with music by Ólafur Arnalds. The written story is a secondary translation of the research process, formed by the somatic exploration, movement experimentation, painting, and the process of film-making. I’ve used watercolors as an aid to help me translate and express the inquiry in the form of text.

On July the 4th 2023, the Nodos Activos Teams was invited to participate in an event named ‘Las Julias’ as organized by the School of Performative Arts (Escuela de Artes Escénicas) from the Universidad Nacional. An event that allows researchers from the aforementioned school to show the academic community of UNA their ongoing or concluded research experiences. Typically, participants are students and academics from the Performative Arts disciplines. However, Nodos Activos combines an interdisciplinary team of students and academics from Design, Visual Arts and Performative Arts, and its products reflect that heterogeneity. Thus, the activity was planned as a means to allow Performative Arts students and academics to exit their comfort zones, and explore the research and creation methods, tools and concepts of the visual arts and design fields in a ‘hands on’ activity developed through an active concept of playfulness and abstract thinking-and-doing.