11 UNDERGROUND: Reenactment, Social Practice and Political Intervention
(2025)
author(s): Arturo Delgado Pereira
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition centres around the fieldwork and shooting process of my documentary feature film, 11 Underground (Chico Pereira, 2024). 11 Underground is a reenactment film project based on a mining strike that happened in Almadén in the summer of 1984, in which 11 miners locked themselves in at 650 meters underground to protest their precarious working and social conditions. After 11 days of enduring the dark and toxic underground galleries, the Almadén Mining Company finally accepted the miners’ claims and the miners came out of the dark hole, received as heroes by their neighbours. As a local filmmaker belonging to the first non-mining generation in over 2000 years, I thought of the premise of making a reenactment film in town: what if 11 people locked-in in the underground mine for 11 days now to pay homage to the 1984 strike? Out of this rather strange proposition there was a desire to create an event -partly social, partly artistic-, that could help to collectively reflect -or re-imagine- our present by reenacting a collective action from the past.
On the one hand, 11 Underground can be presented as a loose reenactment that reproduces the form and duration of a past strike: 11 people confined inside a mine for 11 whole days. On the other hand, the speculative character of this what if scenario (what would happen if..), opens these 11 days to the unexpected, to new actions and directions that might emerge from the implementation of that speculative scenario into the town’s present reality. The intrinsic relation of reenactment with the past, together with the future-oriented nature of what if scenarios -as ways of engaging creatively with possibilities- are, in fact, representative and metaphorical of the current situation of Almadén, which tries to construct a future from the remains of the mining past, while deeply struggling with the negative consequences of the lack of structural plans after the end of mining. Overall, the way this artistic research approaches reenactment is by using the historical referent (i.e. the past mining strike) as a documentary scenario and performing it in the current socio-political conditions, opening the possibility to intervene in the present and collectively imagine possibilities for a better future.
escalating inter-activity: brieftopic glimpse in site-specific post-human improvised music
(2025)
author(s): Barbierato Leonardo
connected to: Enacting Artistic Research
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
There are moments within a performance where destruction and deviation from reality allow an alternative scenario to reveal itself. I argue that these moments can be called ‘brieftopic’, fleeting glimpses into a possible future (Behzad Khosravi Noori, 2024). But what are the connections between reality, deviation and alternative scenario? How can this brieftopia, which materializes for brief moments within a performative event, reverberate outside of it, propagating at a social and political level? During the site-specific improvisation series [in situ], it became evident to me that this brieftopia is tied to an artist’s relinquishment of control, leading to a decentralization of the performance. By introducing the case study, specifically the [in situ] performance held in September 2023 at the Maremma National Park, we will see how unforeseen, unpredictable, and non-linear interactions between myself, the audience, and the non-human components of the ecosystem in which we were immersed, shaped the performance itself, steering it in an unexpected direction and removing it from the continuum of artistic intention, audience perception, and everyday life reflection. In this brieftopia, in a sense, it is existence itself that is reduced to rubble, not for the love of rubble, but for the way out that passes through it, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin.
Music videos: Becoming Beethoven
(2023)
author(s): Tilman Skowroneck
published in: Research Catalogue
Two video clips from "re-enactment 2" at Jonsered Herrgård, September 6, 2021
Copy, tweak, paste: methods of appropriation in facsimile artists' books
(2017)
author(s): Rob van Leijsen
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Iconic artists’ books from the 1960s and 1970s have recently been subject to numerous attempted appropriations by publishers and artists, resulting in the production of facsimiles and bootlegs of famous titles. The original versions of artists’ books from the 1960s and 1970s have become scarce over time because of the relentless interest of art dealers and antiquarians, who sell the books for extraordinary prices. Outside the art and book markets, rare artists’ books are mainly available for consultation in libraries or exhibited in showcases. A re-enactment tendency concerning artists’ books has become a recurrent phenomena, the result or answer to the scarce status some artists’ books hold today. Reviewing several re-enacted artists’ books produced by artists and publishers allows their methods of appropriation to be identified and the discourses of this practice to be pursued. Written from the perspective of a graphic designer, the focus lies on visible technical aspects of book production, such as materials and production techniques, which allow comparison of the books, their makers, and their discourses. The conclusion surveys the found methods used by artists and publishers and discusses future tasks in producing and disseminating re-enacted artists’ books, as well as redefining the position of graphic designers in this process.
Living Archive
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Hermans Carolien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Over a period of five years (from 2013 to 2018) I have collected images of the physical play of my own children, with their friends and neighbor kids. Living archive is here defined as the documentation and collection of a series of play events over a period of five years. ‘Living’ refers to the act of archiving, as the documenting, recording and (re-) arranging of traces over time (Van Alphen, 2014). The archive is “not a passive storehouse of old stuff”’ (p.16), but an active site where knowledge (such a memories, traces) is not only stored but constantly re-constructed. The living archive is open, fragmentary and unstable (Ketelaar, 2018). It consists of more than a hundred photographic sequences and stand-alones that all serve as kinetic markers/traces of the original physical play event.