Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 
  The Invisible Inside the Visible (2014) author(s): Sheilah Wilson published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  The Invisible Inside the Visible was a personal quest turned art project to locate physical evidence of a century-old racetrack on the Cape John peninsula in the village of River John, Nova Scotia. The journey to find the racetrack was marked by its double invisibility. Not only was it remembered without specificity in regard to location, it was also invisible to the observing eye because it was embedded into the landscape. This exposition is a reflection on the nature of landscape as a marker of cultural geography, and on my ability as an artist to pull the past forward through performance. I see the performative gesture as a physical articulation akin to a vibration; it disrupts the stability of the narrative. This project adds to the discourse investigating maps, memory, rural community, oral history, depictions of landscape, performance as tool, and the potential for dialectical articulations of place and history.
  open exposition comments (1)
• 
  Alpha (2014) author(s): Juliet MacDonald published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This is a report of an art-research project that started over four years ago. It concerns drawings made by a chimpanzee as part of a scientific experiment conducted in the 1940s. On the first page I summarise the background to my project, the discussion of drawing that provides a context, and the areas of enquiry that are exposed. On three further pages of the exposition I discuss the methods by which I conducted the research. 'Collecting' describes the acquisition of second-hand books dating from the first half of the twentieth century. In 'Tracing' I discuss the retracing of drawings made by the chimpanzee named Alpha. The third of these pages, 'Experimenting', shows the development of this research during an artist's residency at MEANTIME in 2012.
  open exposition comments (2)
• 
  Located Identity: Finding the Mallee (2013) author(s): Dominic Redfern published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  From within a larger body of research that dealt with how identity is constructed in and through screen spaces, in this exposition I have selected for discussion three works that deal more specifically with the relationship between identity and place. I discuss these three projects so as to chart the shifting ways in which I developed a relationship to a single place, namely the Mallee geo-region of south-eastern Australia. It is a hot, dry region, largely flat and low lying, which for significant periods was inundated by the ocean. This ancient geological history is seen today in the sand dunes and salt lakes that the region contains. It is a place of contested land use, and inappropriate agricultural practices have made it highly susceptible to erosion. In this exposition, I will describe how I was drawn to work in this zone, and how, through the three successive works I discuss, significant shifts occurred in the way I engaged with landscape through the medium of video. In my previous practice I was very often present as a performer on screen. The seven-year arc described in this exposition has seen my own presence slowly fade. My disappearance from the picture, and my shifting relationship to place, are two aspects of the same process, one an expression of the other. The three works discussed contain different approaches to space, place, and landscape, and together they build towards a notion of located identity that sees the landscape subsume the previously present ‘actor’.
  open exposition comments (2)
• 
  Mapping a Modern Diegesis: Terre des Hommes and Robert Altman's Quintet (2013) author(s): Paul Landon published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This project maps the locations in the old Expo 67 site in Montréal used in the film Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979). It reflects upon how the representation of the international, modern architecture and design of the Expo pavilions could shift from signifying promise and potential for social betterment to becoming indexes of technological catastrophe and social decay. It also looks at how the architecture of Expo 67, both as a site of technological spectacle and as an impromptu film set, has disappeared. The interface for the project reflects the process of looking for something that has been forgotten. Like the characters of the film Quintet, lost in a nuclear winter landscape, the reader wanders through expanses of white space to find remnants of the expo site and of the film's set, to find artefacts and fragments of meaning.
  open exposition comments (3)
• 
  Delirious Brahms (2013) author(s): Eivind Buene published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  The institutions of classical music could be regarded as sites of performance and production, and the apparatus and situation of performance as material for the composer. My work 'Johannes Brahms Klarinettentrio' revolves around the idea of composing with the situation of the chamber music performance. The composition is an intervention by way of the paranoid-critical method adapted from Dali by architect Rem Koolhaas: A chamber music ensemble is sitting on stage, performing what seems to be Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Trio (1891). But gradually both the music and the interplay between musicians change, thereby altering the expectations of the audience during the course of listening. As the piece unfolds, the acoustic instruments are overtaken by electronic equipment and sounds. The work is an attempt to challenge the tranquilising flow of chamber music, to open the situation to the possibility of the unexpected.
  open exposition comments (2)
• 
  The Photogram as a Domestic Diary (2013) author(s): Pamela Salen published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  Using a heuristic a method of inquiry, my practice-led research investigates a creative visualisation of memory, autobiography, and domestic space. I approach these experiences from the perspective that home is not necessarily a fixed or ideal place, but rather an on-going condition underpinned by the tension between preservation and transformation. Within these parameters, home is defined primarily as a self-referential process whereby memory and autobiography are integral. I examine photograms and paper sculptures as methods of engaging with, recording, and cataloguing memory. How space is perceived and thus translated onto paper informs my understanding of the visceral and direct qualities of memory as an artefact, as well as a mode of storytelling. Through this, my research aims to contribute, through unconventional image-making processes, to how memory can be triggered and home re-constructed as a domestic diary. I argue that memory is provoked by an intimately-scaled, reconstructed portrayal of home as both an iconic and abstracted space whereby touch, light, and paper are necessary aids. Home is an important area of exploration because of its immediate link to memory. My research offers insight into how domestic space can be perceived as a diary.
  open exposition comments (4)