Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  Between Agony and Ecstasy: Investigations into the Meaning of Pain (2018) author(s): Barbara Macek published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  Pains are moving, alluring us to world-making-activities, attuning our bodies with other bodies and therefore putting us in relation to others. Pains cut into our net of habits, and even the slightest pain causes a transformation. Pains are crushing, deeply distressing, showing us our limitations – but also our capability to go beyond our limits, to outgrow ourselves. In the course of my literary research for this project I generated 10 PAIN CATEGORIES that I derived from poems, philosophical and literary texts on pain, and my own experiences. These poetical/pictorial categories differ profoundly from pain categories as they are to be found in common pain questionnaires: They refer to the existential dimension of pain and do not differentiate between physical and mental pain in order to overcome the myth of this dichotomy. The next step of my project consisted in going into the field to look at, imagine and feel into pain. I conducted methodical observations in the casualty departments of two Viennese hospitals and developed my own method of "self-reflective observation in the mode of seeing/feeling". The assemblages as part of this exposition present the results of these investigations and reconstruct different perspectives on PAIN as an EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENON.
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  LYCANTHROPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS I – Artistic Research on the Edge. Poetical Investigations on the Margins of Medicine and Mythology (2019) author(s): Barbara Macek published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
  In this exposition on the peripheries of medicine and art I will enrole the concept of my project "Lycanthropus erythematosus" and the applied strategies of artistic research. The essence of the work is the proposal of a new thesis concerning the understanding of autoimmune diseases, especially of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE, lupus). SLE is a rare autoimmune disease characterised by acute and chronic inflammation of various tissues of the body. Its cause and pathogenesis are still unknown. The work aims at providing new knowledge in regard to these open questions. Its thesis is exposed in different formats resulting from different strategies of artistic research. It proposes to understand autoimmunity as the expression of transformative processes that cause various physical and mental effects in the afflicted organism. This ongoing metamorphosis is driven by a plan: it is about the emerging of a new being – the Lycanthropus erythematosus.
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  EEE – Exercises in Existential Eccentricity: Movements, Artefacts, Transitions. By Barb Macek (2022) author(s): Barbara Macek, Jonas Howden Sjøvaag published in: SAR Conference 2020
  Autoimmune diseases have become a global health problem, with rising numbers of people affected. But cause and genesis of these diseases are still unresolved, so finding new ways to understand the underlying processes is in demand. Aiming at a new conception of autoimmunity I developed a technique titled “Exercises in Existential Eccentricity” (EEE) within the framework of autoethnography and the biophilosophy of Helmuth Plessner. The EEE were designed to investigate autoimmunity in a practical and daring way by exposing the researcher in her vulnerability as being affected by a chronic autoimmune disease. The results are expected to expand our understanding of autoimmunity and provide new images to help people cope with autoimmune diseases.
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  Exercises in Existential Eccentricity. Conceptualising autoimmunity as a variation of the conditio humana (2023) author(s): Barbara Macek published in: University of Applied Arts Vienna
  Barb Macek (PhD candidate and fellow (DOC) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Fine Arts & Media Arts) takes as her starting point self-reflections and her own experiences with the autoimmune disease SLE. She approaches the phenomenon of autoimmunity in relation to fundamental human ambiguity, following the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner. Macek’s contribution, "Exercises in Existential Eccentricity", explores the bio-philosophical dimension of the disease rather than its bio-medical dimension, showing how autoimmunity raises existential-phenomenological questions regarding bodily ownership, the self, and the notion of the body as “one’s own”. From an assumed embodied diversity, she designs an artistic technique, EEE - Exercises in Existential Eccentricity, drawing on the technique of auto-interviewing, autoethnography and poetics to facilitate a dialogue between different inner voices.
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  SELF as OTHER, or: Speaking aut* (last edited: 2025) author(s): Brab, Annan This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  We, Anna N. and Barb/Brab, started an exchange of thoughts about the meaning of "aut" – as in aut/istic and aut/oimmune. We are interested in what it means to live as auts, to write about it in regard to everydaily life, in regard to the medical discourses about autism and autoimmunity, and in regard to the view of the "others", the not-auts. In the context of language-based artistic research we seek to develop practices that allow for investigating the meaning of aut on different levels of our existence. * (Speaking out and at the same time speaking as auts, but also speaking in a language called "aut")
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