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?

"(...) a cidade (...) consiste somente de um lado de fora e de um avesso, como uma folha de papel, com uma figura aqui e outra ali, que não podem se separar nem se encarar", um lugar onde as partes, os contrastes e o movimento participam numa dança infindável. E é a busca pela compreensão da linha ténue entre o sim e o não, o claro e o escuro, o tudo e o nada, que dá nome ao nosso trabalho, Oppositions. “(…) the city (…) consists only of an outside and a reverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure here and there, which cannot be separated nor face each other.”, a place where the parts, contrasts and movement participate in an endless dance. And it is the search for understanding the fine line between yes and no, light and dark, everything and nothing, that gives name to our work, Oppositions.

This piece is a reworking of a sound installation from 2012 with a similar title, Unvorgesehen–Real–Farblos (Engl. "unforeseen, real, achromatic"). I am currently interested in the dynamics and consequences of coming back to existing pieces and reconfiguring them with new ideas, new context, or new algorithmic embeddings. What is lost, what enters, what is transformed by this operation. It is also an opportunity to try out things, and by giving a new title the old configuration is not superseded or made obsolete.

In Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung bergen die zufälligen Vermischungen von unterschiedlichen Orten und Zeiten auf einem Photo die Möglichkeit, Unbekanntes, Unbewusstes aufzuspüren, Spekulationen über Zufall, Leere und Unendlichkeit anzustellen oder Immanenz zu erfahren. Dieser Artikel begibt sich mit dem Konzept der Non-Photographie von F. Laruelle, des aleatorischen Materialismus von L. Althusser sowie den immanenzphilosophischen Überlegungen von G. Deleuze und F. Guattari auf die Spuren einer Ontologie resp. einer non-onto-photo-logischen Beschreibung von Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtungen. Im Zentrum dieser Betrachtung steht die Annahme, dass eine Photographie nicht als ein Klon der Realität, als ein fetischistischer Realismus zu betrachten ist, sondern als Umkehrung dieser Ordnung: In der Imagination begründet sich die Realität der Photographie, weil in Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung durch das Ineinandergehen der Objekte den Objektformen die Kausalität entzogen wird. Es entsteht ein erkenntnistheoretisches, ein sinnliches Dazwischen. Diese zentrale Annahme, dass in einer solchen Nicht-Standard-Ästhetik der Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung keine Doubles der Welt produziert werden, sondern Indeterminanten, hat zur Folge, dass diese Zufälligkeiten, Variablen und Szenarien auch als solche erkannt werden müssen, weshalb in diesem Artikel theoretische Legenden im Anschluss an Laruelle, Althusser und Deleuze/Guattari entwickelt werden, die es erlauben, die Immanenz der Bilder zu erfassen. English N-fold Exposures - Non-Photography, Aleatory Materialism, Images without Objects In classical photography, analog double or multiple exposures are considered as an accident, a mistake, or unaesthetic. But the accidental blending of different places and times in a photo holds the possibility to detect the unknown, the unconscious, to speculate about co-incidence or to experience immanence. This article goes on the traces of an ontology resp. a non-onto-photo-logical description of n-exposures with Francois Laruelle’s non-philosophical visual aid as well as the philosophy of Althusser, Deleuze and Guattari. At the center of this consideration is the assumption not to regard a photo as a clone of reality, as a fetishistic realism, but as an inversion of this order: not the photo simulates reality, but the image establishes reality. Therefore a photo can develop a life of its own, a reality of its own. Through the interlocking of objects in multiple exposures, the object forms in the photography are deprived of causality, thus creating an epistemological, a sensual in-between, i.e., possibility spheres of imagination and experience. The reflection that in the non-standard aesthetic of n-fold exposure no doubles of the world are produced, but indeterminants, has the consequence that these variables and scenarios has to be recognized as such. That is why in this article theoretical legends are developed, which allow to capture the immanence of the images by means of a non-standardized aesthetics. Download Accessible PDF

Through a form of critical autoethnography, this study diffracts aspects of the author’s artistic practice through the intimate process of mourning to delineate a particular mode of knowledge production within artistic research that queers the relationship between the inside and outside of epistemic and ontological perspectives. The first section considers the abyss as a figure between grief, the unknown, and modes of knowledge production within artistic research. The second section bridges the work of theorising as a form of reconfiguring the world through the study of diffracted light, and further delineates the practice of vibrant contemplation as a method of entangling art practice with theorisation processes beyond a dichotomous opposition between art and science. The final section contemplates the figure of the afterglow as a material-discursive phenomenon that emerges from the temporality of mourning vis-à-vis artistic research. Download Accessible PDF

Scrape Elegy is a participatory multimedia art installation designed as a critical exploration of our presence on and engagement with social media. The work uses sound, a physical installation in the form of a pink public toilet, and participatory practice through visitors’ Instagram accounts. It joins the postmodern art procession of toilet-based installations and plays on the aesthetics of the banal (Maffesoli 1999) as a critique of society, much like such works as Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016) and Gelitin’s Locus Focus (2004). It calls attention to the ethical issues surrounding data scraping technology by using the very same technology to read visitors’ Instagram captions from their accounts back to themselves. Sound becomes the medium for self-representation, subverting the text- and photo-based platform of Instagram. The work is personal and user-specific, using parasitic platform practices to create a critique of modern internet capitalism and tech oligarchies (Sætra et al. 2021). Scrape Elegy is a comedic mourning poem, a monologue, and a private show for the individual in a commercialized, globalized, corporate, pink Instagram world. Download Accessible PDF