Skolbrandsarkeologi
(2024)
author(s): Patrickretschek
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Skolbrandsarkeologi (“School Fire Archaeology”) is an artistic excavation (2022–2026) of Slättgårdsskolan in Skärholmen, Stockholm, led by artist Patrick Kretschek. The art project uses contemporary archaeology, participatory art, and documentary methods to explore the aftermath of the June 1, 2020, school fire. It combines text, photography, film, and artifacts to narrate the event through testimonies from students, teachers, parents, and the public. Exhibited locally at culture house FOLK in Skärholmen, it offers a space for reflection on loss, memory, and reconstruction.
The Dreaming Archaeologist
(2024)
author(s): Athina Koumela
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024. - MA Artistic Research
This thesis is a fiction-based text which attempts to answer to the research question of how can art and archaeology contribute to the blending of the fictitious with the real, which has direct consequences on our understanding of (art) history.
CRITICAL CONFABULATIONS – Corresponding Practices and Mappings
(2023)
author(s): Jim Harold, Alex Hale
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition is based on an archaeological survey in the landscapes around Kilmartin Glen, Argyll and Bute, western Scotland, and references digital datasets – archaeological reference points –alongside the acts (enactments) of field walking, photography, drawing and poetry – experiences and representational discourses – to consider how land and landscapes may be read as dynamic palimpsestic and multi-dimensional fields of entanglement.
Digital datasets were used by the survey to garner fruitful material to aid identification and to analyse (subtle) surface archaeological remains in the inhospitable terrain on the hills bordering Kilmartin Glen. By analysing, categorising and archiving such information, through naming and cataloguing, archaeological methodology effectively orders and tames such wildernesses. We, by contrast, are seeking to draw art and archaeological practices into dialogue with one another in order to assert the importance of recording experiences and random acts as a part of field research and, thereby, to both re-vivify and re-wild our encounters with landscape.
Our exposition, and shared practices, intentionally encourage nuances of reading and interpretation that are found at the dialogic intersection between an artist/poet encountering archaeological landscape survey, and an archaeologist experiencing artistic, poetic and linguistic readings of land: reflecting in the process upon contemporary methodologies and underlying theoretical discourses. As such this research sits within the wider contemporary turn towards interdisciplinary practice, and seeks to establish a dialogue across disciplines; between humans and landscapes, practice and matter, that provides emerging approaches and hopes to remind us of the wild experience.
A topian artistic methodology
(2022)
author(s): Kevin Walker
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition details a methodology for artistic research based on the book Utopia as Method by sociologist Ruth Levitas. It involves specific methods at three levels of analysis: archaeological, architectural, and ontological. Practical work is produced using archaeological and architectural methods, aimed at triangulating onto contemporary ontological issues. The term ‘topian’ was chosen in order to incorporate both utopian and dystopian perspectives — this term, from the Greek ‘topos’ meaning place, frames an artistic practice in relation to one or more sites of investigation.
The methodology was applied in a residency project split between London and Athens, focused on sculptures from the Parthenon that link the two cities. Museums in both cities served as sites of archaeological and architectural investigation. Work included speculative site mapping and stratigraphy, drawing and photography of artefacts, printmaking, and 3D modelling. Works were exhibited in a group exhibition in Athens, ‘Contemporary Archaeologies’.
Hans Schleif
(2019)
author(s): Julian Klein
published in: Research Catalogue
Among the members of the Archaeological Institute of the German Reich, the architectural historian Hans Schleif was notable for the extent of his involvement with the crimes of the National Socialist regime. His achievements in scientific research, for instance as director of excavations at Olympia, are overshadowed by his career in the SS. He was director of the Excavation Department of the »Ahnenerbe« (ancestral heritage) of the SS. After the German invasion of Poland he was briefly appointed Custodian of German Cultural Assets based in Posnan. In 1943, he joined the SS Head Office for Economic and Administrative Affairs and rose to the position of deputy to C Group (Construction) director, Dr. Hans Kammler, whose permanent representative in the Jäger- und Rüstungsstab task force he became. In this role, Schleif was responsible above all for moving key arms production facilities underground, where fighter planes and the »reprisal weapons« V1 and V2 were built – hence for the largely subterranean concentration and slave labour camps of the Sonderstab Kammler. His grand- son, the actor Matthias Neukirch, created a theatre production about Schleif in collaboration with stage director Julian Klein at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. This text is a result of the research undertaken for the production, and reports on selected stages in Schleif’s biography.
