Uncovering an Occupational Folklore of Ceramics: Small Stories Found in the Spaces Between Word, Gesture and Clay
(2025)
author(s): Natasha Mayo, Kim Norton, Sam Lucas
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
The term ‘Occupational Folklore’ refers to the social expressions of people, linked to the work that they do. This exposition explores the possibility of there being a common language of clay, a vernacular that can be used to story-tell, and how stories arise from the studio, from the intersection of making, thinking/talking and clay.
Comprising three discrete projects, we move from a study of the materiality of voice to establishing a vocabulary of clay to a narrative collection of embodied experiences. Their combined knowledge leads to a fourth project, in the form of conversations held whilst making around a studio table. Passages from the exchange are filmed and analysed from the perspective of ‘small stories’, an oral history methodology that gives focus to the speculative, iterative and nuanced decisions often overlooked in a conventional account of a conversation. When applied to the making process, it begins to uncover a deeper understanding of the processual and implicit decisions that take place through the interaction of making, thinking and material properties. The passages allow us to witness the very emergence of storytelling taking place, the moment at which life experiences intersect with formations in clay.
The aim of collecting all four projects together is not simply to document examples but, as with all modes of folklore, to use story to identify and share more resilient and connected ways of being in the world. Within these intersections lie the porous and mutable properties of clay practice, that are rapidly redefining the wider field of ceramics in terms of its social contribution. Contained within these social expressions of clay lies its ability to connect with and contribute to wider community and environmental issues. The term occupational folklore is used in recognition of the historic continuity of behaviours, actions and beliefs that arise from these interactions, if only we shift our focus from individual attainments to the collective knowledge and transferable learning these small stories contain.
The Tacit Knowledge of Claudio Monteverdi
(2024)
author(s): Johannes Boer
published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
Dissertation Leiden University 2024
Johannes Boer
Registration and the annotated libretto of the 2018 opera production
LA TRAGEDIA DI CLAUDIO M
Contextualisation of this opera in both historical as well as epistemological sense.
Structures for Freedom: In-performance communication in Traditional musicians in Scotland
(2022)
author(s): Lori Watson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition articulates tacit knowledge in processes associated with contemporary Traditional music practice in Scotland. Using a case study experiment and a series of workshop performances recorded in 2008, I examine the processes, communication and performance strengths of four leading Traditional and cross-genre creative musicians. In particular, examples of in-performance communication and collaboration emerge.
Reflected Self-Portraits
(last edited: 2026)
author(s): Andrew Bracey
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
"Reflected Self-Portraits" is a body of practice-research that explores the intersection of subjectivity, appropriation, and the materiality of artworks through a series of self-portraits taken using the reflective surfaces of other artists' works. The project, ongoing since 2007, currently consists of an archive of 778 images. These photographs serve as both a record of the artist’s evolving self and a fragmented representation of another artist's work, operating with a parasitic intent that utilizes a specific material quality without engaging in interpretative dialogue. The work diverges from traditional painting practices and aligns itself with appropriation art, emphasizing "making-looking" through peripheral observation of overlooked elements within artworks. The images reflect a unique engagement with artworks, embodying a speculative approach that questions the boundaries between observer and observed. This interaction challenges the conventional hierarchy of artistic agency, positioning the artist's reflection as a secondary yet integral aspect of the host artwork. A three-part video installation at General Practice, Lincoln, featured a scrolling slideshow of these self-portraits, paired with a text-based screen acknowledging the original artists and a video of a mirror being shattered, symbolizing the ephemeral nature of self-representation. By documenting fleeting interactions with art, "Reflected Self-Portraits" questions the role of subjectivity and authorship in contemporary practice, suggesting a commensal rather than fully parasitic relationship with the original artworks. The project integrates theories from Susan Sontag and Hito Steyerl, contemplating the digital and physical dissemination of images and the shifting aura of artworks. As the photographs transcend traditional gallery spaces into digital realms, the work ultimately redefines the concept of the self-portrait, transforming it into a complex interplay between the self, the artwork, and the ever-expanding digital space.
