Research Catalogue

This exposition describes collaboration between three artist-researchers (Kirsi Heimonen, Anu Vehviläinen, Petri Kaverma) and respectively three art genres (dance, music, fine arts). The incentive for this collaboration stemmed from the notion of ‘silence’. On the one hand, silence offers a conceptual umbrella for this interdisciplinary praxis; on the other hand, using silence was an important methodological solution throughout the collaboration. The artists consider that through their collaborative praxis they have created a specific, practice-based artistic research method. This exposition describes that method by using both individual and shared thinking: the exposition is written partly individually (three columns: ‘silence’, ‘praxis’, ‘writing’), partly together (‘discussion’). In the ‘discussion’, the artists meet each other and reflect their understanding of the idea of artistic research through the notion of silence, within the art institution. The active collaboration entailed seven sessions during the period between Jan 2016 – May 2016, as well as a few preparatory sessions for two conference presentations during the fall of 2016. In March of 2017 the group spent a two-day writing period in Järvenpää to write this exposition.

Since Ruukku 8 has asked us to consider “conditions of sharing”, it seems apt, and interesting, to start this exposition about the conditions of sharing of performative well-being through a dialogue with the conditions of sharing that the Ruukku 8 editors, Mika, Tero, and Leena, have offered us. Here we go!

Our aim here is to both provide a response to the Conference ‘Please Specify!’ and to find an alternate way of ensuring that the intrinsic generative nature of research and art is kept active, akin to the mobius strip-like path of both conclusions, and openings. “Midpointness” is a generative project. It is dismantled and reconstructed through the gradual accretion of surrounding connections, associations and influences of the curators, artists, students and other audiences who contribute to it. These are in the form of artworks, public events, texts, artefacts, performances or other interventions. 'An Obstract for Midpointness' (Obstract)is a piece of artistic research constructed before, during and after, "PLEASE SPECIFY!", The SAR Annual Conference 2017. 'Obstract' is as an element of the ongoing project “Midpointness” that seeks to invite us to consider the ‘work’ of art as art’s labour or task. We seek to explore the dynamics of inner/outer dialogues of the process of artistic work, opening up other potentials that an artist researcher might hope for when he/she explores the generative potential of the work of artistic research directly within and in response to a conference about artistic research. At the centre is spoken text that is a play on the tradition of the conference ‘abstract.’ The abstract is the site of an outline of intention, yet here we couple it with an ‘obstruction’ as a means of aggravating and diverting the attempt at a conclusion towards which an abstract, and indeed a formal presentation, might be aimed. “Obstract” suggests, by a process of intervention that the ‘centre’ (the work and/or the text) and its surrounding universe are completely indivisible. As such the principle of ‘footnotes’ filter through to the whole spoken text; the footnotes being analogous to the surrounding constellations within which the ‘centre’ of the work sits, swapping footnotes for centre and vice versa. The footnotes refer to points both real and imagined in the past, present and future.

VARIOUS WRITINGS: CHAPTER I There are rumours that writing will cease, books will die, the digital eye will take over. Standing at the edge of this precipice we look away from these preoccupations. Instead we look back, investigating the act of writing through systematic consideration, attempting to disregard all preconceptions. This exposition focuses on the gestural and uses Vilém Flusser’s concept of ‘pseudo writing’, to analyse the interaction between the physical actions and the technologies of writing. The first act of Various Writings’ was a response to Vilém Flusser’s text The Gesture of Writing. This text radicalised our ideas on what constitutes research and thematised the conditions of sharing in ‘other’ terms. Flusser meticulously disassembles the act of writing. We follow in his footsteps, using personal mythologies, Oulipian constraints / translations, taxonomies and non-verbal conversations as implements to excavate relics of writing. We collect codes, tools, surfaces; test writing against various technologies and translate it into movements, attitudes and objects.

