Research Catalogue

a lesson in the shadows of death entangled moment of frozen fragments embodying sacred movements through air, body, mind, mattering, voicing as if NOTHING

The Agenda Group is a research group based at KMD, connecting artistic practices "with an agenda". The group enables crossover methods rather than media specificity, allowing space for different participants. "An agenda" is here understood as an aspect of socially engaged art practices. This relates to people, narratives and history alike and is about our shared values and contribution to society as artists. The engagement relates to issues outside of the artistic context and investigates how these issues might be mediated and moderated with artistic means. The Agenda Group is open for all kinds of artistic practices, but the focus of the discussions will be on artistic practice "as crucial to both individual and societal change and development" (KMD Strategic Plan). The relationality between art and society is never as simple as it seems and these reflections involves the thinking of intensity in addition to formats, translation and displacement. In this sense the agenda of an artistic project is crucial to the understanding of its implications. The Agenda Group is a pragmatic platform to connect various members of staff at KMD (artistic-researchers, post-docs, PhD’s and maybe even MA-students). The main purpose is to meet regularly, presenting and discussing the artistic research of each of the group members. An internal critical agenda. Research group initiator: Professor Frans Jacobi

15 documented artistic works performed by Ellen Ugelvik et al. (solo/chamber/sinfonietta/orchestra)

In the last days of June 2024 I learned something I would rather not know. Aware that the act of forgetting is something that often simply happens, I started a daily practice of checking if I could still remember what I would like to forget. The question I found myself asking as time passed and I failed is if the desire to remember is what makes us forget. or In the last days of June 2024, I learned something I would rather not know. Something I wanted to forget. Aware that the act of forgetting is something that often simply happens, I start a daily practice: at the end of each day I sit down, stamp a date on a notebook page and take note: Do I still remember? I write using charcoal, a material that has little permanence. To work with charcoal is to constantly fight its desire to go away. Every night I take the time to see if I can still remember what I would like to forget. I know how to remember, I don’t know how to forget. I do nothing to forget, I simply let time pass and register the presence of this thing I now know. I don’t know how to actively forget, and I choose not to learn ways to do it. I wait for it to happen. As time passed and I failed, I found myself asking if the desire to remember is what makes us forget. I fail over and over again. I still remember.

This practice-led research exposition by architect-researcher Elina Koivisto explores how conducting architectural practice through the framework of feminist spatial practice can provide possibilities for un-learning harmful habits and reaching towards uncertain speculative futures. The case study project Kudos – Library for Material Relations realized in Espoo, Finland as a co-creative process between human and non-human participants, provided a lens through which the current material and social relations in architecture-making were challenged, applying the conceptual thinking of posthuman feminist thoughts on care and interconnectivity. Reflecting on the project, architecture is seen as a tool for feminist becomings rather than as a producer of mere artefacts, and meaning and significance are found in the process of its making.

“No one knows what the experiment is worth, but I imagine it’s better than sitting on your own hands.” Possible and barely possible moves is inspired by the kung-fu film Drunken Master, where simulated intoxication is used as a way to confuse the opponent. 
In the project, I used sketches of the movements in the film as a starting point for physical improvisations and looped GIF animations. Imbalance and loss of control have been used as a consistent method – both to generate material and as a way to surprise myself.
 Failing at something you've set out to do can sometimes generate new ideas.