Refiguring composition: artistically researching the contact between composition, improvisation and the outside world
(last edited: 2026)
author(s): Birgitta Flick
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Rooted in a composer–improviser’s fascination with a musical composition’s transformative potential, this doctoral artistic research project reflects on the composition through investigating it as a trace of creative interacting. It applies an artistic working method of individual and collaborative compositional experimental setups of iteratively combined creative activities, such as notating or playing saxophone. Interwoven with autoethnographic reflection, this yields a spiral creative-reflective path that focuses both on the activities and their traces, such as notations or recordings, as well as the human being’s perceptive transformations. Drawing on artistic and sociological–philosophical specifications of the human being’s interacting with its world such as Jean-Luc Nancy’s or Hartmut Rosa’s, as well as Sybille Krämer’s and Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s conceptualization of a trace, the project scrutinizes not only the diversity of evolving relations between all activities–traces–participants as transformative tools for each other, but also seeks a new language as a creative–reflective tool in its own right. Through exploring the notion of the trace, as well as creating neologisms such as the musical Geschehen for a specific notion of created sound, a concept of creative practices as being relational and transformative emerges, leading to the notion of a shared creative practice as shared modes of relating. Creative practices such as improvising and composing evolve as epistemological and semantic grids that conceptualize experiences of engaging with traces, alongside an understanding of a composition as a trace that is formed by and affords specific modes of relating to the “outside” world. Artistic results include new vocal and instrumental scores, lead sheets, electroacoustic pieces, and a selection of recordings.
Self-ish Portraits
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Andrew Bracey
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
My position is that knowledge about an artist and their work can be uncovered through close looking at their work and that some of this knowledge can be held and transferred tacitly to viewers (that are also artists). This knowledge can be articulated through practice, in this case in the making and subsequent close looking and reflection of the Selfish Portrait paintings. Because the knowledge is tacit, as opposed to propositional, the knowledge may be sensed, felt or difficult to articulate in words. Practice is the most appropriate vehicle to test whether this knowledge can shift from what Alexis Shotwell’s has articulated as ‘nonpropositional knowledge’ to ‘potentially propositional knowledge’.
In Selfish Portraits I search for self-portraits by a range of dead artists in terms of geography, gender, race, ‘status’, time of working, style, etc. This necessitates (re)searching beyond my current knowledge base using gallery visits, internet searches and books. The selected self portrait(s) are subjected to a period of ‘looking attentively’ in order to visual interrelate and learn about the painting, and by extension the artist. The main focus is allowing the self portraits to ‘talk to me’ following the theoretical stance of the ‘active’ painting or picture, that knowledge is held in the painting itself and cannot always be found in (written) documentation.
studio Culture
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Andrew Bracey
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The ground-breaking pedagogic research project will elevate the function and usability of the MA fine art studio, and to instil a greater and more effective studio culture. We will do this through a two-phase project, in one staff will demonstrate best practice and students will reflect and evaluate this in regards to their own studio use. In phase two students will replicate what has been demonstrated for their own studio activities. Both phases will be recorded using stop-motion cameras to enable us to study the time and space usage.
The innovation of the project is to give a heightened sense of professional studio activity to and for students, by the direct observation and dialogue with their course lecturers. Tacit knowledge of studio practice has always been integral to art practice and pedagogy, but never formally or quantifiably studied or recorded. We aim to make students actively aware of this through the observation and evaluation of how lecturers use the studio, allowing them to view what is currently hidden as lecturers have studios off campus. The intended impact is that they will productively improve their own studio activity on the MA course and beyond as they become professional artists.
Dissertation Leiden University 2024 Johannes Boer Registration and the annotated libretto of the 2018 opera production LA TRAGEDIA DI CLAUDIO M Contextualisation of this opera in both historical as well as epistemological sense.open exposition comments (0)
This exposition articulates tacit knowledge in processes associated with contemporary Traditional music practice in Scotland. Using a case study experiment and a series of workshop performances recorded in 2008, I examine the processes, communication and performance strengths of four leading Traditional and cross-genre creative musicians. In particular, examples of in-performance communication and collaboration emerge.open exposition comments (0)