choreo | graphy: artistic research project documentation
(2022)
author(s): Eleanor Bauer
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
This page contains a chronological overview of documented artistic research and expositions created within the doctoral research project "choreo | graphy," at Stockholm University of the Arts. This research project generated text publications (documented here in pdfs), live performances (documented here in videos), scores for those performances, interview podcasts, and works for video, all included herein.
A summary of the project is located at the top of the page, entitled "choreo | graphy: doctoral project summary." It explains the research questions and methodology, offering context and orientation for the expositions and documents on this page. Reading this document as a guide to the Research Catalogue contents will assist in understanding each item in relation to the overall research.
ABSTRACT
The research project "choreo | graphy" is an inquiry into the relationship between thinking through dance and thinking through written language, taking the notion of choreography literally as dancing-writing. Respecting that different media afford different thought processes, ideas, and concepts to be reached, this practice-based artistic research project has unfolded within artistic processes and experiments to explore and develop the relationship between dancing-thinking and writing-thinking. Investigating the media-specificity of thought in dancing together (khoreia) as it relates to the media-specificity of thought in language and specifically writing (graphia), the research strives for an adequate relation between the two, one that serves both art forms and respects their differences. The separation of the word choreography into "choreo | graphy" signals the project’s intention to open space for consideration and reinvention of the poetics of choreographic practice and discourse.
Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction
(2020)
author(s): Andrew Miller
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition presents the artistic research project ‘Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction’, which examines the ways in which artistic practices interact with one another. It understands practices as the organised media and structures through which a researcher is able to initiate and continue the process of environmental constitution, the embodied process through which the world emerges as meaningful for and with us. The project is situated within the context of a phenomenological approach to consciousness and sense-making. It demonstrates the potential of artistic practices as phenomenological methods; practices not merely for the creation of art but as vehicles for investigation into human experience.
The exposition is separated into two sections:
The first section attempts to present—that is, to make present—the environment as constituted by the researcher through his engagement with the four main artistic practices; descriptive writing, auditory diagramming, sketching and composing. As part of these practices, the initial engagement with the researcher's surroundings was established through the practices of listening and hearing - making this a primarily aural undertaking. The artefacts are given to the reader in a way that hopes to facilitate desired conditions in which the researcher’s perceived environment becomes present. The artefacts relate directly to the practices which allowed the researcher’s understanding of his environment, and are therefore powerful objects, which may allow the reader to come into contact with the same dynamics that allowed the environment to appear in the first place.
The second section contains a reflective text which looks back on this process of environmental constitution in an attempt to understand the role of each artistic practice within the context of their interaction. It also contextualises the project within the framework of artistic research, by understanding the artistic practices not only as methods for art creation, but also as mediators of human experience, and therefore as tools for understanding the way the world emerges with us. The text, therefore, simultaneously addresses the idea of consciousness as an enactive process, one which sees a blurring of agency between researcher, practice and environment.
The reflection is split into two sections, each referring to two different phases of research: the first, an open and generative approach to the engagement of the practices. The second, a pre-determined and deliberate structure for this engagement.
Re-enaction of Rough and Tumble Game
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Hermans Carolien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This artistic project takes rough-and-tumble play (R &T play), also referred to as fight play, as the central starting point. R &T play refers to ‘vigorous behaviours, such as wrestling, grappling, kicking, and tumbling, that appear to be aggressive except for the playful context’ (Pellegrini & Smith, 2005, p.79), and that are almost always performed without hurting each other (DiPietro 1981). In the first phase material was collected from different events (‘mattress’, ‘rope’, a short film and a working session at the Conservatory of Amsterdam). A selected set of imagery was then handed over to first year students of the Modern Dance Theatre department at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The following themes emerge from this working process:a sense of being alive, serious attention to having fun, energy level, joint attention,and the importance of both imagination and touch in this type of play.In this project also archive material is included that resonates with the theme of fight play.
Participatory sense-making in physical play and dance improvisation: drawing meaningful connections between self, others and world
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Carolien Hermans
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The starting point of Carolien Hermans' research is how both children's physical play and dance improvisation by professionals can be considered somatic practices where sense-making manifests itself in and between bodies, and through movement. Hermans makes use of the concept of ‘participatory sense-making’ (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007) to understand the role of movement, and the lived experience, in the way we make sense of self, others and world. This philosophical-scientific premise is closely aligned with enactivism, a movement in cognitive science that claims that cognition is not so much an internal, mental phenomenon as it is the result of the dynamic relationship between an organism and its environment. Enactivism offers an alternative to traditional models that conceive of cognition as an internal information-processing process in which perception and action serve primarily as inputs and outputs. Body, context, and (the lived) experience thus play a crucial role in the sense-making process.
Play and Dance Improvisation: scores, games and challenges
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Hermans Carolien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In the previous phases of my artistic research I built up a living archive of play activities that occurred close to my home. In the second phase, some of these play activities were re-enacted by dancers/performers in order to capture and get a deeper of understanding of the vitality affects, energy and intensities. In this phase I want to develop a play/dance improvisation workshop around the concept of participatory sense-making. I am therefore collecting games, scores, challenges that are developed by me or other.