Research Catalogue

Solarization: a partially exposed film is exposed to more light, with halo-like effects as a result. Solarization, Solaris, sun / shadow, light / darkness. Colors are experiences of light, on surfaces that hit the eye with different wavelengths. Digital solarization evens out and inverts the colors. A small, superfluous, torn off silk remnant from a hand-printed textile work is the starting point for this two two-sided digitally printed textiles. Colors lose their brillians and darken in step with the light. No darkness without light, no shadow without sun. Two sides of the same coin.

ARTikulationen 2023 is an artistic research event conceived and organised by the Doctoral School for Artistic Research (KWDS) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). It takes place at Theater im Palais, Graz, 04–07 October 2023. ARTikulationen interweaves in-depth presentations of very recent artistic research and findings, a festival character, and a mini-symposium – this year on matters of interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness of research practices with the (sound) environment, nature, and other living beings („Researching Across“).

Art activism is powerful. Also known as activist art, protest art, visual activism, artivism and creative activism, it changes lives, situations and is and has been a powerful weapon across a whole spectrum of struggles for justice. Teresa Sanz & Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos(2021) relay that art activism has the unique ability to bring cohesion and diverse peoples together and it can, as Zeynep Tufekci notes, change the participants (2017). As Steve Duncombe & Steve Lambert (2021) posit, traditional protesting such as marches or squats are no longer as important as they once were. As a result of my own lived experience in activist activities, I very much agree with Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell (2012) that the reason people use art activism is that it works, by enriching and improving protest. In the past, when I lived in a metropolis and was not a parent, I used to be an activist. Now I no longer have immediate access to international headquarters at which to protest and I have to be concerned with being arrested, I am hindered from protesting. This project is an attempt to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism. By devising methods which include at least one of the following: that do not require on-site participation, that can take place outside the public gaze, that reduce the risk of arrest, that open up protest sites that are not “big targets”, that include remote locations, that involve irregular timing, my thesis aims to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism to those who are underserved by more mainstream methods of conducting art activism. Textiles have unique properties that enable them to engage in subterfuge and speak loudly through care and thought(Bryan-Wilson, 2017). They have strong connotations of domesticity, the body and comfort that can be subverted within art activism to reference lack of this domestic warmth and protection(O’Neill, 2022). Being a slow form of art-making, they show care and thought, attention in the making, so that the messaging is reinforced through this intentionality in slow making.

Darkness Matters displays historic lightscapes, specifically at night, from petroglyphs to James Webb Telescope images. The exposition constructs a sort of cabinet of curiosities and wants to take the visitor on a private journey to a virtual exhibition space to re-embrace the endeavors under and around the nocturnal vault, an underrepresented micro-story of our times. By researching archive material, image recordings and other available data Costanza Julia Bani creates speculative reconstructions of our nights and our relationship to the universe behind the sky we can see with our naked eye. Starting from fireflies in olive groves, alpine forests and the Milky Way, the exposition becomes a visual experience around darknesses and light pollution that has been transforming our nocturnal habitat since the introduction of artificial light.

Άφρικα: A Certain Kind of Freedom is pivoting on artistic exploration and re-interpretation of a 'difficult' recent past. In part soundwalk, in part performance art, in part punk archaeology, in part getting lost in the dark; the work is a nocturnal rumination bringing together historical bewilderedness with first-person embodied experience of a place. The artist leads a night walk towards and inwards Agios Achillios island in Small Prespa Lake in Greece – near the borders of Albania, and North Macedonia – and back. En route, the walking audience is exposed to wildlife sounds and animal vocalisations, to orchestrated drama, and to historical records directly or indirectly concerning the broader geographical area and its significance during the Greek civil war.

In Provenir del porvenir Urbano hovers through the fields of sociology, archaeology and philosophy while reflecting on the different mediations of the work: the guided tour, the performance lecture and the video essay. The exposition is based on a speculative artistic-historiographic project where the artist, in the context and aesthetics of the Museum of History, connects her own genealogy with the North. The investigation is a response to recurrent question to people of color living in Scandinavia: “Where do you come from?” This question leads to an epistemological enquire, discussing the limits of knowledge production on a scientific basis versus knowledge production on an artistic basis.