Research Catalogue

This is an exposition in progress. Starting in the 2021/22 season, the professorship Artistic Connective Practices organises and curates a series of encounters with practitioners, the research team of the professorship and audience, in order to explore the notion of Artistic Connective Practices.

Anansi’s Web- Entanglements without Tripping, a Ph.D. research fellow project led by Thomas Talawa Prestø, delves into the intricate weaving of African Diaspora practices and praxis. This exploration uses several conceptual tools to examine how performance can catalyze personal, social, and communal transformation. At its core is ChoreoNommo, a praxis grounded in the African concept of Nommo, which emphasizes the power of words and gestures to create tangible change. ChoreoWanga addresses the architectural and structural aspects of performances, focusing on how these elements can hold and transmit transformative energy (Ashé). PerformancePwen focuses on the energetic effects performances have on communities, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between performer and audience. The Talawa Technique™emphasizes a holistic and culturally rooted approach to dance, and Committography underscores the importance of strategic involvement in arts organizations and policy-making bodies to influence systemic change. The project culminates in two major works: Jazz Ain’t Nothing, an interdisciplinary dance performance incorporating song, dance, music, and visual elements, and That Voudou That We Do, a performative lecture. Both works are accompanied by the Cognoscape, a new writing methodology developed by Prestø. The Cognoscape provides a non-chronological onboarding into the artist’s knowledge scape, offering insights into the artist's praxis, beliefs, and reflections. It serves as a self-referential tool that captures the culmination of practice and experience, focusing on how knowledge manifests rather than attributing ownership to an individual author

"Metamorphoses - The performance of process" is an exposition of choreographic objects. Operating in the realms of drawing, photography, and video, these objects each address a poetics of transformation. The collections expose the simple materiality of change; the wind scattering paper pieces - or being transformed into sound by the paper walls of an accordion. ::: Contextual note: Metamorphoses is the first cycle of the choreographic project Love, polyphonic. The Metamorphoses Cycle consists of four parts: 1. The Performance of Process 2. Performance object 3. International performance workshop tour 4. Choreographic Toolbox #1: Metamorphoses (publication) The project Love, polyphonic extends over six years. The work approaches movement, sound, geometry and language through the concept of "love" as a prism. A force that can only be recognized indirectly. A tool for listening to the world; polyphonic. The series "The Performance of process", which was shared on the Instagram account love_polyphonic and Black Box teater's websites through the spring of 2021, invites us into the process of Metamorphoses. The performance object that premiered at Black Box Teater September 18th 2021 was a collaboration with cellist and composer Lene Grenager and dancer Cecilie Lindeman Steen. The performance was presented in collaboration with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. The collaborators for the international performance workshop tour was MAD, Firenze (IT), La Regarde du Cygnet, Paris (FR) and Dansekapellet, København (DK). The Choreographic Toolbox #1: Metamorphoses (publication) was launched at Norma T in collaboration with Mette Edvardsen on March 7th 2023, and is distributed nationally and internationally by Tekstallemenningen. ::: Janne-Camilla Lyster (b. 1981) is a Norwegian choreographer, writer and performer. She gained her artistic PhD with the project «Choreographic poetry: Creating literary scores for dance», and has a particular interest in pre-figurative practices, including scores, experimental notation and notation systems for movement. She has published a number of poetry collections as well as novels, plays, essays and performance scores.

Presence in Embodied/Encoded is concerned with the physical and embodied dimensions of musicking in relation to digital-informational representations of such phenomena. I explore presence through practices of recording, creative coding, audio production, and spatial electronic music composition. Of particular interest is the link between presence and the sensual/corporeal aspects of sound production and listening. Research in embodied music cognition and extended reality provide a foundation for this type of meaning formation. In the context of immersive electronic music, I suggest that physical presence – a sense of ‘being somewhere’—emerges not just from images/representations of place, but from peripheral aspects of the (embodied) acoustic experience such as spatial proximity and distance, diffuseness, resonance and reverberation, noise floor, etc. Consequently, musical meaning in “Embodied/Encoded” moves away from the symbolic dimension of electronic sounds toward meaning as an outcome of embodied interaction with the environment. The concept of presence can also apply to ‘mixed’ music, or combinations of acoustic and electronic sources, in which virtual presence is complicated by real bodies and spaces. Digital technology renders sound a flexible, malleable entity—a ‘flickering’ signifier to borrow from Hayles—capable of reconfiguring presence in creative ways. The dance between encoded and embodied dimensions inspires and informs this artistic research. Through a body of immersive music and multimedia documentation, I unpack connections between presence and its digital abstractions.

My performance art practice as an artist and researcher has become crucial to test ideas that theoretically catch my interest. For example, years ago I was convinced that performance art compositions were a miracle because of the Chaos theory in physics, where organized chaos was so complex that it was too difficult to perceive the origin, development and end of each action in time-space here and now. Within the context of an event of actions and the probabilities, time stretches out in many directions, making the observable constellation of actions more than chaotic, but four-dimensional almost, in a way that the past, present and future of the actions become one: Anticipation. Therefore, Anticipation in actions becomes crucial to understanding that action could fail even in a prediction, as an action goal is scored to be done, performers in present time-space, live simultaneously in the past present and future of the action, the tension between the action-goal is the vibration, but the anticipation is all the probabilities merge with the past and future of this action. Multidimensional perception requires a performer to perform within an action to improve training and work out through several performance preparations. An example is how to cross at constant speed a mass of crowded people and not change direction. Anticipation switches your present to be merged with your past and future. Such a concept is how I improve daily in my performance lab with the participants of my performance laboratory.

The purpose of this project is to explore how we can minimize the climate impact through the way we plan, produce, and support performing arts productions. The overarching research question was: How can we continue to create relevant and innovative performing arts with a smaller climate impact? The faculty in performing arts at Stockholm University of the Arts worked with Harry Martinson's Aniara from their various disciplines.