Research Catalogue

Islington studio flat 4, at 14 Barnsbury Road, London, 2022, privately rented. Interior design as an art installation. Looted, 2024. My personal belongings were still at the property for two months, after I left on 27 March 2024 and was asked to collect them by 3 or 4 April 2024 from Woolwich. They moved in two or three under aged, who I have never met and were pretending to be my daughters. They must have been removing them one by one over the last few months and until October 2024. 14 Barnsbury Road was deemed illegal through the courts, on 22 April, shortly after I was forced to leave in March. The maintenance employed many Polish citizens, all dressed in black with black caps, like all XRW supporters dress. Twenty-one (20+1) digital photographs for twenty (20) missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity non-EU immigrants and one (1) missing Italian citizen. The twenty-one persons whose details got stolen were abducted by Golden Dawn, the NRM and possibly Forza Nuova; they are deceased. My personal details were also stolen. Was I going yo be the twenty-second? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(magazine) Investigatory research with artworks. The artworld has been traditionally male dominated. This has changed a little bit in contemporary art, but not dramatically. Female artists have sometimes adopted male attitudes or personas to break into the art scene; notably, Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin from the YBA movement. I hold the view that art is not gendered, for instance that there is no art for women or so-called feminine art. Good art transcends such categories, tapping into more universal experiences. For Chris, who was suddenly transferred by his employer, from London, where his daughter lives, to somewhere outside of London; and for Lawrence, whose temporary post was prematurely terminated, though he was planning to return to his legal studies. To all those who don't just "play" the cultural and racial diversity clause. See exposition in connection with "The (Origins of) The Game".

Joining the Forces - Methodologies of Sustainable Transcultural Artistic Research Johannes Kretz (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna) Today, many traditional musical practices are threatened with imminent extinction for various reasons, such as the loss of (indigenous) languages, or the pressure coming from an imbalance of power vis-à-vis a more or less globalized music industry. Even contemporary academic composition can be counted among the endangered traditions, even if it is still somehow "artificially kept alive" to varying degrees in different countries. Therefore, the idea of joining the forces of creativity could be meaningful, to support the solidarity between (artistic) minorities in the widest sense, to gain importance in a world of strongly commercialized cultural life, and to redefine aesthetic and social categories. Since 2007 through various projects and initiatives new formats of transcultural artistic research have been developed at mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna by Johannes Kretz, Wei-Ya Lin and Hande Sağlam. The collaboration between members of the indigenous community of the Tao on Lanyu island, Taiwan and composers, musicians and ethnomusicologists from Austria within the project “creative (mis)understandings” developed new transcultural approaches of inspiration (seen as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity). “Confusing Inspiration” is a teaching format, confronting students of composition and improvising instrumentalists with places, communities and music practices outside of their comfort zone to widen the perspective of their artistic and intellectual concepts and to establish forms of understanding and collaboration. The underlying concepts of both projects aim to encourage communities to engage in unexpected alliances. Beyond that – with regard to sustainability – one has to ask, whether some impulses of this collaborations will continue and propagate in the respective communities. And: can these concepts of transcultural artistic research be extended to a making-with and becoming- with (in the sense of Donna Haraway), which can include – in a similarly mindful and respectful reciprocal way – not only humans from – very – different communities, but also non-humans? In times where climate change and environmental destruction are obvious threats to everybody on this planet, can (local) knowledge holders of indigenous and non-indigenous communities together with artists and researchers contribute sustainable approaches by questioning the demarcation between culture and nature?

This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Journal of Artistic Research documents some of these findings. The team Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project. Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT. Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine. Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT. The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.

The education of a classical violinist – or mine at least, and I see scant evidence that anything else holds today – begins based on a mainstream Romantic ideal consisting of works, geniuses, and concepts of musical authenticity. This is quite useful as a tool to cajole the young violinist into learning the essentials of tone production and playing styles but is at odds with a questioning attitude towards normative traditions that might allow the musician greater interpretive freedom after gaining that technique. While the historically informed performance (HIP) movement was an early, important manifestation of this sort of questioning attitude, the experimental/avantgarde tradition, which has run parallel to these others from the early twentieth century, has not often been applied to the interpretation of historical music. The experimental tradition does not assume conventional tone production or historical authenticity: instead, it is asking the musician to interpret the symbols on the page according to their own artistically informed predilections and contexts to produce new performances emanating from the artwork, thereby transferring more responsibility for the performance from the composer to the musician. To what extent might the experience of the performer be allowed to contribute to the performance of a historical work? As part of a three-year artistic research project in Stockholm, I have been looking into ways of using interpretive techniques gleaned from the study of new music and applying these to historical works. This article describes some existing research that questions the traditional interpretive paradigm, along with the ontology of a musical work and its interpretation, and concludes with a case study, “The Labyrinth,” showing one way that these sorts of attitudes can be put into practice for a genre of music to which they seldom, if ever, have been applied.

If there is one thing that complexity theory has taught us, it is to consider phenomena not as isolated events with properties of their own, but to observe them from a different perspective: as relations in a vast network of interdependent systems. In this light, the role of contemporary music performance has changed, and will continue to change, precisely because the context in which it is created and takes place is constantly evolving. Artistic research can provide the tools to be aware of these changes and to actively re-act in this changing context, not by simply transposing the context or its elements into a representational or aesthetic framework, as happened with the avant-gardes of the 20th century, but by breaking cultural boundaries through transpositions into distant fields with isomorphic functional principles. It is precisely because of this characteristic, which reveals the intrinsic interdisciplinarity in artistic research, that it is possible to revolutionize the traditional conception of music performance and not confine it to an aesthetic regime, but rather expand it to include the context. However, since relationships are not unambiguous, it is not just a matter of revising the concept of performance, but also of reviewing the way we experience and live in the context, as artists, as human beings, and as elements of a circuit of which we are only a small part. In this paper, I will first examine how environmental and social changes have been reflected in performative changes and the ways in which the context of the ecological crisis and contemporary performance are interrelated. Then, I will focus on my research project, “[in situ]”, highlighting its site/situation-specificity, flexibility, immersivity, and interactivity, and explaining how it aligns with and differs from other contemporary music performance practices.

In any performance genre, the use of time is a fundamental element that shapes the artistic experience. When artists from different disciplines come together to collaborate on the same material, the perception and utilization of time as an artistic device can undergo significant transformations. This exposition delves into the intricate realm of non-verbal artistic communication between performers from diverse disciplines, with a specific focus on how the actions of one artist can profoundly influence and shape the decisions of another. To explore this dynamic interplay, a compelling case study is presented, examining the enchanting character miniatures for solo piano composed by Alexander Scriabin during the middle and late periods of his life. These exquisite musical pieces are interwoven with the fluidity and spontaneity of contemporary dance improvisation, creating a rich tapestry of artistic expression. Within this crossdisciplinary collaboration, the exposition sheds light on the ephemeral layers of communication that exist between performers. It delves into thought-provoking topics such as the sense of flow, movement, and structure within the work, the role of physical distance between performers and its intricate relationship with the passage of time, the density of content (i.e., musical material) in the context of crossdisciplinary exploration, and the profound significance of gestural communication between artists. Through this crosspollination of ideas and artistic exchange, the potential for profound and transformative artistic impact emerges. In essence, this exposition offers a thought-provoking exploration of the transcendent power of artistic communication between performers from different disciplines.