Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 2024. ACPA ACPA 2024

• ReForm (last edited: 2023) author(s): Ruchama Noorda connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This dissertation of Ruchama Noorda, together with the artworks documented in it, is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research Noorda situates this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, Noorda links the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy / Wellness movements. In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it, Noorda sets out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process Noorda probes the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, Noorda argues that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts. However the interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and the own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as Noorda moves closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.
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• Die Partimenti von Giovanni Paisiello Ansätze zu ihrem Verständnis (last edited: 2023) author(s): Nicoleta Paraschivescu connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The Partimenti of Giovanni Paisiello: Towards Their Understanding in Context. Full version only available in German. 　 This doctoral thesis of Nicoleta Paraschivescu focuses on Paisiello's partimenti and how to approach their realization and performance. To that end I completed an in-depth profile of his pedagogical activities and expanded the already well-known sources—the Regole published in St. Petersburg (1782)—with newly discovered partimenti by Paisiello. Crucial for this study were connections between Paisiello's partimenti and not only his own compositions but also those of his teacher Francesco Durante and his other contemporaries. This broader perspective required taking into account the genre-specific contexts in which Paisiello’s partimenti reside. The inclusion of larger musical forms and complex progressions as compositional models significantly expands the spectrum of possibilities in the realization of his partimenti. A central idea emerging from this study is that partimenti provide a key to the musical language of the time and offer vast possibilities for realization and ornamentation.
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• The Cognitive continuum of electronic music (last edited: 2023) author(s): Anil Çamci   connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The use of the electronic medium to compose music entails a variety of cognitive idiosyncrasies which are experienced by both the artist and the audience. Structured around this medium on both practical and conceptual levels, this study utilizes a tripartite methodology involving artistic practice, cognitive experimentation and theoretical discourse to investigate these idiosyncrasies. All three components of this methodology operate concurrently to address a succession of questions: How do we experience electronic music? How does electronic music operate on perceptual, cognitive and affective levels? What are the common concepts activated in the listener’s mind when listening to electronic music? Why and how are these concepts activated? In this dissertation Anil Çamc argues that our experience of electronic music is guided by a cognitive continuum rooted in our everyday experiences. Çamc describes this continuum as spanning from abstract to representational based on the relationship of gestures in electronic music to events in the environment. Conducting this research has significantly expanded my comprehension of the experiential depth of electronic music. It has also affirmed my belief that we have much more to gain from the electronic medium, and that the cognitive continuum is one of its most remarkable offerings.
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• (De)Composing Immersion (last edited: 2023) author(s): Miguelángel Clerc Parada  connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This dissertation of Miguelángel Clerc Parada explores various perspectives on the term immersion, and its relation with, and transformation through, a composer’s practice. Immersion is presented as a key term to interconnect diverse aspects of musical practice and music listening with their various phenomenological and ontological implications. Immersion through music is proposed as a transitional experience that exposes and interrelates multiple layers of reality, questioning critically the tendency to think immersion as an experience within a particular or self-contained space (in music, in a book, in a virtual environment, in thoughts, in water, in a music hall, etc.). The compositions What about Woof? (for five percussionists and video installation), La línea desde el Centro (for twelve guitarists), Eufótica (for six percussionists and tape) and A Bao A Qu (for nine musicians and tape), analyzed and developed through the research trajectory, are the main artistic source to develop the ideas of each chapter of this investigation. The compositional processes described and the reflections about immersion derived from them offer diverse perspectives on the practical and phenomenological aspects of music composition, performance and listening.
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• Creating and re-creating tangos : artistic processes and innovations in music by Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann (last edited: 2023) author(s): Barbara Varassi Pega  connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  In this dissertation, Barbara Varassi Pega digs into the constituent elements of River Plate tango in order to decode how specific musical materials were organized and combined by four outstanding musicians: Osvaldo Pugliese, Horacio Salgán, Astor Piazzolla and Gustavo Beytelmann. For this purpose, Varassi Pega has analysed a select number of representative pieces through a study of their scores and recordings. This led to the definition of certain artistic processes and innovations within the genre, theoretical foundations for such processes, and, in all, a deeper understanding of the art of creating tango music, in addition to an overall, chronological view of its development and techniques. The articulation of this (partly) embodied knowledge has resulted in an original contribution to the field, providing new insights with which both Varassi Pega and the greater artistic community can enrich our skills in arranging, composing and performing tango music. The formulation of hypothesis and conclusions, and the translation of the findings into the own production through empiric methods and experimentation were executed alongside the analytical part of the work. The continuous exchange between the practical and theoretical aspects of this research project was fundamental, always strengthening and feeding back each other.
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• LOCVS : herinnering en vergankelijkheid in de verbeelding van plaats : van Italische domus naar artistiek environment (last edited: 2023) author(s): Krien Clevis connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  As an artist, Krien Clevis is fascinated by the phenomenon of place in relation to beginnings and final destinations. This study links up the concept of place with memory, with the idea of transience and the transition from life to death. The main research question addressed the following concern: 'how can I present my work in a way so that it both comprises a representation of place and emerges or exists as a place itself?' As the research was geared toward places of meaning, Clevis also aspired to create new places of meaning. The search for them involved a journey through time and space __ not just _ la recherche du temps perdu, but also _ la recherche du lieu perdu. The research expanded into various areas that are somewhat affiliated with art, namely archeology, architecture and (art)history. Through the photo works and the installation Clevis created, Clevis intends to share a visual story with the audience and find a way in which viewers of the work may appropriate the story and add to it by mobilizing their own perceptions. The reflections on the quality and characteristics of place took Clevis to the classical houses found in Pompeii and the ancient tombs of Rome and Cerveteri. The connection between these spatial manifestations of life and death as two extremes is essential to me. The historical research made Clevis aware that as an artist Clevis is part of long tradition indeed. As such the artistic sightline cuts across the historical sightline in this work, to which Clevis also added a more personal, autobiographical sightline as a third meaningful dimension.
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