Toteutin "The Laundry Case" performanssin Taideyliopiston Teatterikorkeakoulussa pidetyssä SAR -konferenssissa huhtikuussa 2017. Performanssissani pohdin ihmisen ja materian mahdollisuutta tasa-arvoisuuteen esityksessä uusmaterialistisessa viitekehyksessä. Tässä artikkelissa avaan esityksen prosessia ja siihen liittyviä kysymyksiä.

Miten voimme antaa museoesineiden puhua? Abstrakti: Meksikossa läntisessä Sierra Madren vuoristossa asuville wirrarikoille esineillä on erityistä voimaa. Joidenkin wirrarikojen mielestä voimakkaimpien esineiden ja niistä kuvattujen videoiden näkeminen voi kuitenkin olla vaarallista sellaisille ihmisille, jotka eivät ole saaneet erityistä näkemisen kykyä, nierikaa. Tässä esityksessä kysymme, miten me wirrarikakulttuurin ulkopuoliset osallistujat, tutkijat ja taiteilija-tutkijat katsomme wirrarikojen esineitä. Puhuvatko ne meille? Miten voimme antaa niiden puhua? Onko niillä oma ääni ja jos on, onko se poliittinen? Ovatko ne meille vaarallisia? Pohdimme näitä kysymyksiä toimintatutkijoina, taiteellisen ja etnografisen kenttätyön tekijöinä ja yhteisömuseoiden suunnitteluun osallistuvina kehitysyhteistyötekijöinä. Pyrimme rakentamaan dialogia erilaisten taidekäsitysten välillä. Wirrarikayhteisöjen vanhimmat ovat alkaneet suunnitella ja rakentaa yhteisömuseoita, jotta esineiden valmistamisen taito säilyisi tuleville sukupolville. He haluavat, että esineiden valmistusprosesseja kuvataan videolle ja että museoihin kootaan sekä esineitä että niiden valmistusprosesseista kertovia videoita. He osallistuvat aktiivisesti globaaliin alkuperäiskansadiskurssiin ja keskusteluihin museoiden dekolonisaatiosta. Museon suunnittelussa on tärkeä kysyä kriittisiä kysymyksiä, esimerkiksi: Kuka saa valita museossa esiteltävät esineet? Kuka saa katsoa niitä? Kuka saa kertoa niiden tarinan? Tämä ekspositio on wirrarikojen esineitä esittelevän esityksen käsikirjoitus ja dramatisointi, jossa esineistä kerrotaan tarinoita monella äänellä.Videolle kuvatut wirrarikojen puheenvuorot, heidän tarinoissaan esiintyvien inhimillisten ja ei-inhimillisten henkilöiden puheenvuorot, meidän kolmen tutkijan puheenvuorot ja yleisölle esittämämme kysymykset vuorottelevat. Videolla esitettyjen tarinoiden puheenvuorot on käännetty suomeksi. Erilaiset puheenvuorot erotetaan toisistaan typografisin keinoin. Kehotamme lukijaa pysymään valppaana ja kiinnittämään erityistä huomiota siihen, kuka esityksessä puhuu ja kenen ääni kuuluu.

'Et in Arcadia ego'-music performance is an auditory garden deriving its inspiration from 17th-century European meditation gardens. It was premiered at the Helsinki Music Centre in autumn 2016 and performed again in summer 2017 as a part of the Venice Research Pavilion of the University of the Arts Helsinki.The performance was initiated as my KeKe-project 2014 (Sibelius Academy’s former Development Centre, KeKe) and the research question was, how to develop classical music’s performance practices by subtly varying its performative parameters. By pre-recording organic sound material related to wooden instruments like organ pipes, psalteries and harpsichords, including also concrete sounds of wood, cones, stalks and sticks, these sounds were projected into the concert venue and heard among the music repertory and alive improvisations. Moreover, I wanted to pose a question, whether a concert venue could be understood as a compound of resonating elements and shapes. Is it possible to animate the concert venue by studying its auditory features more carefully? The 'Et in Arcadia ego'-performance develops performativity of classical music by subtly varying and extending its performative techniques. This artistic research is articulated in line with phenomenologists such as Don Ihde and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and philosopher Gaston Bachelard.