Hans Schleif - Stations of the Biography of an Architecture Historian in German National Socialism – Addenda and Register
(2016)
author(s): Julian Klein
published in: Research Catalogue
Among the members of the Archaeological Institute of the German Reich, the architectural historian Hans Schleif was notable for the extent of his involvement with the crimes of the National Socialist regime. His achievements in scientific research, for instance as director of excavations at Olympia, are over¬shadowed by his career in the SS. He was director of the Excavation Department of the »Ahnen¬erbe« (ancestral herit¬age) of the SS. After the German invasion of Poland he was briefly appointed Custodian of German Cultural Assets based in Posnan. In 1943, he joined the SS Head Office for Economic and Administrative Af¬fairs and rose to the position of deputy to C Group (Construction) director, Dr. Hans Kammler, whose permanent representative in the Jäger- und Rüstungsstab task force he became. In this role, Schleif was responsi¬ble above all for moving key arms production facilities underground, where fighter planes and the »reprisal weapons« V1 and V2 were built – hence for the largely subterranean concentra¬tion and slave labour camps of the Sonderstab Kammler. His grandson, the actor Matthias Neukirch, created a theatre production about Schleif in collaboration with stage director Julian Klein at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. This text is a result of the research undertaken for the production, and reports on selected stages in Schleif’s biography.
This are the addenda and the register of the publication in the yearbook of the German Archaeological Institute, No. 131, 2016.
All that glitters and NO black holes
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Design, 1995-96, 2023. Design, 1996-97. Photography, 2010, 2011. Essay, 2015. Collage Text, 2022.
The exposition serves as commentary and guide on the place of art, in a gradually environmentally and technologically challenged world. I further make a commentary on outgrown conceptions of the foreign, in terms of the so-called "exotic', and the non-foreign,within the context of contemporary globalisation. This, to raise open questions on the impact of the aforementioned on global politics.
The re-design proposal, inspired by De Stijl, illustrates the modernist historical view that art appears to be regressive, rather than progressive: as soon as a movement or a school becomes established, reaching its culmination, it starts declining.
Finally, I have included a graduate school architectural design project in the archaeological site of Eleusis accompanied by new commentary.
With essay about experimental film making in the British avant-garde, published in "Architecture and Culture" journal, 2015, which is about the environmental challenges of the urban environment. The reference to the TV show "Alone", a competitive prize show of sole or two-person players, is a reminder that humans can live in the natural environment developing survival tactics already applied by their ancestors.
About how to navigate this exposition:
Scroll from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, then scroll to the top right, then scroll to the bottom right.
For Luke.
Undersökning av Långlöt 30:1. Aktiviteter kring ruinerna av Ismantorps borg.
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Maria Jonsson
connected to: Konstfack - University of Arts, Crafts and Design
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Ismantorp fort is one of Sweden's best preserved ringforts. The ancient monument is located on the island of Öland, in the midst of the forest Mittlandsskogen. For centuries the fort has been overgrown. Dating back to the 17th century, efforts have been made to depict the fort, but these attempts were often thwarted by dense vegetation, obscuring the ruins and making them inaccessible. The surrounding forest has kept the fort itself intact, as well as the memory of it, while at the same playing a part in distorting and shaping the public's perception of the monument; through the production and reproduction of plans and depictions drawn from incorrect measurements due to the obscuring vegetation. Archival records - descriptive texts, photographs, plans, drawings - document the site and the activities of archaeologists, antiquarians, scientists, public servants, land owners, locals, tourists (and vandals). Many of these records can be found at the Swedish National Heritage Board. The National Heritage Board was responsible for managing Ismantorp fort for a period of time up until 2015 when the National Property Board took over. In this exposition, Nature plays the part of preserving the memory of the fort, as well as distorting the perception of the fort. In addition to this, the vegetation seems to have been perceived as a growing threat against the preservation of the ringfort. This villainizing of nature also poses questions regarding what constitutes a place, is it first and foremost understood as Nature, or Culture? Which agents have the right to alter a place, and how are these alterations being justified? What does it mean to "restore" a monument or a place to its original state? The research presented in this exposition is also part of a project outside of Research Catalogue, where these questions are examined through the creation of physical artworks. Some of the artworks are presented as part of the exposition.
Tracing Rhythm
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Geir Harald Samuelsen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Rhythm is everywhere. It is breathing and beating hearts; it is the sound of a drum and the repetitive carved lines in stone done by a prehistoric human being. It is the flickering screen and a million digital processes too small to see. It is engraved in the depth of our minds and bodies. It is remembering.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements, and according to Roland Barthes both painting and writing started with the same gesture, one which was neither figurative nor semantic, but simply rhythmic.
In this exposition we are approaching rhythm through contemporary artistic and archaeological gestures, starting with some engraved and painted lines drawn by our stone age ancestors in France and South Africa.
The participants are all from the artisitc research project: Matter, Gesture and Soul, which is based at the Art Academy in Bergen.