Research Catalogue

A conversation between violinist Peter Herresthal and composer Eivind Buene about performing Buene's Violin Concerto.

The SIG Facilitating took shape at the 2023 SAR Conference in Trondheim, after observing over an extended time how frequently artists, artistic researchers and even policy makers refer to facilitation when describing interactions with audiences, communities and research partners. Finding ways to examine such facilitating processes is crucial to the work under way. We know that facilitating practices exist widely in interactive and community based art, and in theater and the performing arts, for example using games, props and improvisation. There are intersections with pedagogy and professional facilitation and coaching, with at least the latter understood as prizing outcomes over processes. The SIG Facilitating asks: What does it mean to facilitate as part of artistic research? Why is this focus emerging now? How are we drawing on a greater web? Organized by Marija Griniuk, Postdoctoral researcher at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and director at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Norway; Janne-Camilla Lyster, Associate Professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts; and Adelheid Mers, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (coordinator). Contact: sigfacilitating@gmail.com

Sculpture You is an act of becoming, an ongoing process of altering your senses and to reflect upon the attention, respect and care you invest while walking the sculpture trail. During the first act you transform into a temporary sculpture. During the second act you perform a ritual in front of each sculpture on the trail. For each of the acts, read through instructions prior to doing the movements.

This paper introduces the method of intuition as it is presented by French philosopher Henri Bergson in the book An Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson 1912). Its usefulness as a tool to observe relevant information in artistic practice in sound is further discussed in relation to a series of works by the author. Exploring this complex field the author makes a preliminary conclusion that sound is not a thing, and it is not limited to what we listen to. It is a system of interrelated threads, the meaning of which is much larger than the actual sound itself.

The pursuit of perfection and the pressure to continually progress often overshadow the intrinsic joy and freedom that initially drew musicians to their profession. After a negative experience within my studies, I wanted to rediscover the essence of music-making through the lens of a specific tool: free improvisation. The research is driven by an autoethnographic approach where I focus on a specific angle within the broader topic of free improvisation: exploring how incorporating this tool affects the different parts of flute playing by putting the focus on how it can make us connect with our instrument, be more aware of our playing, of our body and to expand our creativity and imagination. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this research includes an exhaustive literature review, a journal on my reflections in collaborative sessions with a professional on the field and a data analysis of the survey answers by both professionals and students connected with this tool. Through immersive sessions conducted by Anne La Berge, I was guided across the possibilities of this tool. These are captured in a field journal where I reflect on topics as body awareness, skill development, creativity and motivational shifts triggered by the improvisational process in my own experience. Additionally, the insights collected from the questionnaires bring different points of view in the matter, offering diverse experiences and valuable perspectives. In summary, this study highlights the potential of free improvisation as a tool for reconnection, self-discovery and artistic growth as a flute player.

Psychoanalysis was meant to be a revolution in the centuries after B. de Spinoza’s work. What is interesting in his view for the psychoanalytic theory is how the human experience of the unusual feeling and joy could be approached. The irruption of these feelings is closely connected to symptomatics in psychoanalysis. Symptomatics of the unusual in language and discursive representation in the analytic experience of, say, Sigmund Freud’s couch was a mode of materialization of the feeling. Imagined from the outside world, the characteristic of repression is always an effect of finding an expression.