In a Place like this by Johan Sandborg

In A place Like This sets out to investigate and expand the issues and critical discourses within Sandborg and Higgins' current collaborative research practice. The central focus for the research is concerned with how art, in this instance photographic and painted image making and text, can be used as an agent or catalyst of understanding and critical reflection. The research methodology is constructed through photography, painting, drawing and text. This utilises the form of an artist publication as a point of critically engaged dissemination: a place for the tension between conflicting ideas and investigation to be explored through discussion. The research question is focused on how the production of the image and the act of making images can communicate or describe moments of erasure or remembering in terms of historical and personal narratives with direct reference to moments of violence and place. This is seen not in terms of a nostalgic remembrance of the past; instead as one that is rife with complicated layers and dynamics where recognition is denied the ability to locate a physical representation. Embedded in this is an exploration of particular questions concerning the ethics of representation: the depiction of ourselves and other? In this sense it brings into question an examination of the act of remembering as a thing in itself, through the production of the image and text, contexts of knowledge and cultural discourses explored through the form of an artists publication.

The proposal for Sensuous Knowledge will be to introduce, expand upon and explore the research project:

In A place Like This

In presenting In A place Like This we would also like to see this as an opportunity to develop a new iteration of the research through visual and textural material.

In this instant to propose how the role of art can be seen as an exploratory and interpretive tool of investigation. To propose how in this sense art can play an important part in being able to constantly define and re-define our relationship to material and conceptual understandings and knowledge’s as set out in the research.

What? How? And Why?

In A place Like This sets out to investigate and expand the issues and critical discourses within our current collaborative research practice. The central focus for the research is concerned with how art, in this instance photographic and painted image making and text, can be used as an agent or catalyst of understanding and critical reflection.

The research methodology is constructed through photography, painting and text. This utilises the form of an artist publication as a point of critically engaged dissemination: a place for the tension between conflicting ideas and investigation to be explored through discussion.
The research question is focused on how the production of the image or the act of making images can communicate or describe moments of erasure or remembering in terms of historical and personal narratives with direct reference to moments of violence and place.
This is seen not in terms of a nostalgic remembrance of the past; instead as one that is rife with complicated layers and dynamics where recognition is denied the ability to locate a physical representation. Imbedded in this is an exploration of particular questions concerning the ethics of representation: the depiction of ourselves and other? In this sense it brings into question an examination of the act of remembering as a thing in itself, through the production of the image and text, contexts of knowledge and cultural discourses explored through the form of an artists publication.

The publication is implemented in relation to an analysis of identified places of cultural and political uncertainty in the territories of Northern Russia, Poland, and Norway.
How place is constituted in this instance or re-conﬁgured, deconstructed, augmented, discussed, described, experienced – through a variety of signifying practices – is the core theme and question of the research. The notion of place is not approached passively as apriori – it is seen as a concept that is under constant and renewed negotiation. Thus, In a Place Like This is examining, dissecting, analyzing specific locations and equally, it may propose a model of place that becomes constituted by the artwork itself. The resulting artworks and publication aim to position themselves within given contexts that could determine the way in which place is understood, re-evaluated or experienced.

Johan Sandborg and Duncan Higgins 2013

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