Research Catalogue

Although it is virtually impossible to formalize what ‘best practice’ on the Research Catalogue might be, it harbours by now numerous examples of expositions that ‘work.’ In this session, I want to introduce a small set of diverse expositions from JAR as a way to highlight successful choices people have taken. With a short explanation of expositionality and virtual witnessing, I aim to support an understanding of the effect that those examples have as a way of describing how media-rich articulations can productively engage with both academic and artistic expectations.

short bio and cv

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.

This project is about zero time, which is no time, but can also mean the time of change or a new beginning. The phantoms in question are not ghosts or spectres, but placeholders; they stand for something absent, like the mathematical concept of zero. An important example for such a phantom is phantom pain. This term refers to the perception of painful sensations in a part of the body that is no longer there, for example because it has been surgically or traumatically removed. The key point is: The limb, organ or eye is missing, but the pain is still there, and the pain felt there is real. The reality of pain is essential in the context of this work. Not just phantom pain, but the broader concept of phantom experience is the subject of Phantomology. Phantom experiences are experiences that were not really experienced, such as traumatic events in early childhood; events that were not integrated into the ego system and therefore did not become part of our – accessible – memory. The aim of the Phantomology project is to develop artistic strategies for dealing with these phantoms, guided by the question of how to grasp and investigate them as something absent. The challenge is that it is ultimately about nothingness, timelessness, and our striving to fill voids as a basic human desire, this desire to give content to the gaps we are constantly confronted with in the timelines of our lives.

This exposition proposes revisiting as a method for engaging with long term artistic research. The method was developed while returning to a series of twelve year-long works based on repetition called Animal Years (2002-2014) in the context of the Academy of Finland funded research project How To Do Things With Performance (2016-2020). The same method was further explored as an artistic tool in the project Pondering with Pines (2022-2024). The method could be generalised into revisiting understood as return and repeat, recycle and recombine, reflect and reconsider and adapted to many types of artistic practices.

When does the singer become an artist? We ran an opera laboratory at the Department of Opera at Stockholm University of the Arts, during the years 2017-2020. With the searchlight focused on the creativity of the singer, we wanted to explore the borderland between the rehearsed and the spontaneous, in the art of performing opera. Our basic questions were: -when does the performance of the opera singer, which requires a high level of technical perfection, open up towards the unpredictable, creative moment? -Where is the border line between interpretation and improvisation, does it even exist? We commissioned a mini-opera to use as working material;Camilles irrfärder & äventyr, composed by Petter Ekman to a libretto by Tuvalisa Rangström. Windows for improvisation were included in the score, where the performers can play with text, rythm, melody or structure in different ways. In the work we alternated between artistic experiments and reflection. The ensemble reflected on how the different games and methods opened or closed the creative flow, and how the improvisations affected the performers' relationship to the material. A parallel focus was how the singers were inspired to change or expand their voices. We have found new methods in the work of developing the creative ability and force of the opera singer. We have applied the methods in different ways in higher education for Opera singers, developing new pedagogic approaches in the process.