Research Catalogue

Happening, 2016. Participant's empirical 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", inspired by Alain Badiou's work and organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016. Adopting the political approach of Badiou's "L' Organisation Politique" to apply direct intervention for societal problems, including immigration and labour, 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, Italian and, only a few of them, Greek, 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. Albanians came as non-EU refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. The democratisation of Albania began shortly afterwards, in 1994, when Albanians started protesting for political pluralism in their country. At the beginning of the transition period after communism, Vlore became a port through which smuggling, mainly from Italy, was taking place. Notably, the men I spoke to didn't want to be visualised. Hence, the exposition aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible. Badiou is also known for his philosophy of metaphysics of the four "truth procedures": Politics, Science, Love and Art. The workshop was slightly interrupted by a performing arts student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating (by symbolically re-assigning the gender of male) Albanian non-EU 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. I don't have any personal or other familial connections with Albania - or North Macedonia or Kosovo, all the nationalities, including Albanian, used on fifteen fake non-EU passports used illegally in the UK since 2013 and 2014. I had never even visited those countries before the summer of 2024. The 2016 project was for the purpose of researching and documenting, in an artistic manner, the refugee and immigration crisis, as I experienced it in my native Greece, as well as to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees, who must not be confused with political asylum seekers: those are people who encounter persecution for political reasons from their countries of origin or citizenship, rather than illegal or legal economic immigrants, like the men I spoke to. Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo, all the nationalities on the fake non-EU passports, including Albanian, used in the UK, successively since 2013 and 2014 are non-EU countries. Greece, my native (and my parents' and grandparents' native), has been in the EU since 1981. I have also been a UK national, by naturalisation, since 2011, for the purpose of voting and for political participation in the UK, where I have spent most of my adult life. Paradoxically - or not so paradoxically, since I had also been investigating this case - the political outcome, since 2020 and 2023, of this project was that three fictitious "daughters" of mine had been on the Met police's databases, as 17, 22 and 23 Italian/Albanian female sex offenders. Supposedly, I must had been given birth to a daughter in Albania in 2001, 2002 and 2007! (!!the "prostitutes"; that's believable!!) Or two "schizophrenic" sons, Panagiotis Nigiannis, both, Albanians!; born in 2003 and 2004! as well as a son from Kosovo!; born in 2009! That is simply Golden Dawn's, the BNP's (the XRW component in the UK), and others' cultural "imagination" with regards to Albanians and Albanian/Kosovo citizens. Factually speaking, in 2002, I was living in Athens, Greece, engaged to be married to my former husband, a Greek left-wing national, working at MOB (Mauve) Architects, as an architect designer, with an international cohort of colleagues. I got married in 2003. I lived in Athens until 2004, working also at R.C.Tech architects. In 2001 and the period after 2004, I lived in the UK, working as an architect and in higher education; I don't have children. I gained my first practical experience as an architect in the UK, working in private architectural practice from 1999 until 2002. The records with the fake IDs have finally been corrected in September 2024, including records of falsely alleged children of mine born 2002-2004, when I lived and worked in my native Greece. Specifically, in 2007, I was living in London since 2005, working as an EU/Greek university lecturer. When the G20 summit demonstrations took place in London, in 2009, with the known case of the death of Ian Tomlison by a police officer, I had lived in the UK since 2005, working as an EU/Greek lecturer at the University of East London, where I was also known as Betty Nigianni by my students and colleagues. I never participated in any public demonstrations in the UK, however I have attended demonstrations in my native Greece and, in 2019, in the Netherlands. It is not uncommon for politically-minded cultural producers and academic to participate in public demonstrations about causes they support. There are no children in my medical records, during the whole time I have lived in the UK, which is a total of seventeen years, plus, twelve of those being a British citizen. Greek children take their father's surname; Greeks don't have many children, they're suffering from a shrinking population, although they are in the EU since 1981, for economic reasons. My concerns about serious international organised criminal activity (not even honouring children's basic rights) were reported and confirmed by the Greek, Scandinavian and Albanian authorities. The British authorities have been lagging behind for a long time, intentionally, with their impossible unverified "stories", bashing the left and the liberals - or whatever is left of them - and whoever is decent - whatever has been left of that, too. The Greek police confirmed in 2024 that all claims about children of mine, also between 2002 and 2004, have been dismissed. The Greek Golden Dawn - with their "Big Idea" (Megali Idea) of conquering foreign countries, like North Macedonia, and their chronic attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece - was convicted as a criminal organisation in October 2020. They invented the 'concept' of the 'Real Greek', dependent on any Greek's political orientation. Saying this, they also dig up their target's ancestry: in my case, covering three generations, there are seven (7) Greek ancestors on my father's side, plus one (1), who was an Italian ancestor, my father's grandfather, with the first name Gianni, surname unknown; and eight (8) Greek ancestors on my mother's side. Golden Dawn has been losing their sixty seven (67) appeals and early releases, because of my international work that has been very risky, due to the organised crime methods followed in this case. The conversation included in this exposition took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Despite the fact they were frightened, many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts during that period. Manolis Glezos was the only Greek politician, who went to visit Magda Fyssa, Pavlos' mother, in the Greek courts. For Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P; assassinated at age 34. For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP. For the abducted Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants. For Michalis Katsouris; assassinated at age 29. For the "Other Greek Left". Thanks to the Albanian embassy in London, the Tirane and Durres police, as well as the Durres prosecutor. Thanks to Edi Rama and his Socialist Party, a coalition of left-wing parties, government. Thanks to the Norwegian Labour Party government. Thanks also to Skopje police and Prishtine police. Thanks to the Italian police at Bari. Last but not least: thanks to the Greek police chief, Marinos Stagakis, and the Greek police organised crime division, specifically Ioannis Papakostas, who spoke to me on the phone in the summer of 2022. Thanks to the US London embassy that came in late, in the summer of 2024. Thanks to the French police. Thanks to the very few Met police officers, who eventually figured it out, as well as those British and others working behind the scenes for the last three years or so and more recently. It would not have been possible without them. It has been a long process with many obstacles along the way, seemingly insurmountable, but as proven not. For peace and for safeguarding democracy and everything that comes with it. Ongoing investigatory research, with legal and political activism, surrounded by artworks, 2016-2024. References: Fred C. Abrahams, "Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe", New York: New York University Press, 2015. Counterextremism Project, "Violent, Right-wing Extremism and Terrorism - Transnational Connectivity, Definitions, Incidents, Structures and Countermeasures", November 2020, available online. See all expositions under Art and Activism: "Debris", "The Loot" and "XRW (Implicature)".

