Research Catalogue

HEIMILDALEIKSÝNINGIN: FÚSI, ALDUR OG FYRRI STÖRF. UM VERKIÐ: Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf er heimildaleiksýning um Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson. Verkið var frumsýnt 17. nóvember á Litla sviði Borgarleikhússins og var sýnt frá haustinu 2023 til vorsins 2025. Í sýningunni fer Fúsi yfir ævi sína og valin atriði úr fjölbreyttu lífi hans eru færð í leik- og söngbúning með aðstoð leikara og söngvara. Verkið fór í leikferð til Leikfélags Akureyrar og var sýnt á 80 ára afmæli Leikfélags Sólheima á Sólheimum í Grímsnesi. Fúsi er húmoristi, fótboltaáhugamaður, leikari, söngvari og lífskúnstner sem minnir okkur á að lífið er alltaf þess virði að lifa því þó að stundum sverfi að. Hindranirnar í lífi Fúsa hafa eflt hann og hvatt hann til að lifa lífinu til hins ítrasta með fötlun sinni og njóta hvers einasta dags. Stundum er lífsreynsla þó þess eðlis að aldrei verður fyllilega hægt að komast yfir hana, sama hversu jákvæður og sterkur einstaklingur er. Sýningin byggir á viðtölum við Fúsa, sem Agnar Jón Egilsson frændi hans og leikstjóri sýningarinnar tók við hann á meðan covid faraldrinum stóð. Tilurð sýningarinnar er því samband frændanna Fúsa og Agga og samverustundir þeirra. Í samstarfi við sviðslistaframleiðandann Monochorme og MurMur Productions LEIKARAR: Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson, Agnar Jón Egilsson, Vala Kristín Eyríksdóttir, Þórunn Arna Krjistjánsdóttir, Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Bergur Þór Ingólfsson og Egill Andrason. Leikstjóri: Agnar Jón Egilsson Höfundar: Agnar Jón Egilsson og Sigfús Sveinbjörn Svanbergsson Leikmynd og búningar: Svanhvít Thea Árnadóttir Aðstoðarleikstjóri: Ástbjörg Rut Jónsdóttir Tónlistarmaður. Egill Andrason Aðstoð við söng: Gísli Magna Framkvæmdastjórn: Davíð Freyr Þórunnarson fyrir MUR MUR Production. Tilnenefningar og verðlaun: Sýningin fékk Múrbrjótinn, viðurkenningu Landssamtakanna Þroskahjálpar árið 2024. Múrbrjóturinn er veittur þeim sem þykja hafa skarað framúr í að ryðja fötluðum nýjar brautir í átt til jafnréttis. Í rökstuðningi kom fram að verkið hlyti m.a. viðurkenninguna á forsendum þess að í Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf sé skrifað og leikið af leikara með þroskahömlun og að það sé í fyrsta skipti sem slíkt gerist í atvinnuleikhúsi á Íslandi. Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf fékk einnig hvatringarverðlaun ÖBÍ árið 2024. Hvatningarverðlaunin eru veitt þeim sem hafa með verkum sínum stuðlað að einu samfélagi fyrir alla og endurspegla nútímalegar áherslur um þátttöku, sjálfstæði og jafnrétti fatlaðs fólks. Fúsi, aldur og fyrri störf hlaut tvö Grímuverðlaun árið 2024, leikstjóra ársins og Sprotann (hvatnigarverðlaun Grímunnar). En sýninginn fékk samtals fjórar tilnefningar til Grímunnar 2024, fyrrnefndar tvær ásamt Sýningu ársins og Leikara ársins í aukahlutverki (Agnar Jón).

This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities. The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing inter­disciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning. The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”). The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

Documentation of preliminary steps and collection of musical material and related reflections during the first Term of the Master's Program in Improvisation and World Music. December 2022

MINA is a collaborative project that investigates sharing as a material condition of artistic practice. It seeks to create situations where practices can remain active and in relation, fostering exchanges between different forms of knowledge through situated encounters and provisional configurations. Rather than treating sharing as a discrete act, MINA understands it as an ongoing practice that shapes how attention circulates, how relations are formed, and how practices are sustained over time. Dialogues, exchanges, critiques, and other forms of mutual influence operate here not as supplementary moments, but as constitutive forces within artistic processes, even when their effects are subtle, delayed, or difficult to trace. Working without predefined methods, MINA approaches artistic practice as a field of orientations that emerges through games, conversations, and shared situations. Each encounter becomes a way of testing how sharing can redistribute attention, unsettle habitual positions, and open space for collective thinking.

The Research Through Art & Design (RAD) course for doctoral researchers at Aalto Arts introduces a variety of approaches, methodologies, issues, and concerns in research through practice. In this course, research through practice refers to a broad continuum of artistic research approaches, arts-based, practice-led, and practice-based research approaches, including constructive design research approaches relevant across practices in Aalto University; School of Arts, Design and Architecture. This exposition was created within a Research Catalogue Workshop offered as an additional part of the main course. During this part of the course, the participants are familiarised with the Research Catalogue as a platform and learn how to use it for creating expositions. During the workshop, participants work on their page within this group exposition, based on their current doctoral research or a topic that inspired them during the lectures. The main content is the workshop participants' individual pages within this exposition.

This essay establishes Post‑Interpretive Criticism as a formal break with the dominant aesthetic consensus of the late twentieth century, which treated meaning as something produced through mediation rather than encountered through structure. Surveying post‑1950 traditions across structuralism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, and post‑structuralism, the essay identifies a shared assumption underlying their disagreements: interpretation functions as the necessary and ethically justified ground of meaning. Post‑Interpretive Criticism rejects this premise not by proposing an alternative theory of meaning‑production, but by questioning whether production itself is the correct frame. The essay argues that interpretation is not neutral, inevitable, or inherently liberatory, but structurally hazardous. Language, when introduced prematurely or excessively, alters the proportions of the aesthetic encounter, collapsing interval, crowding distance, and displacing presence with discourse. Meaning, on this account, does not originate in interpretation but in a relational field between work and witness that possesses structure prior to mediation. Interpretation is therefore recast as an intervention rather than a foundation—one that must justify itself ethically by preserving proportion rather than overwhelming it. Positioning Post‑Interpretive Criticism against the historical conditions that necessitated interpretive excess in the post‑war period, the essay argues that contemporary aesthetics now faces the inverse problem: interpretive saturation. Where interpretation once functioned as moral responsibility, it now frequently preempts encounter, substituting commentary for perception. Drawing careful distinctions from phenomenological aesthetics, the essay emphasizes that description of experience is insufficient without a discipline governing speech. Post‑Interpretive Criticism introduces restraint as method, silence as ethical posture, and proportion as evaluative criterion. The essay concludes by outlining the institutional, pedagogical, and critical consequences of adopting Post‑Interpretive Criticism, including reduced interpretive authority, contraction of discourse, and the re‑training of attention prior to articulation. It does not argue for universal application, but claims necessity under specific contemporary conditions. Interpretation, once required, is now placed at risk—not because meaning has vanished, but because the encounter has returned as the primary site of aesthetic responsibility. 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 Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881) Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen.