On the Indeterminate Training Technologies of a Reconstructed Bauhaus Choreographer. A Research Practice Between Speculative Historiography, Architectural Invention, and Performative Co-enactment
(2023)
author(s): Thomas Pearce
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition proposes a method of artistic research that uses (and disobediently misuses) techniques of reconstruction as a mode of performative, artistic, and architectural invention. Our speculative notion of reconstruction challenges inherited disciplinary notions of historiography and simultaneously functions as a propositional and generative tool. The exposition revolves around the discussion of a research and performance project entitled Jakob K., which reconstructs the works of fictional Bauhaus choreographer and gymnastics teacher Jakob Klenke (1874–1941). This reconstruction was the product of a collaboration between performance artists and architectural researchers, involving field work, site-specific re-enactment, 3D scanning, animation, and digital fabrication, and culminated in a series of live performances at Kampnagel (Hamburg) and during the 2019 Bauhaus 100 centennial.
The exposition is structured around a series of multimedia sections, each of which departs from an element of the performance’s architectural and medial framing, describes aspects of the artistic research process, and uses these as a lens for theoretical reflection. In analogy to our working method, which created the project as an ongoing layering of spatial and choreographical ‘evidence’, this method of discussing the project consecutively adds layers and connections to the project-assemblage that is Jakob K. Throughout the exposition, a practice emerges that challenges notions of solely human-authored and human-centred design and performance; proposes a set of techno-speculative training practices while challenging historical discourses on body optimisation; and subverts disciplinary uses of technology, prescriptive logics of representation, and techniques of reconstruction, misusing them instead in disobedient ways and reinventing them as creative affordances that can challenge dominant techniques of power.
Story in motion: creative collaborations on Tłı̨chǫ lands
(2023)
author(s): Adolfo Ruiz, Tony Rabesca
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition describes a creative collaboration in the self-governed Tłı̨chǫ region of Canada’s Northwest Territories. As part of this collaboration, Indigenous research methods and participatory experiences facilitated a process by which regional oral history was visualised and translated into animation. As a long-term project, this research was based on relationships through which a non-Indigenous researcher was able to learn and exchange knowledge with elders and youth from the region. Community workshops facilitated image-making, storytelling sessions, and interaction between generations. The animated film that emerged through this research is an embodiment of cultural knowledge and cultural continuity.
LYCANTHROPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS I – Artistic Research on the Edge. Poetical Investigations on the Margins of Medicine and Mythology
(2019)
author(s): Barbara Macek
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
In this exposition on the peripheries of medicine and art I will enrole the concept of my project "Lycanthropus erythematosus" and the applied strategies of artistic research.
The essence of the work is the proposal of a new thesis concerning the understanding of autoimmune diseases, especially of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE, lupus).
SLE is a rare autoimmune disease characterised by acute and chronic inflammation of various tissues of the body. Its cause and pathogenesis are still unknown.
The work aims at providing new knowledge in regard to these open questions. Its thesis is exposed in different formats resulting from different strategies of artistic research. It proposes to understand autoimmunity as the expression of transformative processes that cause various physical and mental effects in the afflicted organism. This ongoing metamorphosis is driven by a plan: it is about the emerging of a new being – the Lycanthropus erythematosus.