Research Catalogue

Following on from my PhD research, Deeper Canine Topographies continues to explore human-canine cartographies, rhythms, repetitions,micro geographies and relational choreographies towards a proposal for future research.

MA Seminar – Reflection and Method in Artistic Research This MA seminar explores how reflection and method intertwine in artistic research. Through a series of presentations and discussions, the seminar examines how artistic processes can generate knowledge and how this knowledge may be articulated and shared. Invited speakers – Marsha Bradfield (Central Saint Martins, London), Sergej Tchirkov (University of Bergen) and Jostein Gundersen (University of Bergen) – each present distinct approaches to artistic research, spanning visual art, music, and interdisciplinary practice. Their contributions highlight the diversity of methods and the critical importance of situated reflection within creative practice. The seminar concludes with a collective panel conversation focusing on how artistic research can balance openness and rigour, intuition and analysis, collaboration and individual voice.

This exhibition presents the context, process, and conclusions of the artistic research project Imagination as a Tool for Change in Shared Space, carried out at DAMU. At the heart of the research is the question: How can we give the body a voice? In other words, how can we invite bodily perception and imagination into the process of decision-making and exploration, while at the same time perceiving these qualities as fully-fledged mediators of information? The backbone of the research consists of a pair of workshops designed to guide students through the exploration and reflection on the theme of the chill zone at DAMU. A series of exercises aimed to awaken their somatic and sensory perception, followed by an exploration of spaces designated for rest, and finally imaginative exercises with the aim of proposing possible changes or forms for the spaces. The exhibition presents the individual layers of the project: 1) In the contextual layer, we acquaint readers with our personal starting points (chapter: Medallions), with the theoretical and practical-experiential foundations on which we consciously build (chapter: Introduction), and with methodological procedures (chapter: Methodology). 2) At the center is the documentary layer, which describes the structure of the workshops, the creative outputs of the participants, and a chronicle mapping the transformation of the research team's thinking, documenting the lively dialogue between the discourses of transformative pedagogy and embodied learning in acting and authorship. 3) The layer of findings and conclusions identifies two fundamental qualities: (a) the concept of "sensitized researchers", in which bodily and sensory perception provides a full report on the surrounding world, and (b) the situation of being in the imagery, in which working with the imagination offers possible proposals for change. In conclusion, we look back at the reasons for the changes in the original research questions and consider further possible directions for research. Tato expozice prezentuje kontext, proces a závěry uměleckého výzkumu Imaginace jako nástroj změny ve sdíleném prostoru realizovaného na DAMU. V centru výzkumu stojí otázka: Jak dát tělu hlas? Neboli jak do procesu rozhodování a zkoumání přizvat tělesné vnímaní a imaginaci a jak zároveň tyto kvality vnímat jako plnohodnotné zprostředkovatele informací. Páteř výzkumu tvoří dvojice workshopů, které byly navrženy tak, aby studující provedly zkoumáním a promýšlením tématu chill-zóny na DAMU. Série cvičení směřovala k probuzení jejich tělesné a smyslové vnímavosti, následně ke zkoumání prostor určených pro odpočinek a v závěru k imaginativním cvičením s cílem navrhnout možné změny či podobu prostor. Expozice představuje jednotlivé vrstvy projektu: 1) V kontextová vrstvě seznamujeme čtenáře s našimi osobními výchozími pozicemi (kap. Medailonky), s teoretickými a prakticko-zkušenostními východisky, na které vědomě navazujeme (kap. Úvod), a s metodologickými postupy (kap. Metodologie). 2) V centru stojí dokumentární vrstva přibližující strukturu workshopů, kreativní výstupy účastnictva a kroniku mapující proměnu myšlení výzkumného týmu, dokládající živý dialog mezi diskurzy transformativní pedagogiky a vtěleného učení k herectví a autorství. 3) Vrstva zjištění a závěrů identifikuje dvě zásadní kvality: (a) koncept „zcitlivělé výzkumnictvo“, kdy tělesné a smyslové vnímání přináší plnohodnotnou zprávu o okolním světě, a (b) situaci bytí v představě, kdy práce s imaginací nabízí možné návrhy ke změně. V závěru se ohlížíme za důvody změn původních výzkumných otázek a promýšlíme další možné směřování výzkumu.

