recent activities
XRW (Implicature)
(2024)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Sketchbook of 53 A3 drawings with coloured markers, including 4 A3 collages with newspaper cutouts and printed photos. Sketchbook cover with red nail polish.
22 A4 drawings with ballpoint pen.
Preparatory work, 2023-2024.
I adopted the visual vocabulary of the graphic novel, which I partly studied and read a lot about looking at different graphic artists' work, when I was attending classes at the University of Malmo, Sweden, in 2012. I mixed this with stylistic elements of the architectural sketch, using heavily the black marker and stick figures. This visual approach gives a slightly comical note to the otherwise dark subject matter.
"Pop and Politics" (Pop Og Politikk)
Where does the boundary run between art and popular culture? Pop art embraces the iconography of mass culture. Themes are taken from advertising comics, cinema and TV. The slick, impersonal style is a deliberate provocation.
In Norway, pop art is part of a broader left-wing protest movement. Everything from capitalism and imperialism to environmental and gender politics is subjected to critical scrutiny. The exclusive, unique artwork is replaced by mass-produced prints and posters, well suited to spreading a political message."
From the National Museum, Oslo, Norway.
Partisans With a Hoe - Spontaneous Gardening in Urban Space
(2024)
Ivana Balcaříková, Barbora Lungova
This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Journal of Artistic Research documents
some of these findings.
The team
Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project.
Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT.
Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT.
Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague.
Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine.
Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT.
The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.
The Loot
(2024)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Islington studio flat 4, at 14 Barnsbury Road, London, 2022, privately rented. Interior design as an art installation. Looted, 2024.
My personal belongings were still at the property for two months, after I left on 27 March 2024 and was asked to collect them by 3 or 4 April 2024 from Woolwich. They moved in two or three under aged, who I have never met and were pretending to be my daughters. They must have been removing them one by one over the last few months and until October 2024.
14 Barnsbury Road was deemed illegal through the courts, on 22 April, shortly after I was forced to leave in March. The maintenance employed many Polish citizens, all dressed in black with black caps, like all XRW supporters dress.
Twenty-one (20+1) digital photographs for twenty (20) missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity non-EU immigrants and one (1) missing Italian citizen.
The twenty-one persons whose details got stolen were abducted by Golden Dawn, the NRM and possibly Forza Nuova; they are deceased.
My personal details were also stolen. Was I going yo be the twenty-second?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(magazine)
Investigatory research with artworks. The artworld has been traditionally male dominated. This has changed a little bit in contemporary art, but not dramatically. Female artists have sometimes adopted male attitudes or personas to break into the art scene; notably, Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin from the YBA movement. I hold the view that art is not gendered, for instance that there is no art for women or so-called feminine art. Good art transcends such categories, tapping into more universal experiences.
For Chris, who was suddenly transferred by his employer, from London, where his daughter lives, to somewhere outside of London; and for Lawrence, whose temporary post was prematurely terminated, though he was planning to return to his legal studies. To all those who don't just "play" the cultural and racial diversity clause.
recent publications
Watch the sound – listen to the gesture
(2024)
Kerstin Frödin
This artistic PhD project is based on the author’s practice as a recorder player and chamber musician in contemporary Western art music. Through an initial study of the embodied and tacit knowledge of chamber musicians and how it is articulated through gestural interaction during performance, the perspective of the thesis widens to explore how such qualities can be used as a creative resource in interdisciplinary collaboration. At its core, the PhD work has explored long-term collaborative processes in projects where a series of chamber music works have been brought to a staged context, but always keeping the qualities of chamber music at its centre. The research questions that emerge from these conceptual and artistic aims are:
– How can I understand and transfer the communicative and embodied qualities inherent in chamber music playing to staged interdisciplinary contexts?
– How can the concept of the gestural-sonic object, and the multimodal understanding of human perception which it implies, constitute both an analytical tool and a source for artistic experimentation?
– How can musical interpretation be applied in the creation of staged interdisciplinary performances?
The method and design of the project builds on collaborations with artists from the fields of composition, choreography, dance, theatre and visual arts. In the projects, the participating artists have aimed to explore and develop collaborative methods and staged formats where the artforms at the same time have been considered as autonomous and as part of a compound whole. The results of the artistic work are published online in the Research Catalogue.
The project findings suggest that interdisciplinary approaches, such as experimental music theatre, composed theatre and choreomusical practices, may enable the liberation from traditional roles, hierarchies and predetermined formats and can lead to what can be described as a radical interpretation of the original score. Through a study of musical gesture – building on a theoretical framework grounded in embodied cognition and phenomenology – the thesis presents examples, both artistic and theoretical, of processes through which boundaries between artistic disciplines have been consciously blurred, thereby providing novel creative opportunities for the classical music performer.
A Dialogue of Music between East and West: New Interpretations of 20th-Century Art Songs Based on Ancient Chinese Poems
(2024)
Zijing Meng
This research aims to combine my two artistic identities as a Chinese zither (古筝) player and as a classical singer. After researching, interpreting and analyzing two art song cycles from the 20th century, 5 Poems of Ancient China and Japan by Charles Griffes and Songs of Autumn (秋之歌) by Zhongrong Luo (罗忠镕), I integrate Chinese traditional music forms, ornamentation and instrumentation into my vocal performance. The methodology includes literature review, expert interview, internet media review, score analysis, language analysis and experimental music practice. The outcomes highlight my approach of incorporating inspiration from zither music and folk singing styles into the art song cycles, while also addressing the ethical considerations encountered throughout the research process.
The Rhythms of Harmony in Space
(2024)
Ferdinand Schwarz
When sounds meet in space, they interact with each other, they diffract, change, and create new ones - these artefacts are always present, have always been heard, but here they become the music itself. Creating a space of both extreme clarity and overwhelming complexity, they lay bare a music that exists within our perception of steady sounds, a music that listeners create themselves through listening in space.
What forms of creating, performing, and listening can be developed by making the phenomenon of wave interference my main musical material? And what implications can this phenomenon have as a figuration for the entities involved in performing and listening?