Research Catalogue

An overview of Elisabeth Belgrano's artistic / performance / research and teaching in higher arts education 2004-ongoing

A voice. Alone. Sounding as a prayer. As a meditation. Moving through lamentation and hope. In the middle of life. In the middle of living. In the shadow of Death. There is a voice. Voice of Life itself. Voice of God. A performance of a vocal prayer. Voice - Elisabeth Belgrano

Walking Through the Garden of Senses... ... is a musical salon; an experience of longing for that-which-has-not-yet-been-spoken; a walk through the Garden of Senses. A theorbo and a voice are moving through a musical landscape. Their sound is an entanglement of poetry, words and ornaments. This walk comes with one specific purpose: to perform a certain something; to enact je-ne-sais-quoi, nurtured by French Baroque composers such as Michel Lambert, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Honoré d’Ambruis, Sebastien Le Camus. ... towards that-which-we- don't-know-anything-about ... Elisabeth Belgrano Voice Sven Åberg Theorbo Björn Ross Scenography

A journey through the language of passions inspired by the life of the French soprano Anne Chabanceau de La Barre (1628-1688). Highlighting her career in Paris, but also her sojourn at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden (1653-1654), it features her repertory from the Kings chamber, the 'ballets de our' and the 'salons'. Shifting from music to poetry to narration, the project explores how Mlle de La Barre and other female performers in the seventeenth century moved their listeners by expressing the affects through the mirror of the soul - the voice. Music by M. Lambert, S. Le Camus, A-M-. Bartlett, C. Huyghens, P. Chabanceau de La Barre, J. Chabanceau de La Barre, J.-B. Lully & L. Rossi. [61:55] Elisabeth Belgrano, voice Lucas Harris, theorb, lute Carlene Strober, viola da gamba Jennifer Ellis, voice ℗© 2004 Elisabeth Belgrano www.elibelgrano.org EB2004

in progress...

The aim of this project is to investigate vocal ornamentations in French baroque composer Michel Lambert's (1610-1696)'Leçons de Ténèbres. It is an artistic research project where vocal performance practice is diffracted through Karen Barad's theory on agential realism and Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida's concepts of Action-Intuition and Basho.

GLORIES TO NOTHINGNESS SORROW. MADNESS. NOTHING. A voice. A gesture. A beginning. An experiment. A sketch. A becoming. ... based on the story of a singer’s performance of paradoxes and passions in 17th century Venice. ... based on a singer’s research – performed in the 21st century – about the Art of Performing Everything and Nothing. GLORIES TO NOTHINGNESS is an artistic research project investigating performative acts of moving between Vocalizing ≈ Articulating ≈ Mattering ≈ Trusting. The research question: How to perform trust? Every movement, utterance, projection and articulation is consciously exploring and honoring Nothingness as an idea and a concept much debated at the time when the first public opera productions were performed in Venice around 1640. Based on a performative research approach and new materialist theories, performance acts are methodologically diffracted through musical fragments composed by Luigi Rossi (c. 1597 – 1653), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and Francesco Sacrati (1605-1650); through selected poems from the volume Le Glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (Venice, 1641); through thoughts entangled with figures such as RESISTANCE, VULNERABILITY and TRUST; through the practice of exploring force and form as every day performative acts. Elisabeth Belgrano vocal projections / performance Björn Ross visual projections / scenography

Summary Re/configuring Trust is an artistic research project with the purpose to investigate the act of moving between a variety of scholarly and performance stages within the continuum of Vocalizing ≈ Articulating ≈ Mattering ≈ Trust. As human beings and members of a global society, we are constantly facing how we go about facing this voice/trust challenge. The project therefore proposes an investigation into how voices and vocality can contribute to society as bridge-builders for the purpose of a greater sense of trust between humans and non-humans. The specific question I confront is “How to perform trust as an enactment between a vocal performer and her/his audience?” The project is framed by artistic/practice-led performance research and new materialist theories, including concepts such as agential realism, intra-action, and diffractive analysis. My performance research, in sum, is about exploring, praxically the relationship between artistic products/events—originating specifically in a Venetian Baroque context—and more general societal issues today. The overall purpose of the project, beyond and through scholarship, is to contribute to society with a performative model for inspiring and challenging a discourse on how to obtain trust between humans and non-humans in a world having to deal with issues such as global performance of inhumanity, distrust between cultures, and loss of respect for memories of the past.

