The past is rotting in the future: Exploring the Aesthetics of Absence in the daily life
(2024)
author(s): Alexandra Corcode
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
The Past is Rotting in the Future: Exploring the
Aesthetics of Absence in Daily Life, embarks on an
exploration of absence within the human daily life, examining
its manifestation through relations, processes,
and objects. It seeks to understand how absence is not
merely a void but a significant presence that shapes perception,
memory, and imagination. Through a multi-disciplinary
approach that integrates personal narrative with
academic writing, this research investigates the ways
in which absence is performed, textured, and materialized.
Central to the thesis is how photography, as both a
personal and artistic practice, serves as a critical medium
for discussing and visualizing absence, navigating
through personal experiences of loss, and broader philosophical
questions about how absence influences and
constitutes our understanding of the world.
Strategian sisäistäminen
(2022)
author(s): Mia Seppälä
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Tämä ekspositio asetettaa yksittäisen taiteellisen teon laajempaan julkiseen keskusteluun yliopistopolitiikan rakenteellisen kehittämisen synnyttämien ajatuksien liepeiltä. Eksposition keskeinen elementti on videoperformanssi ”Internalizing The Strategy”, joka tapahtuu kaikille avoimessa julkisessa paikassa - Eduskuntatalon edessä.
Strategia tulee vastaan mitä moninaisimmissa yhteyksissä. Tuntuu siltä, että kaikilla pitää olla oma strategiansa. Kunnat, yritykset, urheiluseurat, päiväkodit, korkeakoulut esittävät kilvan omia strategioitaan, mutta miten on strategian sisäistämisen laita? Yliopistojen strategioissa painotetaan maailman muutoksen mukanaan tuomiin vaatimuksiin reagoimista, johon yliopistoilla on korkeatasoista osaamista tuottavina instituutioina mahdollisuus ja suoranainen velvollisuus. Muutoksesta tuotetaan mielikuvia, jotka esitetään sekä pelottavina uhkakuvina, että mahdollisuuksia tarjoavina positiivisina kehityskulkuina. Asiantuntijakielen tarkoituksena on saada tietyt valinnat tuntumaan tarpeellisilta ja hyödyllisiltä. Tähän kieleen on upotettu tietty edistymisen vaatimus ja lupaus, jota on vaikea vastustaa.
Ekspositio pyrkii havainnollistamaan ja koettelemaan strategian sisäistämista taiteellisin keinoin, joka on suhteessa vaatimusten absurdiin luonteeseen.
Menetelmänä käytetään tekijän itse kehittelemää "poismaalaamisen" tekniikkaa, jonka lähtökohtana on digitaalisen valokuvan tai tekstin siirtäminen painomenetelmillä maalauspohjalle. Valittu kuva tai teksti liittyy olemassa oleviin rakenteisiin, formaatteihin ja vakiintuneisiin ajattelu- ja menettelytapoihin. Poismaalaamisessa tehdään näkyväksi merkityksen häilyvyys - teksti/kuva on ihmisen mielikuvien rakentama. Se on purettavissa ja uudelleen tulkittavissa. Kuvan rakentaminen tapahtuu strategiatekstin poistamisen kautta. Poistamisen on määrä virittää useita rinnakkaisia tulkintamahdollisuuksia, jotka liittyvät esimerkiksi tekstin/kuvan pysyvyyteen, kirjoittamisen, poispyyhkimisen ja päällekirjoittamisen suhteeseen sekä Taideyliopiston strategian osalta säädösten valta-asemaan.
Hard Times. Lecture Performance as Gestural Approach to Develop Artistic Work-in-Progress
(2016)
author(s): Falk Hubner
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Artistic work is often an essential mode of articulation within artistic research, specifically when practice is understood as both source and target domain of the research. Therefore, within the performing arts, both process and product are essential gestures of artistic research and are indeed “justified and critical articulations of an interest in knowledge production."
In this exposition, the format of a lecture performance is investigated and discussed as an explicit articulation through which the process of both artistic work and research is shared, rather than functioning merely as a format for disseminating findings. The format of lecture performance that is investigated here frames the artistic work and theoretical-conceptual framework as two distinct, yet interrelated, processes shared with a conference audience. This includes the deliberate choice for a live performance of artistic work-in-progress, adding a gestural and at times very kinaesthetic aspect to otherwise textually-dominated forms of presentation.
The exposition as such has two focuses that are strongly related to each other, approaching the form of a feedback loop: on the one hand, the creation process of a new experimental performance work by Falk Hübner is investigated. "Hard Times" refers to the title of this artistic work: I will carry you over hard times. The performance itself is part of an artistic research into reduction in music, a continuation of the completed PhD research of the author (Hübner 2014). On the other hand, the lecture performance that employs this artistic work-in-progress as "material" as well as the related discussions with conference audiences is also explored.
