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).

In this paper I propose to re-visit the outcome of a research trip I made a few years ago to the island of Sardinia in order to capture stills and video of a dilapidated villa, La Cupola, once belonging to the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni. The research output took the form of an essay video using a film studies methodology to critically re-assess Antonioni’s classic 1960 film L’Avventura. The research took the form of what I would term an occularcentric-cognitive approach whereby my analysis was based primarily on my visual interpretation of the villa. My mental image of La Cupola on first hearing about it was replaced by the online image in my research process, which in turn was replaced by the real image when I arrived at the site, and ultimately by the mediated images of my audio-visual essay. But what wasn’t included in this original research was an unexpected opportunity to enter inside La Cupola, which I retrospectively realised offered an entirely new understanding of the space. With reference to both film and architectural theory, this paper will seek to understand my encounter with the villa according to a primarily sensory and embodied interpretation rather than a sighted one.

Among classical musicians, there is a tendency to define our profession more by craftsmanship than artistry. In our artworld, we often focus on reproducing: A musical performer becomes a transparent medium for the composer’s supposed intentions (Leech-Wilkinson, 2020, chapter 6). How can we reclaim agency and liberty in the process of shaping music? In this exposition, a storytelling approach is applied to the performance interpretation of Luciano Berio's classic flute solo Sequenza I from 1958, with the aim of becoming a more daring interpreter. The storytelling in focus was recorded in the 1950s, echoing even older times. However, in my explorations, the archival storytelling serves as a tool for reimagining a musical score and creating something new.

Our Days of Gold (ODOG) is an ongoing, durational artwork staged on Instagram at @ourdaysofgold_film since April 2017. Over its eight-year duration, the work has accumulated new layers of memory and interpretation shaped by followers’ responses, shifting platform aesthetics, and changes to Instagram’s visual logic, including the disappearance of the square grid in January 2025. Alongside creative contributions, the project draws on a survey conducted with long-term followers, tracing how experiences of viewing, remembering, and interpreting the work unfold over time. This co-authored exposition includes videos, screen-recorded navigations, and writing produced by followers whose contributions reveal a form of polyvocality: multiple interpretive threads and associations that remediate the archive while shaping its evolving narrative. Within this distributed process, ODOG engages autofiction not as a singular self-narration but as a collective mode of authorship, emerging through dispersed readings, layered memories, and networked resonances. At the same time, the project foregrounds the precarity of social media archives, where redesigns, algorithmic shifts, and potential platform loss constantly reshape how the work circulates and persists. Drawing on debates around remediation and digital preservation, ODOG tests how meaning, memory, and narrative can be sustained within unstable infrastructures while acknowledging their continual transformation.