Projektet undersökte genom ett konceptuellt och performativt förhållningssätt offentliga scenrum där en uppluckringen mellan pedagogik och konst skapas, liksom mellan arketyperna läraren och konstnären. Genom att på olika sätt utnyttja de porösa skikt som ligger mellan dessa yrkeskategorier och praktiker skapas genom projektet nya intra-aktiva möjligheter, transdisciplinära möten, sammanfogningar eller fusioner. Vad sker mellan lärandet och konsten på gestaltandets tröskel, i det mikroskopiska ögonblicket? Vad uppstår när de vanor, yrken och tillhörigheter vi vanligtvis beskriver oss som förändras och nya titlar, yrken och praktiker formas? Projektet sökte genom begrepp och koncept att formulera de skeenden och tillblivelser som uppstår genom två temporära ingångar och arketypiska karaktärer i den GALNA och BASTARDEN - Madness and the Bastard. Projektet genomfördes av Elisabeth L. Belgrano (fil dr i Scenisk gestaltning samt dåvaranda gästlärare vid Konstnärliga fakulteten, Göteborgs universitet) och Fredric Gunve (lektor vid Högskolan för design och konsthantverk, Göteborgs universitet) under perioden september 2013 - juni 2015 inom ämnet performativa konstarter/ konceptuell performance/konstnärlig-vetenskaplig högskolepedagogik; parallellt med Fakultetsgemensamma kollegiet för Performance/Performativitets verksamhet. Finansiering delgavs från Konstnärliga fakulteten/GU via kollegiets verksamhet.

The Otherness of the Self - how to curate a Seventeenth century Opera and sing all the Roles yourself. (or: -how to connect and disconnect the roles of the Baroque soprano and her postmodern Otherness. ) (or - a Voce sola in dialogo) -Is it possible to perform an opera and sing all the roles yourself? Is it even possible that we’ll come closer to the core in the music and the narrative if everything is anchored in one single person? -Can I use the interpretation of opera characters to better understand my different roles as a musician - the baroque soprano and the new music singer? - Am I two (or three, or fifty) different singers/musicians/roles depending on what genre or style I’m performing? What divides them? What ties them together? What factors determine how the voice will work, or not? - What can I use from my knowledge of early music in my practice as a performer of contemporary music, and vice versa?

This performance-presentation exhibits ornamenting processes of I/ voice /force and becomings between sounding notes/structures/forms. In short: articulating mattering-processes through force and form. Following a transforming web of acts and encounters, desire and urge - becomings of I/voice - are continuously meeting that-which-isn’t-yet-known. The form (or stage) presented, is a landscape and a twisted borderland made up of nomadic theory (Braidotti 2011) and artistic operatic madness (Belgrano 2014). The force is a chorus of intra-active voices mourning the loss of a city, loss of life and loss of trust. Departing from a nomadology illustrated conceptually, politically and contextually by Braidotti, the I/voice/force move through structures of sound, characters, emotions and statements chanted out of fear and pain. Each vocal sound marks a conclusion and a beginning. Limiting. According to Lacan, limits - being wounds or scars, or marks ”of irreplaceble losses as well as liberal thoughts.” According to Deleuze, limits - ”points of passages, thresholds, and markers of sustainability” (Braidotti 2011). Limits = Conclusions and Beginnings. What comes in between all limits are transformations, as in complex ecosystems of indeterminable encounters. Everyone being part of such an encounter is being touched by the presence of its in/non/human neighbours. Together they form a world of more-than-human-references. An irrational structure in it’s own becoming. The purpose of this paper is to show how each vocally fragmented ’conclusion-transformation-beginning’ of a microscopic moment, generates patterns being part of much larger global patterns. Along the way every act and every turn of I/voice/force will, by means of emergent properties, be diffracted and giving birth to multiple voices. One voice will become I-being-more-than-one-voice, trusting in its own ways, colours, shapes, forms, and non-sensical appearances. As a result, this paper calls for further investigation of transformative processes with/out limits, and thus moving towards an Ecology of Trust.

Meaning-making as vocal ornamentation.

Högskolepedagogisk konferens, Göteborgs universitet HKG 2015, (22/10) Utifrån den produktion av konstnärliga akademiska avhandlingar som i dag finns tillgängliga skulle man kunna hävda att den praktiska/konstnärliga kunskapen som ofta benämnts som 'tyst' inte längre är så tyst. Med anledning av detta blir frågeställningen i denna föredragning enligt följande: vad kan en medveten, nyfikenhetsdriven och lustfylld sammanflätning av teoretisk/linjär/objektiv/vetenskaplig och praktisk/icke-linjär/subjektiv/sinnlig kunskap få för effekt på lärande och undervisning inom högre utbildning? I föredragningen förs vi tillsammans in i ett posthumanistiskt och performativt ‘trassel’, med referens till de ”ömsesidigt formerande samspel (”intra-aktioner”) som föregår framträdandet av mänskliga och icke-mänskliga aktörer, diskurser och materialiteter”(Åsberg et al. 2012, s. 201; Barad 2007, 2011), där vi uppmärksammar hur lärande/undervisningen/ innehåll materialiseras, artikuleras och formas genom görande/praktik. När kunskapsinhämtning kaotisk smälter samman och ‘blir till’ (Atkinson 2015) uppstår en kunskap gen/om det oförutsedda, det rhizomatiskt överflödande och det nomadiska (Braidotti 2011). Resultat från det pågående forskningsprojektet “Vocal ornamentation ≈ Articulation ≈ Mattering” framträder som en röd tråd i ett virrvarr av trådar (Belgrano 2011), spår (Wallsten 2011) och fragment (Belgrano 2015). Intuitivt fångar vi upp sinnlig kunskap och knyter den samman med exempel från examensarbeten inom konstnärliga lärar/utbildningar. ‘Trasslet’ upplöses av och till och resultatet som synliggörs blir till en modell för lärande och undervisning där form inte kan särskiljas från innehåll och där utbildning kan skönjas som ett materialiserat snitt i en evinnerlig bildningskedja . Syftet med denna föredragning blir att bejaka ännu fler trassliga intra-aktiva samtal inom högre utbildning för att uppmärksamma hur undervisning och lärande kan utvecklas genom konst/utbildning/vetenskap-liga möten.

This exposition departs from the silence of a non-existing voice. A voice about to touch the ears and eyes of both author and readers/listeners. A voice already sounding in the head of the author - sounding as thoughts, words, letters and sentences. A non/voice being part of a never ending development of new materialities. An onto-epistemological voice diffracted through a singer's process of making sense of a lesson from a 17th century vocal manuscript. A voice as a mattering method for the art of singing through new materialist theories, vocal and discursive narratives and somatic awareness.

The role of a singer/musician/performer calls for an ability to capture the attention of an audience. In the 17th century the general concern would have been for the performer to develop musical and performative means in order to touch both hearts and souls of the listeners. In a blog from 2016, Finnish voice-artist Heidi Fast writes about a specific case study in a hospital environment (as part of her doctoral research) where she examines and explores the possibilities of non-verbal vocality to attune embodied relationality: “my task is not to ‘give voice to the patients’, instead, I try to create favourable conditions with my voice and presence to invite the participants to an entirely new dialogue. The role of the researcher is not a distant observer, but experiential in proximity.” The relationality enacted by performer/s, researcher/s, listener/s, participants in a musical event/encounter allows for overlappings of shared elevated (or even spiritual) experiences inspiring to new ways of thinking. Such existential experiences can be challenging to describe or to discursively articulate at a later stage. At the same time these ‘spiritual’ experiences provide a provocative point of departure for artistic research. The aim of this presentation is to open up for an intra-active discussion on relationality, with reference to voicing musicking/performing and the spiritual/existential experience; artistic research and religious studies/radical theology/new materialist/non-dualistic/holistic theories; artistic research in music and its potential contribution to existential meaning-making applicable for ex in pastoral care. The music performed in this performance-paper refers to the city of Paris in the 17th century, to the fallen city of Jerusalem as described in the biblical Lamentations, and to Gothenburg and an early 20th century water cistern. Experiencing walls and scores constructed in the past sheds new light on future structures and potential relations. Presented as "Voicing: an intra-active spiritual matter?" at National Network for Artistic Research in Music (Nationellt nätverk för konstnärlig forskning i musik / NFKM) 23-24 Aug 2017, Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden

A diffractive reading of Kitarō Nishida's Thinking on Acting-Intuition, Karen Barad's notes on What Flashes Up (2017) & Michel Lambert's Léçons de Ténèbres (Seconde Léçon du Jeudi St, 1662-63)

This exposition proposes the 17th century ornament 'animer' as an agent in an entangled process of building new knowledge through artistic vocal research and a close reading of Bertrand de Bacilly’s ‘A commentary upon the Arts of Proper Singing’ (1968). A relationship between 17th century vocal ornamentation, the concepts of Nothingness and Je-ne-sais-quoi, and a distrust of the meaning of language has been pointed out in previous research (Calcagno 2003, Belgrano 2011). In this current investigation I search to understand how a specific vocal ornament can contribute intra-actively as part of an artistic research process. The study departs from a collection of Leçons de Ténèbres set to music by 17th century composer Michel Lambert. A selected fragment from these lessons is methodologically diffracted (Barad 2010) through vocal experimentation with the ornament animer. An ornament described as “certain almost imperceptible repetitions of notes done with the throat” (Bacilly 1968). The diffractive analysis includes other agents such as the city of Jerusalem, where vocal experiments were carried out in Aug 2014 (coloured by increased tension in the Middle East); words referring to the ‘fold’ (Deleuze 2006); the subtle listening into sensuous awareness of dwelling with/in the world (Yangisawa 2015); the relationship between music’s ineffability and various academic traditions and cultures of meaning-making and mattering (Abbate 2004). The result of this intra-active encounter captures a different sense of vocality materialised as poetic knowledge in sound and words. My hope is that this study can contribute to a debate on how artistic research as a field ‘in-between’ practice and theory, reason and imagination, cultures from East and West, can inspire to a sense of trust for the sake of relationality and possibly even for a better world. Paper presented at: The 20th Quinquennial Congress of the International Musicological Society Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan March 19-23, 2017