Performance during Art Academy of Trondheims annual Open Academy 2911 2024

This exposition is a documentary project on the artistic research project Neither Fish nor Fowl. The research project consists of theater making, film making, workshops, performances and writing, and explores the wondrous worlds of becoming in theatre for early years. Together with my theater company Teater Fot, I have been investigating the significance of affect as philosophical, emotional, and material inspiration in the creative process, and in relation to young children in Theater for Early Years. Neither Fish nor Fowl was conducted as a performance project from April 2017 to March 2020. During this period, the research process was documented in RC, presenting methods, writings, and reflections along the way. The pre-production performance (for babies 0-2) was shown at the festival Olavsfestdagene in Trondheim, Norway, summer 2017 and at Trondheim Kunsthall autumn 2017. The full production, Begynnelser (for 3-5 years), was presented in april 2018 in co-production with the venue Teaterhuset Avant Garden in Trondheim. Baby Becomings (0-2 years), was presented at festivals and for kindergartens in Trondheim autumn 2018, and the final version Himmel & Hav / Sky & Sea was presented at Rosendal Teater in in March 2020, touring kindergartens for one week. Animalium (2019) was a a kind of spin-off with film making, workshops, visiting exhibition spaces and eventually article writing with an exposition in VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research #2 on the theme Estrangement. In 2020-22 Animalium has become a new research project, looking at post humanist approaches to different sites such as kindergarten spaces, libraries and art exhibition spaces. We are developing new performance strategies with deepening our improvisational and listening skills into a more-than-human sympoietic intra-playfulness. Trying to perform these concepts, we might understand more of what they actually mean to our artistic practice.

When sounds meet in space, they interact with each other, they diffract, change, and create new ones - these artefacts are always present, have always been heard, but here they become the music itself. Creating a space of both extreme clarity and overwhelming complexity, they lay bare a music that exists within our perception of steady sounds, a music that listeners create themselves through listening in space. What forms of creating, performing, and listening can be developed by making the phenomenon of wave interference my main musical material? And what implications can this phenomenon have as a figuration for the entities involved in performing and listening?

This video article presents two pedagogical applications of the artistic research project "Expanding Horizons" for ensembles with adult music students of diverse musical backgrounds. The project is centered around practical explorations of applying improvisation to repertoire from 20th-century Western classical music, in combination with qualitative methods such as autoethnography, participant-observation and semi-structured interviews. The examples in the video demonstrates how approaches that are developed in the project can be applied to pedagogical situations, based on ensemble workshops with musicians of different musical orientations enrolled in music performance programmes in Sweden, one with university-level students in a bachelor programme and another with students at a folk high school. Two pieces were selected and adapted for these situations: Lili Boulanger’s Cortége (1914) and Maurice Ravel’s String quartet in F, movement II (1903). During the workshops, these pieces were then re-worked in a collaborative manner, with an emphasis on mutual exploration and musical expressivity through improvisation. The main pedagogical considerations were: selecting the appropriate repertoire, adapting materials for diverse learners, and fostering agency among performers. Although the improvisational approaches presented are rooted in jazz performance practice, the examples demonstrate how improvisational frameworks can be adapted for music students across musical genres, showcasing the potential for creativity, collaboration and interdisciplinary learning in music education.

This exposition explores the following question: How might an analysis be done in post-qualitative inquiry and performative approaches? Considering that post-qualitative inquiry rejects pre-existing research designs, methods, processes, procedures, or practices, and acknowledging that a research process will unfold and materialize differently in different projects, my aim is to explore one possible approach to analysis. This approach explored herein is specific to my PhD project. At the same time, I invite you to re-turn (to) the pieces you find fruitful and adjust them to your research. The research material being analyzed in this exposition is informed by my PhD project, which explores what might materialize in the matter of digital musicking when a loop station and 1–3-year-olds meet each other in a kindergarten context. Exploring how an analysis might be done in post-qualitative inquiry and performative approaches, and as the title plays on, the method of analyze is with the arts and take an arts-based approach. This exposition contributes to the fields of early childhood music education, post-qualitative and performative inquiry, and arts-based research. This exposition is included in the anthology "Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning", or "Challenges and Opportunities in Music and Education" in Enlgish. The anthology is published as part of MusPed:Research by the Cappelen Damm Academic publishing house. MusPed:Research is a peer-reviewed series of scholarly publications within the field of music pedagogy. The anthology, of which this exposition is a part, has been peer-reviewed, and this extends to this exposition as well.