Research Catalogue

This page is under construction It contains material created for and in the context of the research project Gifts from the Sentient Forest at the University of Lapland. See https://www.sentientforestproject.com

PhD in Artistic Research. Expected viva voce / defence in February 2026

WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER is conceptualized and conducted collaboratively by Charlotta Ruth (SE/AT) and Jasmin Schaitl (AT). The starting point are two artistic practices based on methods of mindfulness and game/play; Performances for the Mind and Choreographic Clues. These two individual perspectives on participation emerge from the project leaders’ ongoing artistic research and merge in their common artistic curiosity in the facilitator role and facilitating the creation of immaterial material. Accompanied by neuroscientist and performer Imani Rameses (US/AT) the research asks: How does immaterial material perform within participatory situations? What role does participatory setting play and how does participation differ if situations are communicated as a workshop, a treatment, a practice or a performance? How can neuroscience support how immaterial and participatory art practices are developed and described? What relation exists beyond involvement and how can a participant become the situation rather than being part of a situation? What has to occur in the mind and body for this to happen? Through practice and dialogue conducted with experts in the fields of contemplative sciences, sound art, choreography, game art and somatics, the research explores how input from participants (e.g. memory, thought, emotion) can be placed at the centre of a flexible yet framed performance situation. WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER was realised in collaboration with the Angewandte Performance Laboratory 2021-2022. In the course of the project, a lecture was given at the Center for Didactics of Art and Interdisciplinary Education, and a public series was realised at Kunsthalle, Wien & Angewandte Performance Lab. Collaborating expert practitioners and dialogue partners are: Philipp Ehmann (AT), Nikolaus Gansterer (AT), Mariella Greil (AT), Dennis Johnson (US/AT), Anne Juren (FR/AT), Krõõt Juurak (EE/AT), Imani Rameses (US/AT), Christian Schröder (AT), Lucie Strecker (DE/AT).

This article examines an expanded conceptualization of time-based art beyond artworks that unfold consecutively over measurable durations. Typical time-based art was characterized with clear beginning and ending such as performance, cinematic art, moving image, sound art, and computational installation. In contrast, this analysis investigates how static art possesses temporal qualities through alternative means. With the incorporation of “time-based materials” - substances that transform their external forms over time – we establish an alternative time-based art characterized by an imminent temporality. Historical paintings like Goya’s "The Third of May 1808" and Bruegel’s "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" reveal early attempts to the depiction of time through compositional arrangement and juxtaposition of events. The author extends this tradition by exploring how certain materials possess intrinsic “temporal directionality” – a predictable but fluctuating transformation process. Examples include oxidation of metals that undergo the process of rusting and patination, creating visual changes that occur gradually and unpredictably, embodying what the author terms an imminent quality - known to happen but uncertain in exact duration. The author makes use of his own artworks as case studies: "Simulacra" (2015), a juxtaposition of photographs of copper armors against the actual deteriorating objects; "The Fall of the Rebel Angels" (2022), a translation of Pieter Bruegel’s painting into an installation using patinated copper; and "Public Cemetery" (2023), an incorporation of natural phenomenon like rain and typhoons as temporal agents. These works demonstrate how materials that vulnerable to intrinsic transformation can create temporal experiences that transcend conventional time-based art definitions, offering new possibilities for expressing time through the interplay of possibility, impossibility, and imminence.

This project is about zero time, which is no time, but can also mean the time of change or a new beginning. The phantoms in question are not ghosts or spectres, but placeholders; they stand for something absent, like the mathematical concept of zero. An important example for such a phantom is phantom pain. This term refers to the perception of painful sensations in a part of the body that is no longer there, for example because it has been surgically or traumatically removed. The key point is: The limb, organ or eye is missing, but the pain is still there, and the pain felt there is real. The reality of pain is essential in the context of this work. Not just phantom pain, but the broader concept of phantom experience is the subject of Phantomology. Phantom experiences are experiences that were not really experienced, such as traumatic events in early childhood; events that were not integrated into the ego system and therefore did not become part of our – accessible – memory. The aim of the Phantomology project is to develop artistic strategies for dealing with these phantoms, guided by the question of how to grasp and investigate them as something absent. The challenge is that it is ultimately about nothingness, timelessness, and our striving to fill voids as a basic human desire, this desire to give content to the gaps we are constantly confronted with in the timelines of our lives.

This exposition proposes revisiting as a method for engaging with long term artistic research. The method was developed while returning to a series of twelve year-long works based on repetition called Animal Years (2002-2014) in the context of the Academy of Finland funded research project How To Do Things With Performance (2016-2020). The same method was further explored as an artistic tool in the project Pondering with Pines (2022-2024). The method could be generalised into revisiting understood as return and repeat, recycle and recombine, reflect and reconsider and adapted to many types of artistic practices.