Explorations with an Ash Tree
(2023)
author(s): Annette Arlander
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
In this essay I describe one example of working with a tree (an ash tree on the former post quay on Eckerö Island) and suggest that such artistic methods, like performing with a tree repeatedly or addressing a tree in writing as a performance for camera, serve as useful tools to generate material to reflect upon later. The heightened perceptual awareness and the intensity of the moment of performance helps in articulating observations and ideas that might not have come to the fore in other circumstances.
The sea as a site of curation: Reflections on aesthetics education
(2023)
author(s): John Baldacchino
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
With the sea as a “site” of curation, a thalassic approach (as that which belongs to the sea), facilitates a showing of those things that converge upon the contingency of daily living. The case for aesthetics is pedagogical, inasmuch as it provides us with a strategy for exiting into the wider world as we move outside the walls of a building (and that of Bildung). Exiting also implies rejecting all those institutionalized constraints that education’s edificial approach brings to learning. Here, in its aporetic nature, art is one of those few human actions which allow us to articulate and enact a sense of being both strangers and homecomers in our own world. In other words, this is a form of curation that is claimed through the autonomy that it portends.
Porous Worlds – the Liminal Spaces of Relief
(2023)
author(s): Pauliina Pöllänen
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Porous Worlds – the Liminal Spaces of Relief was carried out as an artistic research PhD project in affiliation with The Art Academy, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. The project examines the relief, its connections to art, craft, architecture, and ornament, as well as its various dimensions as an artistic medium.
It has been the relief´s in-between status and the lack of contemporary art discourse around it that has informed the questions like: what is at stake working with relief form today? What kind of artistic potential and possibilities does ceramic relief have to offer?
Rethinking WTC: a new interpretation of the Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach through the prism of the theory of Boleslav Javorsky
(2023)
author(s): Natalya Pasichnyk
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
In this project I sought to get new insights into the interpretational process, to make a contribution to the renewal of methods of working with a musical text, to find a new way to communicate meaning found in music, to broaden the role of the pianist to a co-creative one, and to unfold a new facet of the understanding of the Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach.
The initial inspiration for this project came from the theory of the Ukrainian-born musicologist Boleslaw Javorsky (1877-1942), the main sense of which can be formulated as: the main foundation of the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) is the protestant chorales, and that the WTC is an artistic interpretation of images and plots of the Bible.
The use of metaphors, images and narrative is important as a way of working with music for many musicians. For me this way of thinking has always been the most important working method, along with the wide range of other elements within my individual working processes, which inform my artistic practice. I intended to go further and through the creative process during this project develop a new methodological approach in working with the music text. I call the process in search for meaning in preludes and fugues.
I try in this project to tell the story of my personal understanding of this iconic piece, often called the pianist's Bible. The story presented is not merely a descriptive Bible story, but rather a personal reflection over our existence.
My working process began with trying to find and understand the connection between words in the chorales as well as other vocal works of Bach, and the music text of WTC. When analysing the found connection, each prelude and fugue receives a concrete semantic meaning. I decided to place the pieces chronologically according to the meaning I found, so that the entire WTC becomes a unified coherent story, instead of a collection of 48 separate pieces.
I did not attempt to imitate the way of performing that was common during Bach's time, but rather to use all the advantages of the keyboard instrument of our time and all the expressive means it offers to share my findings. By experimenting with interweaving the motives of vocal music with WTC's music texture, I wanted to make my understanding of the genesis of the piece audible, but also to embed my reflections into my playing. It also broadened the role of the pianist to a more co-creative one, which was the common practice in Bach's time, but in an entirely different way. In other words, my intention was to make my interpretation historically informed, but to be faithful to the spirit of the time, rather than to the letter of the time.
The legendary Bach scholar Albert Schweitzer wrote about WTC: "What is gripping, is not the shape, or the structure of the pieces, but the worldview reflected in them". To make my understanding of this worldview audible to all listeners, and to invite them to immerse themselves into Bach’s spiritual universe (where the music's aim is the “recreation of the spirit”), is the overall goal of the project. Bach’s faith generated his music, and so I hope that this music can in turn generate faith, which we need in our current times more than ever.
Embodying Recognition: Dance Improvisation for Scientists
(2023)
author(s): Susanne Martin
published in: Research Catalogue
In this exposition (text, videos, photos) I discuss a series of participatory lecture performances as one major outcome of my artistic research on dance improvisation in and for science and technology oriented higher education. These lecture performances aim to give different stakeholders in the science field an initial insight into dance improvisation and to facilitate discussion of its potential for the scientific learning, teaching and research culture. From the perspective of a dance artist and artistic researcher, I trace the details of how and why I created events for scientists to encounter dance improvisation through shared exploration and shared reflection. Interlacing descriptive and reflective writing, I unfold the argument that by engaging in improvisation as an embodied recognition practice, reflective processes can be set into motion, which critically question habituated forms of bodily, social and epistemological exclusions within academia. In other words, by conceptualising dance improvisation as recognition practice, I hope to shed light on its critical potential which exceeds questions of spontaneity and creativity.
Sonic Placemaking: (Re)Creating Place as a Comprehensive Compositional Practice
(2023)
author(s): Isaac Barzso
published in: KC Research Portal
This paper is focused on the development of a large-scale personal compositional practice centered around the concept of placemaking. Its content is focused on the relationship between data analysis, data sonification, and musical structure in the development of art which engages in a practice which I refer to as ‘sonic placemaking.’ In the end, this research intends to put this artistic practice in a space to interrogate the relationship between art and social change, both on small and large scales. The different sections of the paper will provide context and support for my practice's conceptual and philosophical background, drawing on related theoretical writings in geography, sociology, fine art, and composition while guiding the reader through my process in executing these concepts through works of multimedia art and acoustic composition — and, at the same time, actively questioning the ability of this process to influence social change and worldmaking.
