TAhTO Research School

Series of events, workshops and performances by TAhTO Doctoral Programme (University of the Arts Helsinki and Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture): Henna-Riikka Halonen, Dirk Hoyer, Esa Kirkkopelto, Itay Ziv, Tero Nauha, Elina Lifländer, Julius Elo, Kirsi Törmi, Kiril Kozlovsky, Sirkka Kosonen, and Pasi Lyytikäinen.

The University of the Arts Helsinki organised a Research Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. This first pavilion in the history of the biennale to be dedicated to research consists of an international contemporary art exhibition and a platform for events, both featuring artistic research. The theme of the Research Pavilion was experimentality. Both the exhibition and the research events explored the following questions: How does experimentality manifest itself in contemporary art? Did the discourse on artistic research and its methodologies redefine our ideas regarding experiments and experimentality? Does current research generate new types of methodologies (such as affective or multisensory approaches) reassessing the nature of experimentation? In addition questions pop up such as: Does the concept of laboratory retain its sense in the context of artistic research? Could artistic research laboratories be seen as strategic, transdisciplinary platforms that enable research to be reimagined in new ways, i.e. by creating aesthetic preconditions for experimentation allowing topical problems to be addressed in some hybrid form? Does an artistic research laboratory facilitate new connections between science, aesthetics, and politics?

>>>