Research Catalogue

Through a dialogue with an historical archive the project seeks to construct a fluid story of a confined landscape on the point of transformation. Through the negotiation of a multitude of images the project constructs a narrative that transcends the photographic vision as evidence, and questions whether vision can be more than comparable to the ground of an archaeological excavation. Through the use of the photographic essay as a method the intention is to try and interpret the changeability of the urban landscape.

Conceived and co-organised by Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, this Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group (SAR SIG) provides contexts for coming together via the exchange of language-based research. The intent is to support developments in the field of expanded language-based practices by inviting attention, time and space for enabling understanding of/and via these practices anew.

Este projeto nasceu de um desconforto antigo, mas só encontrou forma quando o corpo — finalmente — começou a falar. Um corpo que, por anos, foi moldado pela obediência, pela culpa, pela contenção. Um corpo que serviu mais para agradar do que para existir. O Corpo que Nunca Foi não é apenas uma instalação visual. É uma travessia. Cada moldura carrega fragmentos de uma história interrompida, silenciada, violentada — mas que, ao ser contada, transforma-se em matéria de resistência. As peças não são ilustrações da dor. São gestos de enfrentamento. São corpos simbólicos criados a partir de camadas de memória, de experiências vividas, de feridas abertas e cicatrizes malformadas. Há nelas vestígios de abandono, de fuga, de abuso, de ausência de proteção. Mas há também outra coisa: o impulso de continuar. O espaço onde as obras habitam — um ambiente branco, forrado como uma câmara asséptica — não é um lugar de pureza. É o contrário: é o lugar onde tudo o que foi considerado “sujo”, “impróprio”, “mentira” ganha finalmente forma e voz. Neste quarto simbólico, o que antes era invisível torna-se presença. O projeto parte de histórias profundamente pessoais, mas oferece um espelho onde outras mulheres possam reconhecer as suas próprias trajetórias — sem medo, sem vergonha, sem a culpa herdada de séculos de silêncio. Aqui, a arte não quer consolar. Quer escancarar o que foi escondido, nomear o que foi abafado, e abrir espaço para outras existências possíveis. Mais do que um processo de cura, este projeto é um rito de insurgência contra os mecanismos que perpetuam a dor como destino. Aqui, a matéria ferida se ergue como discurso.

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.