Research Catalogue

Dorsal Practices is a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker, for exploring the notion of dorsality in relation to how we as moving bodies orient to self, others, world. How does the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our experience of being-in-the-world? A dorsal orientation foregrounds an active letting go, releasing, even de-privileging, of predominant social habits of uprightness and frontality — the head-oriented, sight-oriented, forward-facing, future-leaning tendencies of a culture intent on grasping a sense of the world through naming and control. Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a back-leaning orientation support a more open and receptive ethics of relation? How are experiences of listening, voicing, thinking, shaped differently through this tilt of awareness and attention towards the back?

A 2-part module by the MA Transdisciplinary Studies of ZHdK, Department Kulturanalysen und Vermittlung. Held by Anna Rubi & Eirini Sourgiadaki. Autumn 2023-Spring 2024 Colour perception varies, so do the semantics of colour terminology, for both sighted and blind individuals. The questions around colour perception from ophthalmology or neurobiology perspectives to cognitive and artistic ones, are infinite: Is there a universal human experience of the blue sky, the green grass and the brown soil? How is colour perceived in the brain, how is it translated into a communicable concept and how does it affect our perceived world, our mental and physical state? What is the role of colour in synesthesia? And most importantly, does colour have to do just with vision? In this module we work with the generation of blue colour on print, using the major light source available, the Sun. The Island of Amorgos is often referred to as “Le grand bleu” after the famous french film was shot at location. Its ancient name is “Melania”. “Melani”, the Greek word for ink, (“Melano” for dark blue, cyan) as it is said that in ancient times the place was covered with dark green flora. Our investigation begins exactly with this deep tint. We pay a visit to the famous monastery and the water oracle, walk the trails to observe the sensual -not only vision-based- shades of blue. In the spring term, we participate in local activities such as beach clean-up initiatives of the remote bays by local fishermen and their boats. We visit bee-hives and herb-distilleries, we work with the most basic bits and pieces of the island to capture its essence.

Oversikt over utøvende virksomhet

This artistic research exposition unfolds the shared work between Australian composer Liza Lim and Swedish violinist Karin Hellqvist, from the viewpoint of Hellqvist as performer and co-creator. Together, the artists have created the violin solo work One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (2021–22). The Swedish folk music tradition that Hellqvist has carried with her since her childhood, and especially the polska dance, serves as their point of departure. This tradition resides in Hellqvist’s body and performance practice as embodied knowledge – a term introduced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), and it becomes their main path of research. A central concept in the reflections is the ‘artistic palette’ – a concept created by Hellqvist to conceptualise the skills and abilities used in creative work. Hellqvist’s embodied knowledge connected to the tradition is woven into the work through explorations of elements as the specific pulse of the polska and its ornamentation. Furthermore, those embodied skills are explored as decoupled in the third movement, capturing indeterminate aspects. The main question addressed is how the embodied knowledge of Hellqvist’s artistic palette serves as resource and inspiration in the shared process and how it affects the ontology of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). Topics of distributed creativity, shared work as mycelial structure, instrument-building, ownership, and temporal ecology are being unpacked in the light of the artistic palette. The artistic research exposition unfolds a compositional process whereby the performer is participating actively, thus problematising the view of where creativity may be located in compositional work. It comprises written reflections, audio examples, pictures, and video material from the creative process as well as a video of the whole work. The research context comprises historical and aesthetic perspectives, as well as recent research on performer creativity and embodiment. Download Accessible PDF

Ars Memoriae, The Art to Remember analyzes the role of art within the larger history and evolution of external memory devices. It looks at material traces of remembering and the invention of an ever-changing body of language expressions, like signs and symbols, to enhance communication capabilities. I followed the process of externalizing emotions, knowledge, and information, starting in the Palaeolithic Stone Age about 3 million years ago, until, in a speculative future, it will be internalized again using artificial wetware, neuro-computers, and DNA coding. > Click on the image to download the PDF.

Why I paint Thousands of Circles explores psychological barriers and multilayered themes that stem from a single horrific event that involved Moran’s father and his brother. The artist collates information, photos and constructs an ar(t)chaeological archive where family photos, product imagery, together with newspaper clips to form units of a historical and psychological mind map. The exposition becomes an auto-ethnographical exploration of mid 90's working class North West London. The repetitive painting process, exposed and documented in the exposition, functions as transformative method, where ambiguous feelings of a violent upbringing are directed towards the creation of a visual system with an inherent logic – “creating some kind of beauty out of ugliness.”