Research Catalogue

Beröringspunkterna mellan språk och musik har intresserat många genom historien och i denna exposition står sambanden mellan muntligt berättande på dialekt och musikalisk interpretation samt komposition stå i fokus. Ann Elkjär är flöjtist och doktorand i musikalisk gestaltning, och i doktorandprojektet utforskas en nyfikenhet på muntligt berättande: Vilka musikaliska element går att hitta i muntligt, dialektalt, berättande och hur kan de omformas till kompositoriska och interpretatoriska redskap? Frågorna utforskas i ett samarbete med tonsättaren Ida Lundén, och expositionen bygger på en analys av videodokumentation av den kollaborativa kompositionsprocessen. Arkivinspelningar av värmländskt berättande utgör ett centralt material, där fragment av äldre berättares röster processas och spelas upp med rullbandspelare i dialog med soloflöjtstämman. Genom rullbandspelarna ges möjligheter att skapa loopar som även återspeglas i flöjtstämman, och på detta vis utforskar verket hur element i muntligt berättande kan omformas till musikaliskt material. English: The intersections between language and music have long intrigued scholars, and this exposition centers on the relationship between oral storytelling in dialect and musical interpretation. Ann Elkjär, flautist and PhD student in musical performance, explores the reflective spaces that emerge in the interstice between language and music. The research questions guiding the PhD project are: What musical elements can be identified in oral storytelling in dialect, and how can these be transformed into compositional and interpretative tools? To investigate these questions, Ann Elkjär collaborates with several composers. This exposition presents the collaborative compositional process between Elkjär and composer Ida Lundén. Archival recordings of storytelling in the Värmland dialect serve as a central material, where fragments of an elderly narrator’s voice are processed and played back via reel-to-reel tape recorders in dialogue with the solo flute part. The use of tape recorders enables the creation of loops, which are mirrored in the flute part, thereby exploring how elements of oral storytelling can be transformed into musical material.

This research work is a practice-based enquiry that investigates the use of the saxophone in Middle Eastern music and in Makam-music in general. This research will not focus on a specific style, but on all aspects common to the various regional styles included within the Makam-music macrocategory. Characteristics such as microtonality, modality, ornamentation and a specific type of phrasing are in fact common to a very wide variety of musical styles, present in a geographical region ranging from the Balkan peninsula to Anatolia, the Arab world and North Africa. In this research I focused on the saxophone's technical possibilities of producing microtonal notes, which are fundamental to all makam-music. To do this, I analysed the approach of various performers, consulted some experts on the subject and self-analysed my own approach, developed over five years of studying this type of music. As a proof of concept of this work, I recorded three improvisations. On my practical outcome, I carried out analysis work together with the network of experts.

This is the working document of a six-month residency with the Sound and Image Research Centre at the University of Greenwich, summer 2025, funded by the Arts Council England DYCP program. As an exposition, it records the field trip element of the project and begins to explore the role of spatial audio composition and installation in forging deeper relational connections with place. Ultimately, it asks whether the spatial audio encounter alters the subjective position of the human listener towards a more posthuman subjectivity. As the project evolves more will be added with the hope of an eventual live performance of selected compositions and a broader exposition on the role of field recording as a compositional method.

Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue By Dorian Vale In this foundational essay, Dorian Vale situates Teresa Margolles within the Canon of Witnesses, a post-interpretive framework that honors artists whose works resist explanation and demand moral proximity. Focusing on Margolles’s use of bodily residue—blood, water from morgues, traces of violence—Vale examines how her practice subverts spectacle and refuses the comfort of metaphor. Rather than aestheticizing death, Margolles preserves its aftermath. Her works do not speak for the dead—they let the materials of death remain unaltered, undecorated, and unresolvable. Through her installations, Vale argues, Margolles becomes a custodian of consequence: holding space for what cannot be revived, only witnessed. Written through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism, this essay proposes that Margolles offers one of the most ethically alert practices in contemporary art. Her work is not political commentary—it is aftermath. And in that aftermath, she teaches the critic not to interpret, but to stand still. Vale, Dorian. Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17070909 Teresa Margolles, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Canon of Witnesses, contemporary Mexican artists, art and death, ethical art criticism, trauma in contemporary art, bodily residue in art, morgue water installations, art of aftermath, art and violence, mourning in installation art, witnessing through material, Teresa Margolles analysis, non-interpretive art writing, residue as aesthetic, ethics of witnessing, post-interpretive canon, slow art, sacred presence in contemporary art This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)

The Dogs Who Outlived Philosophy : On Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness (2005) By Dorian Vale In this quietly devastating reflection, Dorian Vale examines Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s 2005 video work Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism. Rather than analyzing the dogs, their dying, or the death they face, the piece invites the viewer to endure them—without commentary, without resolve. Vale argues that these dogs, abandoned yet alive, offer a kind of sacred presence that survives beyond theory. They do not symbolize death. They resist being used as metaphor. Instead, they remain—breathing, ailing, present—while the camera holds still and the world looks away. This essay is not an interpretation. It is a vigil. Vale, Dorian. On Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness (2005). Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16945906 Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, contemporary Thai art, Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness, art and death, ethics of witness, dying animals in art, aesthetic of silence, witnessing suffering, art of presence, slow video art, moral proximity, non-interpretive art writing, visual elegy, sacred presence, trauma in Southeast Asian art, art without metaphor, art and abandonment, ethics of stillness, dogs in contemporary art This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)

Canon of Witnesses: On Zarina Hashmi’s Home Is a Foreign Place By Dorian Vale In this elegiac and piercing reflection, Dorian Vale inducts Zarina Hashmi into the Canon of Witnesses through her seminal work Home Is a Foreign Place. Rather than interpreting the piece, Vale engages it as a ritual of moral proximity—where each word etched on handmade paper becomes a relic of memory, exile, and untranslatable grief. Zarina’s restrained use of language, the materiality of her paper, and her refusal to perform trauma are treated here not as minimalist strategies, but as ethical gestures. The essay resists biographical reduction or historical summary and instead approaches the work as a sacred geography of loss—one that cannot be decoded without doing harm. Drawing from the principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism, Vale positions Zarina not as an artist of silence, but as a custodian of what language can no longer hold. What remains is not narrative. What remains is presence. Vale, Dorian. Canon of Witnesses: On Zarina Hashmi’s Home Is a Foreign Place. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17072625 This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843) Zarina Hashmi, Home Is a Foreign Place, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Dorian Vale, art and exile, Urdu in art, trauma and memory in art, minimalism vs restraint, sacred aesthetics, witness-based art criticism, moral proximity, non-interpretive art writing, handmade paper in art, ethics of language in art, feminist art critique, contemporary South Asian art