The Research Catalogue (RC) is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research provided by the Society for Artistic Research. The RC is free to use for artists and researchers. It serves also as a backbone for teaching purposes, student assessment, peer review workflows and research funding administration. It strives to be an open space for experimentation and exchange.

recent activities >

The (origins of the) game (2024) Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Happening, 2016. Participant's research, including improvised full recorded interview with first generation Albanian immigrants to Greece, images, and thematic text. The research was conducted for the workshop, "Logics of Worlds", inspired by Alain Badiou's work and organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016. Adopting the political approach of Badiou's "L' Organisation Politique" to apply direct intervention for societal problems, including immigration and labour, I used play as a method to facilitate improvised discussions. People share and respond more freely when participating in structured, but playful interactions, such as those a game involves. Albanians speak three languages, Albanian, Italian and, a few of them, Greek, so I wasn't able to translate parts of the conversation. Avlona is an English now obsolete name for Vlore, an Albanian seaport and former ancient Greek colony Aulon. Albanians came as refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. Notably, the men I spoke to didn't want to be visualised. Hence, the exposition aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible. Badiou is also known for his philosophy of metaphysics of the four "truth procedures": Politics, Science, Love and Art. The workshop was slightly interrupted by a performance art student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating (by re-assigning the gender of male) Albanian refugees. For this exposition, I include an essay by Pantelis Boukalas, in Kyriakos Katzourakis, O "Dromos Pros Ti Dysi" (The Way to the West), 2001, as well as Kyriakos Katzourakis' introduction in English. I don't have any personal or other connections with Albania (or North Macedonia); I had never visited before 2024. This was a project to research and document in an artistic manner the refugee and immigration crisis in my native Greece, but also to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. Non-EU economic refugees must not be confused with political asylum seekers, who encounter persecution for political reasons from the countries of origin or citizenship. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees. Albania (and North Macedonia) is a non-EU country; Greece, my native (and my parents' and grandparents' native), has been in the EU since 1981. I have also been a UK national, by naturalisation, since 2011. Paradoxically, the outcome of this project was that fictitious non-EU son(s)/daughter(s) of mine have been (since 2018) on UK police databases, as disabled 14, 19, 21 year-old transgender Italian/Albanians. Maybe I was married to a Nordic neo-Nazi, who was living with one of them since 2013 in London? Dismissed. Or did I have the one that came to the UK in 2017, who is the daughter of a known (not to myself) former Greek politician? Dismissed by the Greek authorities. My concerns about serious international organised criminal activity (not even honouring children's basic rights) were reported and confirmed by the Greek, Scandinavian and Albanian authorities. The Greek Golden Dawn - with their "Big Idea" (Megali Idea) of conquering foreign countries, like North Macedonia, and their chronic attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece - was convicted as a criminal organisation in October 2020. They invented the 'concept' of the 'Real Greek', dependent on any Greek's political orientation. Now they're losing their sixty seven (67) appeals - and early releases. The conversation took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts, despite the fact they were frightened. Manolis Glezos was the only Greek politician, who went to visit Magda Fyssa, Pavlos' mother, in the Greek courts. For Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P. For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP. For the missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants. For Michalis Katsouris. The work is in progress.
open exposition
The history of Japanese jazz bassists (2024) TianYi Zhang
Show [pptx]
The background introduction is about three character bassists in Japan. It analyzes and studies the three famous Japanese performers from different perspectives such as artistic style, characteristics, learning experience, and playing style.
open exposition
Can Philosophy Exist? (2024) Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Photography with sound and net art, drawing, found folk sculpture with digital drawing, readymades, 2012, 2020, 2021. Accompanied by archival material. The exposition exposes the question of what is artistic research. Usurping the essayist format, which is traditionally associated with research in say the area of philosophy, the exposition formally operates on different levels. I selectively included visual art research material from my own artistic archive, as well as anonymous material that's readily available from the internet and in film archives. In this way, I wanted to emphasise the role of archiving and using archives in the artistic process, as an element of artistic research and artistic production that might involve remediation. Taking that we live in a largely theoretic culture, which means that we use external information systems for storage and retrieval of written, visual and other material, the implication is that art is part of this theoretical system. Moreover, I specifically problematise the notion of value in relation to the visual arts by using the popular media figures of the counterfeit and the impostor, with reference to the so-called "impostor syndrome", correlated with being a minority of some sort in one's field: "A different thought is that two people may be answerable to the very same standard of success or competence, yet be subject to different epistemic standards for reasonable belief in their respective success or competence. This would be an example of pragmatic encroachment." (Katherine Hawley, "What is Impostor Syndrome?", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 93, 2019). I suggest that some artworks operate as philosophical provocations of the archive. "The artwork just exists", as Frank Stella argued.
open exposition

