Research Catalogue

CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PORTO. October 16, 17, 18th, 2024 :: Drawing Across :: Along :: Between University Borders considers the epistemological and transformative potential of drawing research to connect divergent areas in the university today. The conference focuses on drawing-based collaborations between art, science and society to tackle artistic, educational and societal challenges. We invite artists, scientists, educators, students, university policymakers and persons interested in inter-transdisciplinary practices across academia, research, and society to contribute and join the discussion in three possible directions: ACROSS - In what ways are drawing practitioners challenging the disciplinary strictures that often constrain thinking and acting across divergent areas in the university? ALONG - How can drawing activities be an ally of STEM education in the university, and how can STEM practices be an ally of drawing education? BETWEEN - How can drawing-based practices and STEM disciplines collaborate to address the urgency of societal challenges?

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Building-Sound Compositions in (half-)public places: Starting from Graz, six vacant buildings in different European cities were researched as aural architectures and understood and experienced as an integral part of building-sound compositions. Techniques and strategies ​​were developed how sound art can react systematically to site-specific architectual conditions or how these environmental acoustic characteristics can become part of a previously non-existent composition.

"What is today the city, for us? I believe I wrote something like a last love poem to cities, in a time when it’s becoming more and more difficult living them like cities. Maybe we’re coming to a moment of crisis of the urban life, and Invisible cities are a dream born by the heart of unliveable cities." - I. Calvino, Introduction to Città Invisibili, Mondadori 1983 Starting by a confrontation between two historical utopian projects (Arturo Soria’s ciudad lineal and Constant’s New Babylon) I try to investigate with a broad and heterogenous look the idea of adopting path as fundamental topic of the city: whether Soria or Constant, in different ways, suggest an architecture of roaming, a nomadic and virtual space, that is the same space of cosmopolis, an anticipation of globalized culture that’s identified in a flux-condition and not in a stasis-one. Ciudad lineal and New Babylon projects prophetically forestall many tendencies of contemporary urbanity, proposing an idea of cities that are at the same time hyperlocal and hyperplanetary, ahistorical and superficial, acentric and non-identitary, inhabited by people always in movement. Streets don’t conduct anymore just to some places, they are places themselves: the condition of movement, and the street trail that constitutes his support, represents the urban archetype that is the basis of all contemporary architectonical and social disposition. From the description and comparison of these two projects the Generic City emerges, alienate and privatized, where we’re living in nowadays.

This exposition provides a spherical exposition of the research processes through a repository of images, texts, and diagrams, and contains the exegesis—a critical textual articulation of the doctoral artistic research project Circus as Practices of Hope: A philosophy of Circus. Abstract My doctoral artistic research project, Circus as Practices of Hope: A Philosophy of Circus, responds to the growing complexities emerging from the convergence of the fourth industrial revolution, the sixth mass extinction, and the eco-socio-political turmoil of our time. What does it mean to be human today? What does it mean to be a circus artist today? How is circus relevant in today’s context? Core to this inquiry is the assertion that although circus arts hold the potential to foster significant knowledge, they simultaneously perpetuate outdated worldviews that restrict their transgressive potential. With this research, I investigate alternatives to regressive models of thoughts and modes of composition, aiming to identify and articulate circus´ inherent epistemic, ontological, and ethical specificities and their relevance for navigating and steering the current planetary paradigm shift. I conducted my research through embodied practices as a circus artist, as a pedagogue, and from the perspective of a human on Earth. My inquiry occurred through Multiverse, an iterative series of compositional performative experiments and discursive activities. I engaged critical posthumanism and neo-materialist philosophies to challenge and evolve my relation to risk, mastery, and virtuosity. The project conceptualizes circus arts as nomadic and fabulatory practices, culminating in a series of artistic, choreographic, and conceptual tools and methods that articulate circus arts within and beyond their disciplinary boundaries. The project advances a philosophy of circus that highlights circus-specific kinetic, aesthetic, and embodied relevancies in today’s context, situating circus arts as hopeful practices for the future. To quote this work: Robitaille, M-A. (2024), Circus as Practices of Hope: A Philosophy of Circus, Documented Artistic Research Project (doctoral thesis), Stockholm University of the Arts. Publication series X Position no. 33 ISSN 2002-603X ; 33 ISBN 978-91-88407-52-8 (print) EISBN 978-91-88407-53-5 (e-publ)

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.