This music research drama thesis explores and presents a singer’s artistic research process from the first meeting with a musical score until the first steps of the performance on stage. The aim has been to define and formulate an understanding in sound as well as in words around the concept of pure voice in relation to the performance of 17th century vocal music from a 21st century singer’s practice-based perspective with reference to theories on nothingness, the role of the 17th century female singer, ornamentation (over-vocalization) and the singing of the nightingale. The music selected for this project is a series of lamentations and mad scenes from Italian and French 17th century music dramas and operas allowing for deeper investigation of differences and similarities in vocal expression between these two cultural styles. The thesis is presented in three parts: a Libretto, a performance of the libretto (DVD) and a Cannocchiale (that is, a text following the contents of the Libretto). In the libretto the Singer’s immediate inner images, based on close reading of the musical score have been formulated and performed in words, but also recorded and documented in sound and visual format, as presented in the performance on the DVD. In the Cannocchiale, the inner images of the Singer’s encounter with the score have been observed, explored, questioned, highlighted and viewed in and from different perspectives. The process of the Singer is embodied throughout the thesis by Mind, Voice and Body, merged in a dialogue with the Chorus of Other, a vast catalogue of practical and theoretical references including an imagined dialogue with two 17th century singers. As a result of this study, textual reflections parallel to vocal experimentation have led to a deeper understanding of the importance of considering the concept of nothingness in relation to Italian 17th century vocal music practice, as suggested in musicology. The concept of je-ne-sais-quoi in relation to the interpretation of French 17th century vocal music, approached from the same performance methodology and perspective as has been done with the Italian vocal music, may provide a novel approach for exploring the complexity involved in the creative process of a performing artist. Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Performance in Theatre and Music Drama at the Academy of Music and Drama, Faculty of Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg ArtMonitor dissertation No 25 ArtMonitor is a publication series from the Board for Artistic Research (NKU), Faculty of Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg A list of publications is added at the end of the book. ArtMonitor University of Gothenburg Faculty Office of Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts Storgatan 43 PO Box 141 SE 405 30 Gothenburg Sweden www.konst.gu.se ISBN: 978-91-978477-4-2

This exposition is an orna/mentor’s doing, an attempt, an essay, a performance, a line-of-thinking, a series of relations, a performance-research-model, a beginning of an orna/mentor’s manifesto. It might appear chaotic for some, and inviting for others. Its aim is to allow for the visitor to dive into the ‘orna’ (as in ‘urn’ meaning: an ornamented vase) mentored by a vocal performer. The exposition performs the raw and asymmetric intimacy of a research process searching to penetrate into (while at the same time radically opening up) that-which-is-yet-to-be-known. The performative caring has created an endless amount of philosophizing figures/sounds-in-themselves, as ornamented variations of an original musical score; a translation of one doing of another doing of another doing. Included in this exposition - as yet another ornamented variation – is a ‘peer-review-dialogue’ (a Q & A) between the orna/mentor and a Chorus of Unknown Reviewers. This dialogue has been included to clarify (or perhaps confuse even more) some of the questions that might arise in the mind of the visitor while moving through the exposition.

This exposition is a collaborative translation study of two 17th century historical sources. The aim is to search for possible ways of translating acts, words, and musical meaning from the past into new acts, words, meaning and musical performances. The following questions will be addressed: What can we learn today about a performance from 17th century? What was the sound of a voice in the 17th century like? What was the relationship between a performer and her/his audience in the 17th century? To what extent did musical sources influence a musical performance in the 17th century? How can 17th century vocality be translated and performed in a contemporary performance (research) context? The historical sources used in this study are 1) "Le Glorie della Signora Anna Renzi romana", a collection of poetry composed in honor of one of the most successful singers in Venice around 1640, Anna Renzi romana; 2) a collection of some of the most popular Roman cantatas around 1640.

The aim of this paper is to present a performative encounter between a singing/thinking voice and the Japanese philosophical concept of Acting-Intuition proposed by Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945), founder of the Kyoto School (of Japanese Philosophy) around 1913. Departing from a vocal investigation of French composer Michel Lambert’s Leçons de Ténèbres (ca. 1664), the performer follows the thoughts crystallizing in the very act of singing. This intuitive act complies to Nishidas view of “our active engagement with our surroundings” and “never just the passivity of pure reception” (Krummel 2015:87). In the act of singing the singer and song are shaped along with the shaping of space itself. Thus, while singing a song and a space the singer is acted upon by both space and the song. In this way, acting-intuition proves to be a concrete mode of human existence in the world’s dynamism, providing a non-dual platform for determining human living. In the process of singing in a space along with an audience, the listeners are involved in the intuitive act and as well as in the translation process of incorporating ‘the other’ as well as “developing one’s identity” (Bouso 2016:112) The thinking by singing can thus be regarded as an experience of translating and transporting meaning from one place to another. Acting-Intuition can also be used a philosophical tool, for reminding us to “rethink our own linguistic categories, to reflect on ourselves at the same time as we reflect on others” (Bouso 2016:113). Applying Acting-Intuition as an artistic research methodology, might perhaps even help us re-envisioning a sense of trust and an “eternal link among all living beings, all beings in their aliveness, this shared transience, and the possibilities for renewal that follow downsfall”, allowing us to “facing the im/possibilities of living on a damaged planet” (Barad 2017:75).