recent publications <>

CCC at the mdw: Interweaving Artistic and Musicological Exploration at Music University (2024) Chanda VanderHart, Judith Kopecky
Even at one of the world's oldest and largest music universities, the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, the siloing of fields is the norm. Thanks to budgetary and organizational structures, it is rare that artistic practice and traditional musicology teaching are actively combined; what conservatory students learn in music history seminars and what they learn from their performance teachers exist largely separately from each other. This exposition documents an ongoing, pragmatic attempt to interweave traditional music research with artistic practice and interventions, thereby introducing students to Artistic Research at bachelor's and master's levels. The CCC (Content-Concept-Context) module was initiated by Judith Kopecky at the Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education and has enjoyed cooperation with the Institute for Musicology and Performance Studies (IMI) for the past three years. Here she, Stephen Delaney and Chanda VanderHart reflect on the promises, surprises, limits, and potential for intertwining scholarship and artistic practice in an institutional setting.
open exposition
environment embodiment - towards poetic narratives (2024) Fernanda Branco
PhD Artistic Research project environment embodiment - towards poetic narratives (2020-2024) by Fernanda Branco at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. This artistic research explores experiential agency in encounters between body and environment. It draws from uncanny, embodied and poetic perspectives, unfolding as a constellation of sympoietic practices. Webdesign by Ellen Palmeira Illustrations by Aza
open exposition
Alternative Histori[es]: A Place Where Something Happened (2024) Eliot Moleba
Abstract This artistic research project focuses on narrative accounts of Norwegians who self-identify with a ‘multicultural and/or immigration background(s)’, to explore how their (hi)stories can be woven into the tapestry of the contemporary Norwegian public memory and story. I set out to interview and collect their narrative accounts, which must also be understood as oral (topical) histories, focusing on (hi)stories of their lived experiences, with a special interest in an event that happened in a public space and has been experienced as a meaningful or life-changing moment. Through a collaborative process, the oral (hi)stories were transformed and used to produce interactive monuments installed on the sites where the narrated events took place. One of the key artistic challenges in the project was to grapple with the question of how not only the collaborators but also the public can be empowered to actively shape and engage with artistic works, becoming co-collaborators themselves. This artistic inquiry led to the development of monu(mo)ments, an artistic concept and initiative that is dedicated to turning stories of Norway’s diversity into interactive, performative works of public art. The monu(mo)ments are not just symbols of collective memory but embody that very concept in how they themselves function. Through an interactive/participatory design, the public is invited to contribute their own narratives, perspectives, and experiences, shaping the monu(mo)ment's meaning and relevance. They invite the public to become co-creators of the narratives embedded within their communal spaces, fostering a sense of ownership and agency, and blurring the boundaries between artist(s) and public, the past and the present. The project strives to illuminate the untold oral (hi)stories of these narrators by allowing them to take over public spaces and infuse them with gripping personal narratives to shift how we read those places and (re)negotiate their past/meaning. This is to create an ‘alternative history’, dedicated to writing and inscribing these voices into public spaces and our broader collective imagination. Other artistic results include a live-action role-playing game (LARP). Furthermore, the larp was modified to serve as a resource for educators, enabling them to address interconnected themes within their classrooms through immersive gameplay. It has been performed in schools, festivals, and conferences in Norway, Austria, and Denmark. Overall, by creating artistic works that (re)imagining public memory as a dynamic and interactive process, this artistic research project foregrounds and contributes to the ongoing efforts to capture and reflect Norway’s multicultural reality and identity.
open exposition

sar announcements <>

Subscribe to SARA