In the globalising world, our cultural influences have become more diversified than ever. At the same time, the code of good conduct on honouring intercultural sources of inspiration is still being written in the collective consciences of artists and audiences alike. The current mindset is being explored in an artistic research project, of which the concert this article focuses on was a component. “Approcreations”, an experimental solo concert, was atypical in terms of the conventions of the instruments played. The recital trialled the public’s receptiveness by developing pioneering uses for a tradition-oozing instrument while casting thoughts into the perception of artistic identity in the crossfire of preconceptions, aftermaths of colonialism and cultural appropriation disputes. Would the public’s sentiments differ from the performer’s expectations? The author, having developed a time-tested perspective after decades of international touring as a non-African player of the Mande diatonic balafon, now zeroes in on the factors influencing how we interpret and feel about culturally complex art practices. Sociocultural and symbolic connotations of musical instruments are analysed in light of the affordance theory, and the instruments’ evolution from cultural assets into universal vehicles for human creativity is pondered upon. Video samples from the concert stage concretise words into sounds and colours. The outcome of this artistic component is then inquired based on both self-reflection and audience feedback. Finally, as the controversy around cultural appropriation vs. inspiration extends beyond music to encompass a broader range of performing arts, the conclusion seeks to identify tendencies in the findings that might benefit art practitioners in other genres as well.

This exposition presents parts of a practice-based artistic research project, Acts of Transfer, a collaboration between artist Katy Beinart and writer Lizzie Lloyd (2020–2021). The project consists of a series of ‘chapters’ which revisit artworks from the recent past that involved social engagement or public participation, documenting both the process and outcomes of our returns. Acts of Transfer was interested in what the afterlife of such artworks might be and how they might be meaningfully represented in the future. Each return or ‘chapter’ generates new artwork, while retaining some sense of the original. They include a range of outcomes: excerpts (screenshots, photographs, readings, instructions etc.) from the original artworks made by our participants, as well as our own documentation through photography, drawings, and notes taken during our returns, alongside passages of experimental writing and films. In presenting parts of this project in Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining, we further explore how documentation might serve as a means to reenact and reimagine the artworks to which we returned. In each case, we consider how aesthetic, emotional, physical, psychological or conceptual transfer might signify to those involved and to future audiences. We expose the complicated relationships that underlie practices that rely on participation, and highlight how meaning develops beyond the immediate duration of such projects. What follows renders these complications tangible, leading to new artworks that are intentionally emergent and fragmented. We look to evoke the effervescent experience of participating, remembering and communicating experiences of social, relational and durational artwork, to hold fast to what is lost and what might be reimagined.

This exposition centres around the fieldwork and shooting process of my documentary feature film, 11 Underground (Chico Pereira, 2024). 11 Underground is a reenactment film project based on a mining strike that happened in Almadén in the summer of 1984, in which 11 miners locked themselves in at 650 meters underground to protest their precarious working and social conditions. After 11 days of enduring the dark and toxic underground galleries, the Almadén Mining Company finally accepted the miners’ claims and the miners came out of the dark hole, received as heroes by their neighbours. As a local filmmaker belonging to the first non-mining generation in over 2000 years, I thought of the premise of making a reenactment film in town: what if 11 people locked-in in the underground mine for 11 days now to pay homage to the 1984 strike? Out of this rather strange proposition there was a desire to create an event -partly social, partly artistic-, that could help to collectively reflect -or re-imagine- our present by reenacting a collective action from the past. On the one hand, 11 Underground can be presented as a loose reenactment that reproduces the form and duration of a past strike: 11 people confined inside a mine for 11 whole days. On the other hand, the speculative character of this what if scenario (what would happen if..), opens these 11 days to the unexpected, to new actions and directions that might emerge from the implementation of that speculative scenario into the town’s present reality. The intrinsic relation of reenactment with the past, together with the future-oriented nature of what if scenarios -as ways of engaging creatively with possibilities- are, in fact, representative and metaphorical of the current situation of Almadén, which tries to construct a future from the remains of the mining past, while deeply struggling with the negative consequences of the lack of structural plans after the end of mining. Overall, the way this artistic research approaches reenactment is by using the historical referent (i.e. the past mining strike) as a documentary scenario and performing it in the current socio-political conditions, opening the possibility to intervene in the present and collectively imagine possibilities for a better future.