This exposition is a tale of (at least) two encounters performed as a Lesson in the Shadows of Death. In these shadows we find sounding voices, moving bodies and relations between what might be described as extreme opposites. What can be found in place nick named the City of Fire, or the Assembly of Death? Perhaps an opening to this question can be found in this exposition.

The voice presented in this NO PAPER PRESENTATION cannot be imagined as separated from any bodily act or matter. It intoxicates all along without an end. This voice emerges out of No Thing (Calcagno 2003). It would not claim to be in a specific relation to gender, class, ethnicity or other classification, yet this voice can be identified as "an imaginary figure of any thing"; a paradoxical voice performed and presented out of unexpected encounters with whatever meaning there might be. This voice can be traced to 17th century Venetian music drama stages - considered to be a symbol for Nothingness as specifically performed in operatic mad scenes. This NO PAPER presents a development of an artistic doctoral project on 'how to perform vocal nothingness' (Belgrano 2011). In the current study a Baradian (feminist) diffractive methodology is applied (Barad 2007, 2012), allowing vocal practice to intra-act continuously with any matter or meaning encountered along the road, by "re-diffracting, diffracting anew, in the making of new temporalities (spacetimematterings)" (Barad 2014). Through this performative approach VOICE argues that vocal identity can be viewed as an entangled dance - where sound, thoughts, judgements, senses, madness, matter, chaos, vibrations and so on cannot be separated from one another - "endlessly opening itself up to a variety of possible and impossible reconfigurings" (Hinton 2013). The result that emerges from this trans-spatiotemporal study is a sensuous queering of operatic vocality that allows individuals to experience a monstrous voice as Any Thing or No Thing, following a discourse on Nothingness that had a fundamental impact on 17th century operatic vocality and on the birth of music drama.

Upplevelser av existentiellt meningsskapande...

Performing the Unknown: Mapping Modes of Musical Practice through Performance Philosophy, New Materialism and Artistic Diffractive Methodologies.

Alone. Full. Need. Time/Space. Pondering. Moving. Spilling over. Over-vocalizing. Exploring. Ornamenting. Feeding.

The aim of this presentation is to perform an insight into the process of developing a research method, based on a practice-led/diffractive/artistic research methodology. The result includes a true story about a woman’s vocal awakening through the concept of NOTHINGNESS; about seventeenth century voices and musical manuscripts; about voicing experiences in Venice, Kyoto, & Jerusalem; about a collection of poems dedicated to one of the first opera singers – Anna Renz romana - who became NOTHINGNESS on stage; touching on Italian Nothingness and French Je-ne-sais-qua. What will become - as for the end of this story – is an attempt to articulate a process of ornamenting-as-a-method allowing for the emergence of a poetic-onto-ethico-epistemology.

Vad innebär det att gestalta Guds kärlek? Denna inledande fråga upplöses i nya riktningar och förståelser: 'Gestalta är att leva'. 'Gestaltande är en människas idé om Guds kärlek'. 'Gestalta är att skapa skönhet' och ’fördjupad medvetenhet om små rörelser'. 'Gestalta innebär att inkludera'. 'Gestalta är att vara Kristi tjänare'. 'Gestalta är ett tillblivande'. Ord har under våren 2020 'tagit gestalt' genom existentiella samtal mellan anställda och ideella i Carl Johans pastorat i Göteborg. Dessa ord och tankar formar grunden till en serie konstnärligt gestaltande (existentiella) laboratorier, som i sin tur får resultera i en performance installation med premiär under 'diakonins månad', september 2021.

The research explores 'ornamenting' as a transferable method in inter-disciplinary studies, inter-faith dialogues and artistic/therapeutic practices. Adapting techniques of Renaissance musicology, the processes we have developed de-create and re-create vital connections. It is a communica-tions strategy for times of crisis. Starting with simple sonic relations we extend the method far be-yond its traditional musical setting. The practice utilises 'Nothingness' as a component of creativity, providing a novel response to figurations of nothingness as mere negation. Preliminary results sug-gest its potential as a counter force to nihilism and social dislocation. The work divides into four areas. 1. Primary research on relationships between sound, meaning, and the sense(s) of self, exploring how sense is made of Otherness via processes akin to musical praxis: consonance, dissonance, 'pure voice' and ornamentation. 2. To apply this new perspective to a range of exile experiences – mourning, social disconnection, ex-communication and aggres-sive 'Othering'. 3. To investigate the cancelling of normal time-conditions in crisis situations such as trauma, dementia, and mystical experience, relating non-linear temporality to creative practice and healing. 4. To widely disseminate our results and methods as contributions to the methodology of artistic research via journal articles, live workshops and performances, and a book of original, praxical, testable, and teach-able interventions.

Before the Beginning. Pause here. For the gradient Of silence is changing. Pause, to hear behind all sounds The slope of silence deepening...

