Research Catalogue

WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER is conceptualized and conducted collaboratively by Charlotta Ruth (SE/AT) and Jasmin Schaitl (AT). The starting point are two artistic practices based on methods of mindfulness and game/play; Performances for the Mind and Choreographic Clues. These two individual perspectives on participation emerge from the project leaders’ ongoing artistic research and merge in their common artistic curiosity in the facilitator role and facilitating the creation of immaterial material. Accompanied by neuroscientist and performer Imani Rameses (US/AT) the research asks: How does immaterial material perform within participatory situations? What role does participatory setting play and how does participation differ if situations are communicated as a workshop, a treatment, a practice or a performance? How can neuroscience support how immaterial and participatory art practices are developed and described? What relation exists beyond involvement and how can a participant become the situation rather than being part of a situation? What has to occur in the mind and body for this to happen? Through practice and dialogue conducted with experts in the fields of contemplative sciences, sound art, choreography, game art and somatics, the research explores how input from participants (e.g. memory, thought, emotion) can be placed at the centre of a flexible yet framed performance situation. WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER was realised in collaboration with the Angewandte Performance Laboratory 2021-2022. In the course of the project, a lecture was given at the Center for Didactics of Art and Interdisciplinary Education, and a public series was realised at Kunsthalle, Wien & Angewandte Performance Lab. Collaborating expert practitioners and dialogue partners are: Philipp Ehmann (AT), Nikolaus Gansterer (AT), Mariella Greil (AT), Dennis Johnson (US/AT), Anne Juren (FR/AT), Krõõt Juurak (EE/AT), Imani Rameses (US/AT), Christian Schröder (AT), Lucie Strecker (DE/AT).

Keywords: access, censorship, document, knowledge, language, navigation... For a few weeks, a group of peoples gathered and had for agenda to approach "research" in education(s) and in the context of Art as part of Societies. Investigating/reading/questioning traces (signs, clues, memories, facts, datas) and shadows of knowledge systems, circulations, and accesses - including active translations and reflections on perceptions - they discussed the status of "document" and values of knowledge in relations to the modalities of their publications and presences within the context of a library. The group decided to focus on analogue research methodologies. Extracted? Outdated ? Archived ? Censored ?

Een artistiek onderzoek naar contact, verbinding en gemeenschappelijke grond.

Home page of the Journal of Sonic Studies

This thesis investigates the crisis of Regie (i.e. of the agency of directing) in a post-#MeToo landscape. It argues that the outset of this crisis lies in an expansionist gesture – rooted in the avant-gardist ambition to merge art and life – by which directors have conflated artistic mandate with managerial control; a gesture culminating in the toxic institutional cultures painfully exposed during the last decade. Starting from this point of no return, the thesis examines the question of how to acknowledge the fact of directorial power abuse without cutting our practices off from the potential – or even the necessity – of directorial agency as such. Its title “Reinventing Regietheater” thus carries the tension between a historical form of theater (generally known as “directors’ theater”) and a yet-to-be-found future expression. Conceived as artistic research, the discrete focus of the thesis is the rehearsal space and its confines. Within the micro-scale of the latter, the crisis of Regie reverberates first and foremost in the non-foreseeable instances of the actor-director interaction; namely in the increasing scrutiny applied to the tool of improvisation. In contrast to the prevailing strategy of eroding the rehearsal space’s symbolic boundaries (in the interest of directorial accountability), the thesis conceptualizes – practically as well as theoretically – a “Space of Rehearsals” as a heteronomous zone of safe but ecstatic play. This “Space of Rehearsals” is constructed through a rehearsal method informed by the psychoanalytic concept of transference as well as the interaction framework “Wheel of Consent”. To answer its main questions, the thesis presents a “written part” as well as a set of “online resources” containing the documentation and “re-stagings” of the practical experiments. Four “books of Regie” present methodological reflections, a critical genealogy of a theater of directing (based on the author’s symptomatic practice) as well as the central concepts. Three so-called “Pre-studies”, devised through practical work with professional actors/collaborators form the empirical basis of the thesis, sketching out different possibilities for the actor-director relation in a re-invented Regietheater. In the proposition resulting from the above, directorial agency does not necessarily sit with the director. Nevertheless, the disciplinary divide between actor and director is upheld; as well as the radical asymmetry in the distribution of authorial power, albeit in temporally limited and co-curated iterations. The main argument of the thesis is thus that the artistic potential of the historical form of Regietheater can be salvaged without taking a revanchist or revisionist stance: the idiosyncratic directorial agency known as Regie has its place in consent-based rehearsal settings.

Abstract This Research Catalogue exposition with audio-visual examples documents ongoing research into artistic interactions helping to ascertain and streamline prosocial and empathic behavior in groups with divergent backgrounds and modes of thinking and how these skills can benefit the artistic endeavors positively. Promoting intersociality and an empathic approach to collective music making amongst individuals who represent different schools of musical thoughts and styles or expertise, as well as bringing to the table divergent cultural backgrounds and individual characteristics is the aim of Ensemble Improvisation Experimentell (E i E), founded and lead by me at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK) since February 2021. In a world of pandemics, climate crisis and war it may seem idealistic, even fanciful, to search for moments of ‘shared empathy’ or creative symbiosis amongst musicians in professional exchanges and its influence on artistic experience and outcome, without immediately searching for ways of dimming the fire of destruction through war and climate crisis that our global society faces. However, finding micro-solutions through artistic endeavors and promoting a more sustainable future for the arts themselves in general, and specifically for the genre of contemporary music, is a valuable goal and tool for infiltrating humanism with sustainable thinking and acting patterns. Extensive video and audio documentation of practice sessions and performances, as well as exemplary images are attached to this exposition.