Research Catalogue

This exposition documents my explorations of pondering with pine trees. Tämä ekspositio dokumentoi yritykseni miettiä mäntyjen kanssa. Den här ekspositionen dokumenterar mina försök att fundera med furor.

Illustration as research from within the field is of relatively new practice. The illustrators discourse on representation (Yannicopoulou & Alaca 2018 ), theory (Doyle, Grove and Sherman 2018, Male 2019, Gannon and Fauchon 2021), and critical writing on illustration practice was hardly found before The Journal of Illustration was first issued in 2014, followed by artistic research through illustration (Black, 2014; Rysjedal, 2019; Spicer, 2019). This research project developed as response to a rise in hate crime towards refugees and the targeting of European Jews in recent decade. A pilot project (This Is a Human Being 2016-2019) treated how narratives of the Holocaust may avoid contributing to overwriting of history or cultural appropriation. Asking how illustration in an expanded approach may communicate profound human issues typically considered unrepresentable, this new project hopes to explore representation and the narratives of “us” and “the others” in the contemporary world through illustration as starting-point for cross-disciplinary projects. The participants from different disciplines, have interacted democratically on common humanist themes to explore the transformative role of illustration in contemporary communication. our projects should afford contemplation of illustration as an enhanced, decelerated way of looking; and drawing as a process for understanding - a way of engaging in understanding the other, as much as expressing one’s own needs (McCartney, 2016). This AR project consisted of three symposia and three work packages, and the artistic research unfolded in the symbiosis of these elements. Our investigation of illustration across media and materials continues as dissemination and exhibitions even after the conclusion of the work packages in 2024.

Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public. Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact. The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).

Elena Cirkovic is conducting a transdisciplinary research project at Aarhus University, the University of Lapland, the University of Helsinki, and the BioArt Society Finland on the complex interactions between Earth and outer space systems, as well as the limitations in communicating with the unknown and unpredictable. The associated artwork is aiming for simplicity, placemaking, and "non-disruptive" BioArt (to the extent possible).

This publication presents the outcomes of the Connective Symposium, which took place at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg, in November 2022. The symposium was the first time that the professorship and research group Artistic Connective Practices, initiated in 2021, opened its work to the international field: We invited practitioners from all over the world to share their work and exchange about the concept of "artistic connectivity". "Artistic Connectivity Unfolding" is an attempt to share the experiences during the symposium with the broader artistic research audience, and to contribute to the body of artistic research work that is socially engaged. The exposition is potentially many things: In part, it is a piece of documentation of the symposium, in part reflections on and proceedings of it. It is also an explorative contribution to our emerging and unfolding discourse of artistic connectivity, — unfinished, fluid and moving — and thus a springboard for our future work on artistic connectivity.

The aim of this documented artistic research project is to investigate functions of directing within an expanded understanding of co-created performing arts. My main question concerns the following. What practices and principles of directing in co-created performing arts are revealed in the sample narratives, expositions and final productions of the thesis, and what do these say about transformations within different spatial and social contexts? The project process consists of four documented stagings and a final performance. It is this way I develop the concept “The Coteur” which stands for a directorial function combining a unique, biographical director function (The Auteur) with the openness of a co-created process formed around place, collaborators and contexts, where the development of an original work start without a script. Here I am interested in what I call ”staged absence” which I consider to be an artistic principle based on the removal of “the expected”. What happens, for example when the lead vocalist and the music are taken out of a popular song to leave behind a group of beat counting back-up singers, looking for their cue and a rhythm. Or when boxers are taken out of the ring and only the choreography of the referee remains. In my artistic research project I want to challenge the premises of co-creative performing art, and the director function, by also using forms for seminars and association meetings, to stage collective readings aloud, from manuscripts. This is combined with autobiographical and reflective writing, influenced by the principles for knowledge in practice, to uncover and develop artistic principles for a co-creative director function.