PP & Existential Psychology

In progress

Even with a healthy suspicion of 'cultural universals', there is a notable ubiquity to the relation between song and death. Peoples seemingly unconnected as the Plains Nations of North America, the Urubu Indians of Brazil, Japanese Zen Buddhists, and the Irish Celts have deep traditions relating voice and Death. The most obvious basis of this association may be the shared physiological phenomena of 'the breath leaving the body' – a process necessary to life when accompanied by breathing in again – but which also marks 'the end of a life'. Taking the popular Greco-Roman myths of the nightingale as a starting point or our performance, we are to engage an audience in an exploration of the aesthetics of the Death-Song. As those familiar with end-of life situations know, encounters between life and death are not always occasions of silence: there may be tears, cries, raving, even laughter. Such expressions may be part of 'a good death'. What is certain is that even with the utmost fore-knowledge and preparation the reactions to death are unpredictable. The medieval ars moriendi pamphlets were helpful but necessarily incomplete for the same reasons that the contemporary 'professionalisation' of end-of-life care can never be adequately codified. Living and dying are arts requiring ornamentation and improvisation. Our ideas for a vigil-performance ritual emerged via a series of dialogues and improvisations starting in the fall of 2019. An 'ornament' in the musical sense, the research is shaped by personal closeness to Death; by an exploration of Nothingness; by the uncertain landscapes between living and dying; by an exploration of the borders of the real and unreal. It is a conversation between two performance philosophers: a singer, and a poet; between music and word. The only axiom we accept in the research is that living and dying are not antithetical but rather mutually implicative. Given the complexity of the material and the historical trajectory we wish to pursue from the early Renaissance to the present day, the performance will necessarily be a demanding one. If the audience is willing we would present the material as a far-from-silent vigil structured around a song or poem at each hour, beginning at sunset. There would follow a reflection and discussion period, then a short break before the next piece, and so on until sunrise. Needless to say the dialogic and improvisational content of the material will bend this framework as the ideas and performances find their own lives and deaths.

Western thought emphasises rival schools winning or losing debates: it speaks of knock-down arguments, fatal inconsistencies, of destroying, attacking, and defending positions. 'Philosophical triumph' is a sublimated mode of WOUNDING and SHAMING any opposition. The ancient Greeks used the word aischuné to talk of an opponent being 'put to shame' – a feminine noun. The 'loser' of an argument is (dis-)figured as less rational, less human. Their Otherness is amplified until they capitulate. Canonical references to thinkers as midwives, nurses, or mothers of ideas are rare: such metaphors imply intimate co-operation and the fleshy, impure materiality of thought. Yet attempts to vanquish the canonical masculine-dominator style of thought with some version of a non-wounding, compassionate mode of thinking readily mimic the power-structures and gender-binaries they seek to oppose. This 'war-model of thought' is ultimately nihilistic – it characterises differences as antitheses, then seeks to destroy the 'opposition'. Such is the problem we seek to address. During the last two years we have explored philosophical, theological, and aesthetic issues via a praxis-led 'Ornamentation' method. Starting from NOTHING, we allow elements which seem meaningless in themselves to ‘flash up’ (Barad 2017), entangle through intra-action, accumulating and complexifying the material 'on its own terms', becoming poetic, scholastic and ecstatic. Unknown to one-another, neither contributor has any 'territory' or 'position' to attack or defend. This is not a dialogue, a dialectic, nor even 'two persons making something together'. It is a trans-human performance, a method for allowing the space and material between the contributors to “endlessly open [...] to a variety of possible and impossible reconfigurings” (Hinton 2013:182); “blasting, bursting open, and scattering […] to effect a complete reorganization of meaning” (Barad 2017:41); becoming a/live environment - an ecology in which the world can create itself.

Vetenskapsmän och konstnärer delar intresset för att se, röra vid och förstå det vi inte känner till. Skilda praktiker och forskningsfält har sin egen förståelse och relation till den frånvaro av vetande som “intet” ställer oss inför. Från mötet med livets ändlighet, kvantfysikens till synes omöjliga påståenden till det tomrum som uppstår i mötet med konstverket ​– stunder då vi korsar gränserna för det kända. Vad gör dessa ögonblick med oss? Dokumentation från ett event arrangerat av Vetenskapfestivalen, Göteborg , Världskulturmuseet och Kollegium. Samtal i anslutning till Konstinstallationen VÄGG (från 2014) av Dorna Aslanzadeh i samarbete med Kollegium med stöd av Statens Konstråd. Medverkar gör Jonna Bornemark, Professor i filosofi, Centrum för praktisk kunskap, Södertörn University och Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano, röstkonstnär, konstnärlig forskare, existentiell vägledare och prästkandidat i Göteborgs stift. Kollegium är en konstnärsgemenskap som utgår från en vision om konsten som vänskaps- och kärlekshandling. Verksamheten arrangerar ambulerande utställningar och publika samtal som undersöker släktskapet mellan transcendentala och estetiska erfarenheter. https://www.kollegium.nu/

The purpose of this exposition is to collect data of what Performative Theology can be and become primarily within an academic research but also beyond. The expo will be a timespace nurtured by members the Network for Performative Theology, established 6 October 2022 in Oslo.

