Research Catalogue

The EcoSomatics Conversations Series invites sharing of engagement, practices and thinking around environmental awareness through embodiment activities, dance and art. It posits a definition of EcoSomatics as of the body-mind-ecology and takes the form of open public dialogues between two (or more) people: independent artists, practitioners, and academics. The project was conceived by Dr Polly Hudson, (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University), and the conversations are co-convened with Dr Karen Wood, (Birmingham Dance Network and C-DaRE). The conversations took place virtually with a large international audience, and the podcasts are audio recordings of the live events. It is supported by funding from ADM Faculty Research Investment Scheme, Birmingham City University. Image by Ming de Nasty.

Professional Doctorate in Arts + Creative is an educational pilot programme in The Netherlands for an advanced degree in universities of applied sciences. The PD program at an university of applied sciences is developed to train an investigative professional. This portal is a platform for publishing artistic research generated by the PD candidates. Within the Professional Doctorate program, this portal will also be used as an internal tool for documentation. Only candidates who have been formally admitted to the PD Arts + Creative programme can connect with and contribute to this portal. For more information on how to apply, visit 'Who is part of the PD Arts + Creative programme' on our website

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.

Kunstens grenser. Prosjektet er både er performativt og diskursivt: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kirkerommets potensial som kunstarena og en utprøving av kunstens grenser og stedsforandrende kraft i kirkerommet som offentlig rom. Man kan si at kirken befinner seg i et estetisk vakuum. Dette eventuelle tomrom kan tenkes som et mulighetsrom. Kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet er samtidig en undersøklese av kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet innbefatter en ambisjon om å utvikle og utvide organistens rolle og utvikle en performativ estetikk for musikere, basert på egne erfaringer og kunstnerisk utvikling av rituelt musikkteater og liturgisk orgelspill. Utvikling av liturgisk musikk. Som del av det kunstneriske utviklingsarbeidet inngår samarbeid med et utvalg komponister- der vi i fellesskap vil utvikle musikalske material og konsepter, spesialskrevet for prosjektet og meg som utøver. Kunst og religion. Kirken var, en gang i tiden, stedet for kunst. Er det fortsatt slik? I lys av Reformasjonsjubileet i 2017, innehar prosjektet, på et overordnet plan, en refleksjon over spennet mellom samtidskunsten og kirkekunsten siden reformasjonen, i norsk kontekst. Parallelt er Kunstliturgien en undersøkelse og refleksjon over forholdet mellom tro og kunst, estetikk og religion. Prosjektet har også en spirituell og eksistensiell ambisjon: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kunstens transformerende dimensjon.

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The Boundaries of Art The project is both performative and discursive: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of the church space’s potential as an arena for art, and an examination of the boundaries of art and its transformative power within the church as a public space. One might say that the church exists in an aesthetic vacuum. This possible emptiness can be understood as a space of possibility. The Performative Potential of the Church Musician At the same time, the project investigates the performative potential of the church musician. It includes an ambition to develop and expand the role of the organist and to cultivate a performative aesthetic for musicians, based on personal experience and artistic development within ritual music theatre and liturgical organ performance. Development of Liturgical Music As part of the artistic development work, the project involves collaboration with selected composers — together we will develop musical materials and concepts, written specifically for the project and for me as a performer. Art and Religion The church was, once upon a time, the place for art. Is that still the case? In light of the Reformation Jubilee in 2017, the project carries, on an overarching level, a reflection on the tension between contemporary art and church art since the Reformation, in a Norwegian context. In parallel, The Art Liturgy serves as an inquiry and reflection on the relationship between faith and art, aesthetics and religion. The project also holds a spiritual and existential ambition: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of art’s transformative dimension.

Having departed from the idea of exploring the subject of “childhood politics” and memory (topics that both Anja Suša and Dejan Kaludjerović have been interested in and invested in through their own artistic practices in theatre and visual arts, as well as in this collaboration), they soon found themselves caught up in the discussion about artistic mandates and the potential artistic format as the output of the research project. The discussion became so intense that it entirely changed the focus of the collaboration—from the content of the project to collaborative protocols—and finally landed in what is best described by Claire Bishop as the “Grey Zone,” which can also be understood as a liminal space between contemporary artistic practices in the fields of performing and visual arts. Coming from the ideologies of the Black Box and the White Cube, which have been further reinforced by many years of institutional practice that still revolves around the idea of formal artistic education and artistic mandates, the artists soon realized that they wanted to embark on the journey of reinventing themselves in the artistic field of the “other,” despite the lack of formal training or any previous experience. They tried to explore the possibility of entering each other’s art fields based solely on artistic experience, and not on any particular art training.

How can embodied listening be performed, from my ears (body) to yours? How are we (dis)oriented? ‘Braced under the heating sun’ is centred around listening to and documenting my childhood home and its aural particularities through processes of embodied listening. The project is based on my recordings and experiences there between February and March 2020 (bookended by the waning Australian black summer bush fires and the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic). The house is made from wood and so bends with the weather. The wooden structure amplifies the sounds of our habitation. The house is located on the edge of a small town and next to a sugarcane farm in North Queensland. Although in a tropical climate it has no flyscreens, and air-conditioning in only one room. The windows are open all of the time to let a breeze through. Most evenings you can find green tree frogs, geckos and insects amongst other animals in or around the house. In this way nature (a wild exterior) pushes against and blurs into the home (an organised interior). It is never silent there, the sounds are a mix of all forces; human/animal, natural/industrial. For me, it resonates as a site that is connected to the world despite its rural location. In this house the “rhythms and cycles of the living and the immediate needs of every living being are highlighted and played out. It is where intensities proliferate themselves, where forces are expressed for their own sake, where sensation lives and experiments, where the future is affectively and perceptually anticipated” (Elizabeth Grosz 2008). In this audio paper, I discuss this installation work and my continued research on embodied listening.