Lecture Series "Knowing in Performing"

Since the winter term 2018/19 the Artistic Research lecture series “Knowing in Performing” takes place at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Internationally renowned artistic researchers investigate the cross-disciplinary dynamics of Artistic Research with a special focus on the performing arts.

Upcoming Summer Term Lectures:

12 March 2019:

Looking back, looking through, looking beneath: the promises and pitfalls of reflection as a research tool

Prof. Dr. Darla M. Crispin, Vice Rector for Research and Artistic Development and Director of the Arne Nordheim Centre for Artistic Research (NordART) at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo

 

9 April 2019:

Performing Citizenship. Heterotopian Research between Art, Science and Society

Prof. Dr. Sibylle Peters, artistic researcher and performer, Visiting Professor at the Heteropia Graduate Program at Folkwang University of the Arts

 

14 May 2019

Cultural Gaps in Artistic-Research

Prof. Dr. Susanne V. Granzer, actress and Professor for Acting, mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and Dr. Arno Böhler, philosopher, University of Vienna

Time and Place

• Tuesdays, 6 - 8 p.m.
• Fanny Hensel-Hall

mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Anton-von-Webern Platz 1, 1030 Vienna

Further information: https://www.mdw.ac.at/knowinginperforming_rvo

 

Abstracts:

Darla M. Crispin: Looking Back, Looking Through, Looking Beneath: The Promises and Pitfalls of Reflection as a Research Tool

In the final session of the International Symposium Knowing in Performing on 4 April, 2018, the Panel concluded that artistic research “makes it possible for students to develop ‘reflective research skills’, opening up a very broad and flexible field between research and the arts with potential gains on both sides” (Haruki Noda, Conference Report, mdw-webmagazin: https://www.mdw.ac.at/magazin/index.php/2018/04/19/von-musizierenden-papageien-und-stillen-klaengen/?lang=en). The emphasis upon reflection is significant, and echoes developments in artistic research internationally – but what is its nature when characterised as a ‘research skill’ and how can it serve as a mediator between ‘research and the arts’? This lecture considers the role and status of reflection in artistic research. First, it examines developments that have consolidated into what has been described as the ‘Norwegian model’ of artistic research; then, it considers more broadly and critically the role of reflection in the work of the international artistic research community. The Artistic Research Fellowship Programme was established in Norway in 2003 in order to fund the research of individuals within arts training schools. Its activity has since been consolidated and overseen by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP). In January 2018, Artistic Research PhDs based upon the NARP structures were ratified in Norway. The new PhD programme retains its predecessors’ strong emphasis upon personal ‘reflection’. In many ways, the element of reflection has been the most challenging aspect of Norwegian artistic research programmes—often more so than the art-making at their core. Tensions between art and its explication, and the credentials of the artist-researcher as a reliable arbiter of these, are often problematic. Long-standing questions about the viability of personal experience and self-scrutiny within the supposedly objectified world of advanced research remain unanswered. This lecture will offer some general propositions concerning the promises and pitfalls of introducing an explicitly personal dimension into the array of tools recognised for use by arts researchers.

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Professor Darla Crispin is Vice Rector for Research and Artistic Development and Director of the Arne Nordheim Centre for Artistic Research (NordART) at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH), Oslo. She previously held senior posts at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Royal College of Music in London and the Orpheus Instituut, Ghent. A pianist and scholar, she moved to the UK from Canada for her postgraduate studies, gaining a Concert Recital Diploma from the GSMD and a PhD from King’s College, London. Darla specialises in musical modernity, especially the works of the Second Viennese School. She is an acknowledged expert in the developing field of artistic research, having co-authored one of the seminal books on this subject, The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto (Leuven University Press/Orpheus Institute 2009). Her forthcoming book, The Solo Piano Works of the Second Viennese School: Performance, Ethics and Understanding will be published by Boydell & Brewer.

Photo: NMH

 

Sibylle Peters: Performing Citizenship. Heterotopian Research between Art, Science and Society

“There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places —places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society —which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” This is how Foucault famously defined heterotopias. Prisons, cemeteries, theatres, brothels or ships – heterotopias are real spaces of other worlds, environments, institutions and enterprises, which are neither entirely good nor bad, but have a clear distinction towards the outside, thereby counteracting and representing the outside within them. However, since Foucault invented the concept heterotopias seem to have spread. While Foucault was talking about longstanding heterotopias, today Heterotopia has become a format of performative experimentation, transdisciplinary design, activist struggle and – not least – inclusive research. Heterotopias have become labs for other ways of living together, hubs to experiment with new articulations of citizenship. In my lecture I will discuss four examples of heterotopian research and their different performative methods: the FREE PORT BAAKENHÖFT by geheimagentur and the Floating University by Raumlabor, the Academy of Destruction and Animals of Manchester by Theatre of Research.

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Prof. Dr. Sibylle Peters, researcher, performance artist, studied literature, cultural studies and philosophy, and worked at the universities of Hamburg, Munich, Berlin (FU), Bale, Wales and Gießen. As a freelancing performance artist she realized projects with major European partners (e.g. Wiener Festwochen, Berliner Festspiele, Tate Modern) focussing on participation and collective research. Peters is cofounder and director of FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, where children, artists and scientists meet as researchers. She is cofounder and speaker of the PhD program Performing Citizenship and currently Visiting Professor at the Heteropia Graduate Program at Folkwang University of the Arts.

Photo: Tate Modern

 

Susanne V. Granzer/Arno Böhler: “Cultural Gaps in Artistic-Research”

In fact, most of the current debates on artistic research are taking place in Europe and in European institutions. It will be a main objective of our lecture to de-territorialize the debate on artistic research by virtue of confronting us with the relation of art and research in Indian cultures. Especially the tantric tradition has developed complex ideas on the relation of art research, philosophy and scientific knowledge. But there exist also contemporary institutions like Adishakti which promote a transdisciplinary combination of art, art research and philosophy to generate new ways of knowledge in the arts and through the arts. We therefore claim that the definition of artistic research should no more be a pure inner European issue in future.

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In 1997 Arno Böhler, philosopher at the University Vienna and Susanne Valerie Granzer, actress and professor for acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna did found the cultural factory baseCollective to explore new ways of doing philosophy at the cutting edge of philosophy and the arts. Since 2016 they run an annual 3 months residency program on artistic research in South-India to question artistic research from a transcultural perspective: In 1997 Arno Böhler, philosopher at the University Vienna and Susanne Valerie Granzer, actress and professor for acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna did found the cultural factory baseCollective to explore new ways of doing philosophy at the cutting edge of philosophy and the arts. Since 2016 they run an annual 3 months residency program on artistic research in South-India to question artistic research from a transcultural perspective: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/arno.boehler/php/

Photo: baseCollective/Christoph Hochenbichler