Research Catalogue

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.

Een artistiek onderzoek naar contact, verbinding en gemeenschappelijke grond.

Darkness Matters displays historic lightscapes, specifically at night, from petroglyphs to James Webb Telescope images. The exposition constructs a sort of cabinet of curiosities and wants to take the visitor on a private journey to a virtual exhibition space to re-embrace the endeavors under and around the nocturnal vault, an underrepresented micro-story of our times. By researching archive material, image recordings and other available data Costanza Julia Bani creates speculative reconstructions of our nights and our relationship to the universe behind the sky we can see with our naked eye. Starting from fireflies in olive groves, alpine forests and the Milky Way, the exposition becomes a visual experience around darknesses and light pollution that has been transforming our nocturnal habitat since the introduction of artificial light.

Άφρικα: A Certain Kind of Freedom is pivoting on artistic exploration and re-interpretation of a 'difficult' recent past. In part soundwalk, in part performance art, in part punk archaeology, in part getting lost in the dark; the work is a nocturnal rumination bringing together historical bewilderedness with first-person embodied experience of a place. The artist leads a night walk towards and inwards Agios Achillios island in Small Prespa Lake in Greece – near the borders of Albania, and North Macedonia – and back. En route, the walking audience is exposed to wildlife sounds and animal vocalisations, to orchestrated drama, and to historical records directly or indirectly concerning the broader geographical area and its significance during the Greek civil war.

In Provenir del porvenir Urbano hovers through the fields of sociology, archaeology and philosophy while reflecting on the different mediations of the work: the guided tour, the performance lecture and the video essay. The exposition is based on a speculative artistic-historiographic project where the artist, in the context and aesthetics of the Museum of History, connects her own genealogy with the North. The investigation is a response to recurrent question to people of color living in Scandinavia: “Where do you come from?” This question leads to an epistemological enquire, discussing the limits of knowledge production on a scientific basis versus knowledge production on an artistic basis.