Research Catalogue

Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public. Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact. The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).

'Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation: Toward non-local collaborative art practices' investigates the resonances of concepts from quantum theory in the realm of transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research. Throughout a series of protocols using diffractive methodologies, we intend to translate and embody concepts such as spacetime, entanglement, non-locality, uncertainty, indeterminacy, and superpositionality, and embed them as tools for our artistic practices. These concepts were chosen for their singularity in physics, but also for the ways in which they confront ontoepistemic pillars of ‘Modernity’, such as sequentiality, determinacy and separability. The research is carried out by a transdisciplinary non-local core ensemble formed by Søren Kjærgaard, Amilcar Packer, and Carla Zaccagnini. The cities we inhabit – Copenhagen, Sao Paulo and Malmö – have been our laboratories. Departing from tools and methods learned from each-other's disciplines, we have been creating scores that guide our simultaneous actions while walking on the street –interacting with public spaces and their characteristics– or while lying asleep –in the most private of spheres. On the one hand, in a practice we call ‘non-local walking’, scores conduct our collective experiencing of our cities, involving a diffractive methodology of reading and listening, and the entangled collecting of objects, words and other affections found in the urban terrain. On the other hand, the ‘entangling dream practice’ experiment is an attempt without aiming at success of meeting each other in our dreams. Both investigations are conceived as boundary-crossing transdisciplinary methodologies through which we create a relational, critical consciousness and sensing that stimulates unexpected outcomes, embracing failure. These scored performances have resulted in cartographies, drawings, moving sculptures, audio works and writings. Across these various materializations, unexpected connections, constellations, and coincidences e/merge, unveiling yet unheard polyphonies that give resonance to the urban and mental spaces, as potentized terrains awaiting (re)circuitry, and, as fields of forces that await to be (re)experienced.

An overview of Elisabeth Belgrano's artistic / performance / research and teaching in higher arts education 2004-ongoing

Integrity of science would surely be challenged by possibilities of bias, errors, mistakes or misinterpretations. Science is charged with methods evaluating the relevance and significance of these — even when the first-person singular, which doesn’t sound objective, is in their research question of any scientific claim. With or without relevance and significance, I mash-up here a narrative with the scientific notes from Atatürk’s Nutuk / Discourse (1927) with respect to NATO.

During the early weeks of the Gezi Park Protests in the summer of 2013, the Turkish government banned gatherings in Taksim Square. One man, however, stood alone in front of the Ataturk Cultural Centre (AKM), one of the symptoms around the never-ending events and culture wars, with the police around, obviously "obeying" the ban on gatherings. He instantly went viral on the internet: The Standing Man (Duran Adam), reminiscent of an unknown 1950s Hollywood melodrama The Man Who Stood There, while others began to stand "alone" nearby, but not exactly in the legally described form of an assembly or public gathering. As such, only the man's name was mythified and not the other participants'.

Meet the Yunani is my mix-up audio-visual-inscriptive artwork for the Unani or Yunani systems of medicine that are deployed in medical fraud. I deploy cognitive philosophy, art and science in this webart for the real settings of scientific hoaxes, the illusions concealed through prescribed fictions, and represented as the real. A mix-up audio-visual-inscriptive artwork for the Yunani, often touted as a "traditional" and "holistic" approach to health and well-being. In truth, the various versions of deploying Unani in medicine is inothing more than a parascientific hoax perpetrated by those aiming to capitalize on the growing demand for "alternative" and “natural” remedies. Unani (یونانی) is simply a rebranding of the Perso-Arabic medical traditions, which in turn were heavily influenced by the teachings of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who, while pioneering advances in the human anatomy and physiology, also promoted a flawed model of the human body and health based on the concept of the four humours - blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Unani practitioners of the Perso-Arabic medical traditional medicine, accompanied by Judeo-Hellenic adaptations represented with the neoplatonistic tree of life sefirot (סְפִירוֹת / σφαίρα), Greek humours or "doṣas" (दोष) from the Ayurvedic medicine claim to have inherited this ancient Greek wisdom. In truth they have merely taken these outdated and disproven theories, given them an exotic-sounding name, and presented them as traditional wisdom. Unani's diagnostic methods and treatment approaches, from bloodletting to the use of arcane herbal concoctions, lack scientific bases and were thoroughly debunked by modern medical research. The allure of this “ancient wisdom”, however, continues to draw those in need of alternative healthcare, without knowing that they are falling victim to a sophisticated marketing ploy masquerading as traditional medicine. The Unani's mystical trappings are nothing more than a pseudoscientific hoax rooted in long-refuted Greek four humour theory.