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VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research

Visit VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research: visjournal.nu

VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research is a digital journal presenting artistic research, emphasising the importance of reflection that is interwoven with artistic practice, thereby generating new knowledge. VIS is an open-access publication and uses the Research Catalogue publishing platform for its submission and peer-reviewing processes, as well as for its final publication. It has adopted an approach to peer-reviewing in which, rather than the process being blind, a dialogue is established between author(s) and peer-reviewer.

VIS holds an open call for every issue. Up to seven expositions are selected by the Editorial Committee for further peer-review. Submissions in the Scandinavian languages are actively encouraged, but VIS is also open to contributions in English. Following the appearance of its inaugural Issue 0 in spring 2018, VIS has produced two issues in every subsequent year.

The journal is the result of a cooperation between Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (part of Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills).

The Steering Committee for VIS
Ellen J Røed
, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor, Stockholm University of the Arts
Paula Crabtree, Vice-Chancellor, Stockholm University of the Arts
Anne Gry Haugland, Board member at The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (part of Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills)
Ann Kroon, Active Director of the Research Office, Stockholm University of the Arts
Morten Schjelderup Wensberg, Chairman, The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (part of Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills)
Geir Ivar Strøm, Policy director, The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (part of Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills)

Editorial Committee for VIS
Tale Næss, Dramaturg, playwright and author
Magnus Bärtås, Vice-Rector of Research, University of Arts, Crafts and Design
Gunhild Mathea Husvik-Olaussen, Artist
Michael Francis Duch
, Musician, professor, and Deputy Head of Research at NTNU – Department of Music.
Behzad Khosravi Noori, Assistant Professor of Practice, Communication and Design at School Of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Habib University
Eliot Mmantidi Moleba, Research fellow at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts, KHiO
Cecilia Roos, Vice Rector of Research, Stockholm University of the Arts

Contact:
visjournal@uniarts.se



contact person(s): Heidi Möller

url: http://www.visjournal.nu

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  13. VIS Issue 13 VIS Issue 13 was published on 18 March 2025. The issue features six expositions within the theme “Brieftopia”. Editor: Behzad Khosravi Noori.
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  12. VIS Issue 12 VIS Issue 12 was published on 23 October 2024. The issue features seven expositions within the theme “Contemporary Ar(t)chaeology: A dead-alive of Artistic Re-search and History”. Editors: Behzad Khosravi Noori and Magnus Bärtås.
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  11. VIS Issue 11 VIS Issue 11 was published on 2 April 2024. The issue features six expositions within the theme “Play, come what may”. Editors: Cecilia Roos and Gunhild Mathea Husvik-Olaussen.
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  10. VIS Issue 10 VIS Issue 10 was published on 20 October 2023. The issue features six expositions and a recorded conversation within the theme “Circulating Practices”. Editors: Cecilia Roos and Gunhild Mathea Husvik-Olaussen.
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  9. VIS Issue 9 VIS Issue 9 was published on 14 March 2023. The issue features seven expositions within the theme “of Memory and Public Space”. Editors: Serge von Arx and Eliot Moleba.
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  8. VIS Issue 8 VIS Issue 8 was published 18 November 2022. The issue features seven expositions within the theme “of Rules and Alternatives”. Editors: Serge von Arx and Eliot Moleba.
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  7. VIS Issue 7 VIS Issue 7 was published 14 March 2022. The issue features five expositions within the theme “Metamorphoses – Tales of the Ever-Changing”. Editor: Anna Lindal.
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  6. VIS Issue 6 VIS Issue 6 was published 19 October 2021. The issue features five expositions within the theme “Contagion”. Editor: Anna Lindal.
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  5. VIS Issue 5 VIS Issue 5 was published 15 March 2021. The issue features seven expositions within the theme “One more time, let's do it again!”. Editor: Trond Lossius.
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  4. VIS Issue 4 VIS Issue 4 was published 14 October 2020. The issue features seven expositions within the theme “Affecting material and technique”. Editor: Trond Lossius.
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  3. VIS Issue 3 VIS Issue 3 was published 1 March 2020. The issue features eight expositions within the theme “History Now”. Editor: Magnus Bärtås.
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  2. VIS Issue 2 VIS Issue 2 was published 23 September 2019. The Issue features five expositions within the theme ”Estrangement”. Editor: Magnus Bärtås.
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  1. VIS Issue 1 Risk – and associated topics such as vulnerability, unguardedness, precariousness, failure and uncanniness – are frequently raised as concerns within artistic research arenas. VIS # 1 – Risk in Artistic Research – jeopardy or validation? moves through more artistically-stylised accounts of ‘danger’ towards the more hopeful linkage of risk with discovery and the reconfiguring of the imagination.
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  0. VIS Issue 0 Issue 0 features eight expositions created by researchers within the arts. Every contributor has been carefully chosen and invited by the Editorial Committee, with the view of presenting best practice within the field of artistic research.
  The expositions have gone through a dialogue-based peer-review which is something that the Editorial Committee would like to continue to develop in the coming issues, a process intended to be significant for VIS.
  Every exposition is presented on the VIS webpage and has an editorial text that explains why the contributor was chosen. The actual exposition itself, on the other hand, will be found in the database of the Research Catalogue. The expositions have their own designs and explore widely different topics, depending upon how each researcher has chosen to work within the offered format.
  
  The Editorial Committee would like to thank all the contributors for their inspiring work which sets the tone admirably for what we hope will follow.
  
  Editorial Committee: Cecilia Roos, Serge von Arx, Anna Lindal, Mia Engberg, Trond Lossius, Magnus Bärtås och Darla Crispin

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  ideally, the biryani that brings us all together (2025) author(s): Saniya Jafri published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  This Exposition is a brief ironic comment on the ongoing degradation, commodification, and colonisation of food and its many dimensions — recipes, ingredients, context — and a reflection on the territorial definitions that shape identity, in this case of South Asians and the Global South, once bound together as a people and still united in the brieftopian world of the Author’s Greatest Biryani: an amalgamative dish of political and cultural reproductions, drenched in time, where old and new contest identity. Through a conversational, autoethnographic lens, the exposition blends historical, colonial, and territorial reflections, using Biryani as both departure point and metaphor for shared identity and dislocation. Visual collages — archival, familial, and sourced — act as probes connecting memory, culture, and belonging. Ultimately, the work offers the Author’s Greatest Biryani as a living document of generational knowledge and a utopian gesture, inviting both insiders and outsiders to gather around a dish transcending borders and time.
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  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.
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  Photography, Temporality, and Thinking about the Future (2025) author(s): Jon Hovland Honerud, Hilde Hovland Honerud published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  The photographic image has always historizised; an artifact of the past, photographic moment. But just as it is conditioned by the temporal and material context of its making, its essence – if there is one – is conditioned by how we encounter the image. This encounter involves both the situation in which the image is seen and our individual selves in relation to it – our histories, beliefs, and expectations. To further reflect on this unstable, temporal quality of the photograph, we explore the meaning of looking at the future by looking at photographs. Artistically and philosophically a contradiction in terms, it is still a practice we experience: How to look ahead with something temporally bound to the past. To do this, we reflect on ‘Regarding the Pain of the Future’ by the first author and develop and discuss an artistic practice emphasising a second, photographic moment.
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  Galaxy Revolution – Space travel as a tool for reimagining (2025) author(s): Whyte&Zettergren published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  Welcome to Galaxy Revolution, the space station of Historical Spiritual Vibrations space agency. At the station you can access training sessions and game instructions we use to imagine training and healing practices for the new space race. You can experience glimpses of our space journeys and learn more of the history of the tools and knowledge we bring with us on our missions. Dock at our space station and (mis)use our methods to reshape and imagine the past, present, and future in your own way. The exposition gathers documentation of Whyte&Zettergren's live actions and ritual practices at locations in Iceland where the Apollo 11 astronauts trained for their journey to the Moon. It also includes infrared imagery, a technology used in space visualization to capture light waves invisible to the human eye, recorded during the duo’s space journeys. The duo explores space both as a site where future colonial projects are planned and as a fictional realm for imagining alternative worlds. In their work, Zettergren's speculative technofeminism and Whyte's ritual dubfuturism intersect. Practices that reshape futures in various ways; through an intersectional feminist and technocritical lens, and through the experimental remixing of history, ritual, and rhythm in dub culture. When the present feels dystopian, dreams of life in space become a way to envision change, a transformation of the world through imagination, whose echoes vibrate into the future.
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  Fata Morgana. An Essay Journey. (2025) author(s): Torben Körschkes published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  ”Fata Morgana. An Essay Journey” explores the optical phenomenon of the Fata Morgana and its mythical namesake, Morgain Le Fay, as a figure of thought to explore transcultural and transgeographical relationships between landscape and identity. Conceived as an essay journey with artistic interventions, Fata Morgana argues for rethinking imagined geographies against the territorial bigotry prevalent in Europe and the world, against essentialist ideas of singular or linear origins. Instead, Körschkes uses Fata Morgana as a motif, myth and method for artistic research, employing its ephemerality and “diffuse occurrences” to relocate places into other places, narratives onto other narratives, and thus brings together different spatialities, temporalities and identities into brieftopian co-existence.
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  Design Phenomenographies for Industrial Wastelands (2025) author(s): monica tusinean published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  The long-neglected industrial wastelands of Romania present themselves as heterotopias in need of help. Post-Communist industrial ruins form a link to a multi-layered and difficult past, and their systemic erasure has contributed to a collective amnesia that perpetuates historical trauma and denies the local population access to the landscapes, natural and artificial, that tie them to a shared past and a collective cultural identity. This contribution aims to illustrate one methodology of bridging the gap between preservation through museumification and invasive architectural intervention. In this context, artistic and design-driven research practices can enable the emergence of ephemeral creative spaces that foster engagement with industrial heritage and reach beyond commodification and capitalist exploitation.
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