This exposition is a bilingual presentation - in Swedish and in English - of two parallell tracks through the Landscape of Performative Theology. One of them is the result of a course taken during the Autumn of 2022, as part of my theological training towards priesthood in the Church of Sweden. The other track is a collection of entangled fragments part of a MA thesis in Systematic Theology linking the work of theologist Prof. Graham Ward with Performativity Theory and Artistic Research.

The research project 'Lessons in the Shadows of Death' explores and exposes an almost lost tradition of public mourning - the Art of Lamentation. The project follows the structure of the 17th century musical genre 'Leçons de Ténèbres' – traditionally composed as vocal ‘lessons’ performed during Easter week contemplating the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC and based on the Biblical Lamentations. The overall purpose is to create and promote an intra-active 'grief-entangled' music practice in relation to public mourning and wounds of loss. Previous artistic research on vocal mad scenes, lamentations and Nothingness (Laasonen Belgrano 2011) and performance philosophical explorations of apophenia and autopoesis (Price 2017) has since 2019 merged and developed into a growing archive investigating ‘ornamentation-as methodology’. The primary aim of this project is to transform the ornamented music and words of Michel Lambert’s nine Leçons de Tenebres from 1661 into nine video-essays. Together with an international network of artists and scholars we will bring the 17th century musical mourning to a contemporary Jerusalem – a city which lives as a symbol of any falling, wounded and embodied space-time. The project reconfigures the Art of Lamentation as a living practice for a wounded world in need of re-learning how to attend to existential consciousness and communal grief.The research project 'Lessons in the Shadows of Death' explores and exposes an almost lost tradition of public mourning - the Art of Lamentation. The project follows the structure of the 17th century musical genre 'Leçons de Ténèbres' – traditionally composed as vocal ‘lessons’ performed during Easter week contemplating the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC and based on the Biblical Lamentations. The overall purpose is to create and promote an intra-active 'grief-entangled' music practice in relation to public mourning and wounds of loss. Previous artistic research on vocal mad scenes, lamentations and Nothingness (Laasonen Belgrano 2011) and performance philosophical explorations of apophenia and autopoesis (Price 2017) has since 2019 merged and developed into a growing archive investigating ‘ornamentation-as methodology’. The primary aim of this project is to transform the ornamented music and words of Michel Lambert’s nine Leçons de Tenebres from 1661 into nine video-essays. Together with an international network of artists and scholars we will bring the 17th century musical mourning to a contemporary Jerusalem – a city which lives as a symbol of any falling, wounded and embodied space-time. The project reconfigures the Art of Lamentation as a living practice for a wounded world in need of re-learning how to attend to existential consciousness and communal grief.

Proposal peer-reviewed and accepted as ”Themed Session”, 18th Biennial conference on Baroque Music, Cremona 10-15 July 2018 In the light of the conference main theme ’Crossing borders’ the aim of this round table / themed session is to develop an experimental discourse departing from a musical source from the period 1550-1750, as part of a performative ritual for crossing borders and strict dichotomies. The objective is to search from new chiasmatic crossings between a musician’s gaze, a musical source from the Baroque era and musicological findings. Following the discourse of letting go of the perceived strict dichotomy between musical text and music performance (Schulze 2015:3) this session proposes a radical move towards a borderless entangled reading of musical sources based on performative methodologies. This approach may allow for new relations to develop between traditional distinctions pronounced through musicological findings and artistic performance methods; it might also allow for closer collaborations between musicologists and artistic researchers in music. Artistic research in music is a fast growing experimental academic field, with a strong link to musicology. Highly significant to this new field is the desire to find ways of merging sensuous (subjective) knowledge with a variety of other research methodologies. The artistic research purpose is often to follow the performing process of understanding a musical score and the active performance practice calling for praxical strategies such as ritual thinking, musicking through texts and theories (ex. hermeneutics, feminist new materalism), reflective/diffractive methodologies, meaning-making through translation studies, essayistic writing, and speculative performance philosophy. For this session four short (5 min.) presentation will be performed with one common point of departure: ‘musical source a part of a performative ritual for crossing borders and strict dichotomies’. With reference to these four presentations the stage will open up for an intra-active and explorative dialogue between all participant in the session.

