Research Catalogue

ARTikulationen 2023 is an artistic research event conceived and organised by the Doctoral School for Artistic Research (KWDS) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). It takes place at Theater im Palais, Graz, 04–07 October 2023. ARTikulationen interweaves in-depth presentations of very recent artistic research and findings, a festival character, and a mini-symposium – this year on matters of interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness of research practices with the (sound) environment, nature, and other living beings („Researching Across“).

Art activism is powerful. Also known as activist art, protest art, visual activism, artivism and creative activism, it changes lives, situations and is and has been a powerful weapon across a whole spectrum of struggles for justice. Teresa Sanz & Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos(2021) relay that art activism has the unique ability to bring cohesion and diverse peoples together and it can, as Zeynep Tufekci notes, change the participants (2017). As Steve Duncombe & Steve Lambert (2021) posit, traditional protesting such as marches or squats are no longer as important as they once were. As a result of my own lived experience in activist activities, I very much agree with Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell (2012) that the reason people use art activism is that it works, by enriching and improving protest. In the past, when I lived in a metropolis and was not a parent, I used to be an activist. Now I no longer have immediate access to international headquarters at which to protest and I have to be concerned with being arrested, I am hindered from protesting. This project is an attempt to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism. By devising methods which include at least one of the following: that do not require on-site participation, that can take place outside the public gaze, that reduce the risk of arrest, that open up protest sites that are not “big targets”, that include remote locations, that involve irregular timing, my thesis aims to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism to those who are underserved by more mainstream methods of conducting art activism. Textiles have unique properties that enable them to engage in subterfuge and speak loudly through care and thought(Bryan-Wilson, 2017). They have strong connotations of domesticity, the body and comfort that can be subverted within art activism to reference lack of this domestic warmth and protection(O’Neill, 2022). Being a slow form of art-making, they show care and thought, attention in the making, so that the messaging is reinforced through this intentionality in slow making.

WALKING AS PRACTICE WAP23 was a process-based residency during September-November 2023, where artists using walking as a method delved into each others’ knowledges and things they encountered together at BKN, the Northern Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden. Fieldworks, share sessions and seminars were created jointly to locate and entangle structures, narratives and themes for walking. The residency formed a transformative, dynamic space for art that engaged with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings: the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area. Processing how walking is interlocked in our artistic practices, this exposition represents a gathering of texts, visuals and audio from the walking art residency. The selected artists contributed with interdisciplinary practices, primarily drawing, photography, video, performance and dance. They worked both individually, in spontaneous constellations and in group sessions. The dissemination of the program took place in share sessions upon arrival of new artists - including dinners, open studios, walks, workshops etc. In addition, as the program unfolded, each artist developed their own exposition.

This Book of Scores presents the standard music notation for the compositions featured in the album 'Portfolio'. Each piece is crafted for solo bass guitar, pushing the instrument's expressive boundaries and revealing its rich polyphonic potential. Through inventive arrangements, these compositions invite bassists to explore new dimensions of solo performance.

Welcome to "Studies in Kunstvakidiotie". Here, you can browse through the photographs, essays, drawings, audio and video clips. ‘Studies in kunstvakidiotie’ is the doctoral research of Mirjam van Tilburg at Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA). This is a study in arts education from within the arts. She tries to shift the dominant image of life-long-learning (LLL) and provide insight into the possibilities that this LLL space also provides to art teachers. By searching in this way, more and more became clear about life-long-learning of art teachers. Therefore, a linear cause-and-effect narrative did not seem to do justice to the subject matter. The term ‘studies’ in the title is sketchy — it also involves repetition and seeking connections and, above all, it is a derivative of studio and study. Five essays form the markers within ‘Studies in Kunstvakidiotie’. Together, they construct a narrative. The essay ‘(onder)zoek in kunsteducatie’ describes practices and values that stem from Mirjam van Tilburg’s artistic practice: education. The motivation behind this research is that art teachers find LLL events to be limited. The essay ‘LLO als commoning practice’ discusses the possibilities of commoning practices. The examples: The New School Collective and studios are outlined herein. The studios are the experiment within this doctoral research. During the winter of 2020-2021, Mirjam van Tilburg worked with ten art teachers. The experiment of this doctoral project coincided with the Covid-19 crisis. Together they occupied artist studios in Tilburg and Rotterdam to de-automate and look at teaching practices. The essays ‘Blik’ and ‘Tijd’ therefore propose two topics of conversation within LLL: the ‘aesthetic glance’ and the temporal experience of ‘interruption’. These essays question the efficient and productive order prevailing in the work environment and LLL of art teachers. The essay ‘Herontdekking van Kunstvakidiotie’ is the story of a change in the craft of art teachers in the first Covid-19 crisis year. The term ‘kunstvakidiotie’ in the title cannot be directly translated into English because it is a compound word and may have specific connotations in the Dutch context. The essay describes how in these studios, art subject teachers had one foothold: artistic fervour.

Our bodies are porous entities that interconnect with and depend on the broader collectivity of human and nonhuman life that exists within a shared environment. Using the figuration of synthetic bodies, this exposition aims to examine the relationships in which we are enmeshed as our bodies absorb and excrete chemicals. With a focus on involuntary exposure to industrially manufactured chemicals (as opposed to exposure to naturally occurring chemicals or voluntary experimentation with chemicals of all types), this exposition invites readers to learn about the chemicals to which we are exposed and by which we are affected. With the ubiquity of chemicals in the environment, who are we becoming? How do chemicals affect us and how do we interact with them? How can we live well with chemicals in spite of their potential to harm? Adopting a decolonial feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist approach and embracing queer ecological sensibilities, this exposition develops protocols for embodied and materially embedded research practices that trace the effects of exposure to chemicals in everyday life. In so doing, it aims to demonstrate how we might build resilience through encounters with toxicity, contamination, and impurity. Download Accessible PDF