SIG 8: Facilitating 2024
(2025)
Adelheid Mers, Janne-Camilla Lyster, Marija Griniuk
The SIG Facilitating took shape at the 2023 SAR Conference in Trondheim, after observing over an extended time how frequently artists, artistic researchers and even policy makers refer to facilitation when describing interactions with audiences, communities and research partners. Finding ways to examine such facilitating processes is crucial to the work under way.
We know that facilitating practices exist widely in interactive and community based art, and in theater and the performing arts, for example using games, props and improvisation. There are intersections with pedagogy and professional facilitation and coaching, with at least the latter understood as prizing outcomes over processes. The SIG Facilitating asks: What does it mean to facilitate as part of artistic research? Why is this focus emerging now? How are we drawing on a greater web?
Organized by Marija Griniuk, Postdoctoral researcher at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and director at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Norway; Janne-Camilla Lyster, Associate Professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts; and Adelheid Mers, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (coordinator).
Contact: sigfacilitating@gmail.com
RELAY
(2025)
RELAY ARTicle
RELAY is a three-year EU-funded research project supported by the ERASMUS+ programme „Cooperation Partnerships" that focuses on developing the artistic and educational fields of choreography, dance and music.
The concept that gave our project its name – RELAY – is based on deep trust in the transiting and transmissive foundation of both artistic production and knowledge development. RELAY underscores a fluid and processual element in the intersection of art and education. Not only does the actual production and development of knowledge and artworks depend on collective – and therefore transmissive – efforts, but the future life of those productions depends on how they are shared. For example, a dance technique only lives through those who practice it. A piece of music is passed on (through ear, instrument technology, or score) between practitioners, producers, and listeners. Every hand-over gives the possibility for development, re-iterations, and productive misunderstandings.
The exposition here gathers the findings, reflections and insights into the principles and methods of RELAY as well as obstacles, hiccups and (creative) failures as a work-in-progress.
Authors and Contributors: Ana Papdima, Andreea Duta, Catalin Cretu, Evita Tsakalaki, Jan Burkhardt, Konstantinos Tsakirelis, Laura Lang De Negri, Maia Means, Max Wallmeier, Mihai Mihalcea, Nadine Kribbe, Rasmus Ölme, Sergej Maingardt, Stella Malliaraki, Vera Sander