"Let them burn down the library in Alexandria. There are powers above and beyond papyri. We may be temporarily deprived of the ability to rediscover these powers, but we will never eliminate their energy.” Antonin Artaud (in: Performance Studies in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Atay Citron, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, David Zerbib, Bloomsbury, 2014) ORNAMENTING (force) an ECOLOGY of TRUST (form) Exploring Force and Form through Performance /Performativity 23 April, 2015 Pǝ'fɔ:m(ǝ)ns PERFORMANCE/PERFORMATIVITY CROSS FACULTY GROUP Faculty of Fine, Applied And Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg What is this power the goes beyond and above structures, rules, and material? An energy and a force, moving ongoingly, turning through any space, ruled by indeterminacy and the emergency of the unexpected. An energy risking its own values, or even the values of others. With these words in mind we proceed asking ourselves: HOW are we as human beings handling our individual forces and energies when facing new and unexpected challenges; or simply when we allow our forces to creatively and madly travel as free and boundless energies; or when our forces are under attack, and when we need to respond or to perform a critical resistance to regimes and superior powers? What can be understood about all non/in/human forces – when we allow ourselves to closely observing our own performative acts of knowing, mattering, sensing, questioning, understanding and making decisions? The Faculty Group for Performance /Performativity invites you (this is an open invitation!) to an entangled encounter. It is an invitation to enter an academic environment on equal terms, allowing for a broad and at the same time a deep investigation into processes of understanding and knowing. The purpose of this event is to magnifying the motion of force, by placing patterns and fragments of performative ‘doings’ under a microscope and intra-actively analyzing the results in relation to form, space, time, senses, voices, products of knowledge, learning/teaching, and every day practices. We believe there is a need for tracing patterns of forces between scholarly, artistic and scientific doings (forces/practices and forms/theories that at first might appear distant from one another) through a blurred, diffused and diffractioned encounter - in order to re-generate new knowledge. When defining our own ‘doings’ in society we can eventually continue to design solutions creating changes in our habits. In a long-term perspective these changes can transform into new ways of meeting nature, but also in meeting one another as members of a complex global community. The aim of this entangled encounter is to turn forces and forms of academic traditions slightly upside-down/inside-out, somehow mirroring ‘the uneasiness’ sensed around us in our global society. Our common task will be to create an environment where boundaries between subjects and objects at first remain undefined and uncertain in order to intra-actively articulating new knowledge while ORNAMENTING (force) an ECOLOGY of TRUST (form). For more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/871813436209632/ Elisabeth Belgrano & Fredric Gunve

A Music Research Seminar honouring Accademia degli Incogniti and Claudio Monteverdi Palazzo Grimani, Venice 15 June 2017 Nordic Network for Early Opera and Nordic Network for Vocal Performance Research, in collaboration with Scuola di Music Antica Venezia, are delighted to invite you for a performance seminar in Venice 15 June around the theme of vocality, music drama and the vibrant intellectual / artistic scene in Venice around Monteverdi and Accademia degli Incogniti. The idea comes from a desire to offer a fringe-event / sub-encounter / prologue for (among others) participants of the two symposia co-happening in Venice 16-17 June: The Foundazione Cini conference on Monteverdi (16-17 June) and the symposia "Encounters, Discussions, Experimentations: Art, Research and Artistic Research in Music”, the Research Pavilion of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Venice Biennale 2017 (16-17 June) We are also hoping to meet anyone interested to explore the fairly new academic field of Artistic Research. Time: 15 June 2017 15:00-18:30 Venue: Palazzo Grimani, Ruga Giuffa off Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Venezia,

The aim of this artistic research symposium is to allow for VOICE to act as a guide into the UKNOWN. Through an entangled mish-mash of intra-active events (performances, installations, workshop and seminars) participants will be invited to explore the potential power of VOICE and its impact on the UNKNOWN or ’that-which-is-yet-to-be-known’. In 17th century Venetian academic circles VOICE was considered to be a symbol of NOTHINGNESS (Calcagno 2003). VOICE was also the primary tool in the creation of the opera genre (Belgrano 2011). Questions driving the event include: how can we understand VOICE in contemporary every day performances, based on both sensuous and intellectual knowledge? What specific vocal features will emerge if we allow VOICE to be the guide into the UNKNOWN aspects of life and living? The symposium will be staged as the first one out of three events, allowing for the project to eventually grow into an international platform for Vocal Performance Philosophy, based at IAC. This first event is a seed highlighting the significance of the theme; the second event will be presented as an intra-active performance-workshop; the final event will be organised as an international symposia. The symposium is curated by Nordic Network for Vocal Performance Research (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/399282/399283), Nordic Network for Early Opera (http://www.earlyopera.org), and Network for Performance Philosophy (https://performancephilosophy.ning.com/about).

This exposition is part of a session on Somatic Performance Philosophy and Vocal Soundscapes, part of a 'Somatically-informed Performance Research and Reflection Gathering', 23-26 August in the island of Corfu, Greece.

En introduktion till ämnet praktiskt kunskap ur ett konstnärligt gestaltande perspektiv.

Course introduction, Master level in Performative Arts (music/music drama/performance/theatre)

NNVPR seeks to promote innovative (cross-disciplinary) research and teaching relevant to the Vocal Performance Studies. The network will strive to inspire, exchange and debate on issues relevant to vocal performance research among scholars, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and other interested members of the research community.

... with this expo the intention is to create and capture a branch of the international Performance Philosophy Network in Gothenburg, Sweden... an open spacetime for philosophizing and sharing through acting, moving and meaning-making...