The exposition will demonstrate how these conference discussions strongly inform the work process of the specific artistic work in question and attempt to shed an alternative light on the well-known concept of "audience talks", which typically serve to generate feedback and insights into audience perspectives for artists after tryouts or performances of unfinished work. The audiences of conferences are, in most cases, considerably different in nature than "standard" audiences, offering the possibility of insightful input on quite different facets of both artistic work and research process––provoked by the very form of a lecture performance as described above. The exposition suggests that this type of lecture performance, explicitly including the audience at a conference as important source of information, feedback and peer-review, forms a gestural method of artistic research in itself, whose full potential within artistic research is yet to be explored.
Picturing Silence
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Guy Livingston
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This dissertation considers performed silences in composed music and suggests that musicians often use markers to communicate the dimensions of silence. These markers may shape, summon, or impose silence. Markers are signals or cues that may be visible, audible, or multimodal. This research consists of an archive of examples from the author's pianistic practice, as well as three case studies drawn from works of Beethoven, Cage, and Antheil.
Full title: "Picturing Silence: Markers in Musical Performance as a Means of Understanding Silences"
Where Can I Wish You Happy? [submitted to Royal Academy of Art, The Hague - 2023-06-29 22:16]
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): He Bo
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
Master of Photography and Society
On 12 May 2008, at 14:28 Beijing time, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale struck my home province of Sichuan, China, killing 69,227 people, leaving 17,923 missing and injuring 374,643 in various degrees across China. At the time, I was at university in another city far from home.
In this thesis, My beginning question is how to fit myself who is absent from this earthquake into its history and the memories shaped by it. As a practitioner and researcher of photographic images, I want to reach out beyond the physical and psychological distance to the real memories of the earthquake understand its impact by describing, speculating and analyzing ready-made images about it and by explaining my own visual strategies, such as making and reworking photographs on this topic. These images contain 1) group photos of local people before the earthquake who were separated from each other in life and death by the it, 2) video clips taken by television camera reporters and other anonymous people on the day of the earthquake, and 3) the visual outcomes produced by people who look at or photograph the earthquake ruins which turned into tourist attractions now. In these ways, I highlight that we can encounter actively that earthquake through dealing with photographs about it and new photographic actions since then, in order to find possibilities to shape the postmemories for those Chinese who, like me, were absent or irrelevant at the time of the earthquake.
In September 2022, a new strong earthquake occurred in Sichuan. I regard it as a bridge to relate the 2008 earthquake to present-day China. At that time, China was still in the midst of an extremely rigorous Covid-19 prevention and control phase, with various restrictions trying to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 cascading from the top down. By putting the two earthquakes together to discuss, I argue that Chinese people should remember the disasters of the past so that we can find our place in new dilemmas to deal with them. We should face up to the pain others have experienced and are experiencing and reach out to help, instead of ignoring or avoiding our responsibility. As a Chinese studying an English-taught MA program in the Netherlands, the differences between the Chinese and English contexts, the temporal distance between the current Chinese context and the European historical context were gaps that I could not avoid in this thesis writing. These gaps are reflected by describing and reflecting on my act of going to the former site of the Auschwitz Concentration camp. Acting as a spokesperson, I brought the inappropriate reactions of some Chinese people in the present to the plight of their compatriots to that field of traumatic memories, emphasising the importance of confronting one’s own absence and distance from the disaster from the other’s side.
Shifting identities : the musician as theatrical perfomer
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Falk Hübner
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The artistic PhD research "Shifting Identities", by Falk Hübner, investigates the musicians' professional identity and how this identity might shift when musicians start acting as theatrical performers. In most of the theatrical situations where musicians "perform", their profession is extended by additional tasks such as walking on stage or reciting text. As an alternative strategy to extension, this research introduces and focuses on reduction, which means the abstracting away of specific qualities or abilities of the musician's profession. The audience watches musicians not doing certain things that usually belong to their profession. Both the expansive and the reductive approaches are concepts of working theatrically with musicians. They are different, perhaps even contradictory strategies, but both bear the ability to enrich the musician's professional identity with a more theatrical appearance. In order to build an understanding of what is extended or reduced when the identity shifts from a musician to a theatrical (musician-)performer a dynamic model is developed which builds strongly on what musicians actually do, a model that categorises the musician's professional activities into internal, external and contextual elements.
This dissertation considers performed silences in composed music and suggests that musicians often use markers to communicate the dimensions of silence. These markers may shape, summon, or impose silence. Markers are signals or cues that may be visible, audible, or multimodal. This research consists of an archive of examples from the author's pianistic practice, as well as three case studies drawn from works of Beethoven, Cage, and Antheil. Full title: "Picturing Silence: Markers in Musical Performance as a Means of Understanding Silences"open exposition comments (0)