Research Catalogue

Performance philosophy is still something of a ‘wild frontier’ where fundamental questions can be re-posed concerning the nature of wisdom and love, life and truth. For if love and wisdom are not co-extensive with verbal communication, then philosophy may be legitimately pursued by performative means. In this session the participants aim is to enact and unfold a set of trajectories rather than describe or 'define' their work in words alone. Passion and grief are disruptive currencies. Passion and grief not only seem un-necessary for biological life, they frequently threaten it. Yet a life lived without them would seem impoverished. Whether one views these turbulent affects as parasites, invaders, or as the engines of higher culture, they inhabit philosophy as an ineradicable black-market haunts all states and empires. We aim to consider this under-zone on its own terms, weaving theory with demonstrations of transferable techniques for cross-disciplinary research.

CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PORTO. October 16, 17, 18th, 2024 :: Drawing Across :: Along :: Between University Borders considers the epistemological and transformative potential of drawing research to connect divergent areas in the university today. The conference focuses on drawing-based collaborations between art, science and society to tackle artistic, educational and societal challenges. We invite artists, scientists, educators, students, university policymakers and persons interested in inter-transdisciplinary practices across academia, research, and society to contribute and join the discussion in three possible directions: ACROSS - In what ways are drawing practitioners challenging the disciplinary strictures that often constrain thinking and acting across divergent areas in the university? ALONG - How can drawing activities be an ally of STEM education in the university, and how can STEM practices be an ally of drawing education? BETWEEN - How can drawing-based practices and STEM disciplines collaborate to address the urgency of societal challenges?

Happening, 2016. Participant's research, including improvised full recorded interview with first generation Albanian immigrants to Greece, images, and thematic text. The research was conducted for the workshop, "Logics of Worlds", inspired by Alain Badiou's work and organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016. Adopting the political approach of Badiou's "L' Organisation Politique" to apply direct intervention for societal problems, including immigration and labour, I used play as a method to facilitate improvised discussions. People share and respond more freely when participating in structured, but playful interactions, such as those a game involves. Albanians speak three languages, Albanian, Italian and, a few of them, Greek, so I wasn't able to translate parts of the conversation. Avlona is an English now obsolete name for Vlore, an Albanian seaport and former ancient Greek colony Aulon. Albanians came as refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. Notably, the men I spoke to didn't want to be visualised. Hence, the exposition aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible. Badiou is also known for his philosophy of metaphysics of the four "truth procedures": Politics, Science, Love and Art. The workshop was slightly interrupted by a performance art student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating (by symbolically re-assigning the gender of male) Albanian non-EU refugees. For this exposition, I include an essay by Pantelis Boukalas, in Kyriakos Katzourakis, O "Dromos Pros Ti Dysi" (The Way to the West), 2001, as well as Kyriakos Katzourakis' introduction in English. I don't have any personal or other connections with Albania (or North Macedonia); I had never visited before 2024. This was a project to research and document in an artistic manner the refugee and immigration crisis, as I experienced it in my native Greece and to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees. Non-EU economic refugees must not be confused with political asylum seekers, who encounter persecution for political reasons from the countries of origin or citizenship. Albania (North Macedonia and Kosovo) is a non-EU country; Greece, my native (and my parents' and grandparents' native), has been in the EU since 1981. I have also been a UK national, by naturalisation, since 2011. Paradoxically, the outcome of this project was that fictitious non-EU son/daughter of mine have been (since 2018) on UK police databases, as disabled 21 year-old Albanian male; and 22 Italian/Albanian female. I must have been given birth to a daughter in Albania in 2001 and 2002! (!! the "prostitutes"; that's believable!! Golden Dawn's, the BNP's, and others' cultural "imagination" with regards to Albanians): in 2001, I was living in the UK and in 2002 in Greece, engaged to be married to my former husband, a Greek national, working as an architect. Greek children take their father's surname and the Greeks don't have many children; they're suffering from a shrinking population, although they are in the EU since 1981. My concerns about serious international organised criminal activity (not even honouring children's basic rights) were reported and confirmed by the Greek, Scandinavian and Albanian authorities. The British authorities are lagging behind with their impossible unverified "stories", bashing the left - or whatever is left of it. The Greek Golden Dawn - with their "Big Idea" (Megali Idea) of conquering foreign countries, like North Macedonia, and their chronic attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece - was convicted as a criminal organisation in October 2020. They invented the 'concept' of the 'Real Greek', dependent on any Greek's political orientation. Now they're losing their sixty seven (67) appeals - and early releases. The conversation took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts, despite the fact they were frightened. Manolis Glezos was the only Greek politician, who went to visit Magda Fyssa, Pavlos' mother, in the Greek courts. For Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P. For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP. For the missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants. For Michalis Katsouris. For the "Other Greek Left". Thanks to the Albanian embassy in London and the Albanian police. Thanks also to Skopje police and Pristine police. Finally, thanks to the Greek police chief and the Greek police organised crime division. The work is in progress.

O projeto apresenta-se como uma investigação centrada nas reverberações da prática artística diante dos arquivos institucionais e privados e de imagens e objetos-vestígios encontrados no Vale do Ave (Portugal), relacionados à história, ao imaginário e à memória do itinerário do algodão e da indústria têxtil algodoeira neste território. Através de caminhadas, do respigo de imagens, documentos e objetos e de um processo crítico de fabulação ativam-se linguagens artísticas que questionam as narrativas e discursos monolíticos prevalecentes nos modos como a história se constrói e instituí nos espaços de enunciação pública, formando as identidades regionais e nacionais e os imaginários sociais e coletivos. Problematiza-se assim as ausências e os negativos produzidos por uma história monumental, como espaços aporéticos mas ao mesmo tempo produtivos e agenciadores de outras narrativas potenciais acerca do passado, do presente e do futuro. English: From the absent image The project presents a research centred on the reverberations of artistic practice in the face of institutional and private archives, images and trace objects found in Vale do Ave (Portugal), related to the history, imagery and memory of the itinerary of cotton and the textile industry in this territory. Through walking, gleaning of images, documents and objects, and a critical process of fabulation, artistic languages are activated, questioning the prevailing monolithic narratives and discourses on how history is constructed and instituted in public spaces, forming regional and national identities and social and collective imaginaries. In this way, the absences and negatives produced by a monumental history are problematised as aporetic spaces that are simultaneously productive and agents of other potential narratives of the past, present and future. Download Accessible PDF

In Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung bergen die zufälligen Vermischungen von unterschiedlichen Orten und Zeiten auf einem Photo die Möglichkeit, Unbekanntes, Unbewusstes aufzuspüren, Spekulationen über Zufall, Leere und Unendlichkeit anzustellen oder Immanenz zu erfahren. Dieser Artikel begibt sich mit dem Konzept der Non-Photographie von F. Laruelle, des aleatorischen Materialismus von L. Althusser sowie den immanenzphilosophischen Überlegungen von G. Deleuze und F. Guattari auf die Spuren einer Ontologie resp. einer non-onto-photo-logischen Beschreibung von Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtungen. Im Zentrum dieser Betrachtung steht die Annahme, dass eine Photographie nicht als ein Klon der Realität, als ein fetischistischer Realismus zu betrachten ist, sondern als Umkehrung dieser Ordnung: In der Imagination begründet sich die Realität der Photographie, weil in Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung durch das Ineinandergehen der Objekte den Objektformen die Kausalität entzogen wird. Es entsteht ein erkenntnistheoretisches, ein sinnliches Dazwischen. Diese zentrale Annahme, dass in einer solchen Nicht-Standard-Ästhetik der Doppel- oder Mehrfachbelichtung keine Doubles der Welt produziert werden, sondern Indeterminanten, hat zur Folge, dass diese Zufälligkeiten, Variablen und Szenarien auch als solche erkannt werden müssen, weshalb in diesem Artikel theoretische Legenden im Anschluss an Laruelle, Althusser und Deleuze/Guattari entwickelt werden, die es erlauben, die Immanenz der Bilder zu erfassen. English N-fold Exposures - Non-Photography, Aleatory Materialism, Images without Objects In classical photography, analog double or multiple exposures are considered as an accident, a mistake, or unaesthetic. But the accidental blending of different places and times in a photo holds the possibility to detect the unknown, the unconscious, to speculate about co-incidence or to experience immanence. This article goes on the traces of an ontology resp. a non-onto-photo-logical description of n-exposures with Francois Laruelle’s non-philosophical visual aid as well as the philosophy of Althusser, Deleuze and Guattari. At the center of this consideration is the assumption not to regard a photo as a clone of reality, as a fetishistic realism, but as an inversion of this order: not the photo simulates reality, but the image establishes reality. Therefore a photo can develop a life of its own, a reality of its own. Through the interlocking of objects in multiple exposures, the object forms in the photography are deprived of causality, thus creating an epistemological, a sensual in-between, i.e., possibility spheres of imagination and experience. The reflection that in the non-standard aesthetic of n-fold exposure no doubles of the world are produced, but indeterminants, has the consequence that these variables and scenarios has to be recognized as such. That is why in this article theoretical legends are developed, which allow to capture the immanence of the images by means of a non-standardized aesthetics. Download Accessible PDF

Through a form of critical autoethnography, this study diffracts aspects of the author’s artistic practice through the intimate process of mourning to delineate a particular mode of knowledge production within artistic research that queers the relationship between the inside and outside of epistemic and ontological perspectives. The first section considers the abyss as a figure between grief, the unknown, and modes of knowledge production within artistic research. The second section bridges the work of theorising as a form of reconfiguring the world through the study of diffracted light, and further delineates the practice of vibrant contemplation as a method of entangling art practice with theorisation processes beyond a dichotomous opposition between art and science. The final section contemplates the figure of the afterglow as a material-discursive phenomenon that emerges from the temporality of mourning vis-à-vis artistic research. Download Accessible PDF