Jenny Perlin (Oslo National Academy of the Arts)
Going Under
The doctoral project Going Under investigates the impulse to escape into the underground. The aim of the project is to examine how narratives of individualism and myths of self-sufficiency affect individual lives in subterranean sites. The project argues that contested narratives of the underground can be mined productively by activating overlooked and unstable material aspects of analog film. This approach to methods emphasizes contingency and gap and seeks to challenge oppositional models of above and below, concrete and ephemeral, domestic and foreign. Working through the analog film frame can serve as a way to illuminate the desire to escape. Pressures and conflicts around labor, ownership, and racial, class, and gender discrimination usually remain hidden within the darkened spaces of frame lines, camera errors, or film grain. These elements are meant to be invisible and inaccessible, much like the underground. The research will focus on activating material concerns in the context of practical fieldwork with individuals living in new and abandoned military bunkers, missile silos, and shelters. Going Under seeks to reveal, through practice-based research, the hidden histories and conflicting politics of underground sites and the people inhabiting them.
Biography: Jenny Perlin makes 16mm films, videos, drawings and animations. Her films work with and against the documentary tradition, incorporating innovative stylistic techniques to emphasize issues of truth, misunderstanding, and personal history. Her projects look closely at ways in which social machinations are reflected in the fragments of daily life. Perlin’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and film festivals, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, and others.
Ola Sendstad (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Design)
Stories from birch production
The artistic research will work with aesthetic experiments and stories from forest, forestry and the saw line. The focus is birch and birch forest, with its rich, but to a large extend lost tradition for use, with its strong and special qualities and as underdog position to spruce and pine. A continuous underlying question is how the forest as place, ecosystem, production site, cultural heritage and work environment can be closer and expressed connected to materials, things, and building. When we build, we build both the place where resources are added and the place they are taken from. I am interested in forest as nature and industry, but even more as culture.
Biography: Ola Sendstad is an architect and organic farmer. He got a master’s in architecture from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2011 and have since then run his own practice. Through installations, interventions, publications, exhibitions, and events he works with questions around our physical environment’s usefulness, inherent qualities and collective and individual values, often with a starting point in cultural heritage.
Peter Knudsen (NTNU)
Expanding horizons – a jazz exploration of 20th-century art music
The artistic research project "Expanding horizons" focuses on the meeting between jazz musicians and 20th century classical music, to contribute with knowledge on how this encounter can serve as a way for jazz musicians to expand their musical language and an understanding on how improvisers approach material from another musical tradition. Through the creation of musical arrangements and compositions, with constellations ranging from duos to big band, the project sets out to answer to following research questions:
- How does the process unfold when contemporary jazz musicians approach the musical language of 20th century classical music?
- What kinds of improvisational approaches are involved in these processes?
- In what ways can these encounters serve as ways for jazz improvisers to expand their musical vocabulary?
Biography: Peter Knudsen (NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology) is a jazz pianist and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden, and a PhD fellow at NTNU in Trondheim. His albums explore themes as diverse as French Impressionism, Swedish Romanticism, as well as his own compositions inspired by nature, literature and life itself. These can be heard on his octet album ”Sagas of the Present”, released by Italian label CAM Jazz and reviewed favorably by Down Beat, All About Jazz alongside European magazines. He was also commissioned to write music for Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, resulting in the folklore-inspired suite “Nature Spirits”, with an album with the same name released by Do Music Records in 2019. Peter is also a member of Derupeto, an international quartet with members from Sweden, Brazil and Mozambique. See also: www.peterknudsen.com / https://www.ntnu.no/ansatte/peter.knudsen
Video example (duo with classical guitarist David Härenstam)
Sergej Tchirkov University of Bergen)
(Re)-Thinking Virtuosity
The project aims to explore the performer's perspective on the notion and role of virtuosity in experimental music practice. Is it simply a reference to technical prowess and the ability to provide “error free” performance? Or it is a force that is codified in the structure of a composition and informs the actions of performers resulting from conscious or embodied knowledge of their instruments? And if so, how does this force affect the composer's experience embodied in the score and how does it inform the performer's strategies at the moment of performance? Could it be that virtuosity is actually for many not the few? To investigate this, I plan to problematise the notion of virtuosity by integrative use of artistic and scientific methodological strategies. The historical background of ‘virtuosity’ shall be explained in order to determine the validity of the term itself in the context of current discourse that considers performer a co-creator of the work. This will provide a framework for the core part of my research – reflection through practice on my own practice, in which I plan to unfold the process of integrative collaborations with five composers of very different backgrounds and to examine the collaborative and individual choices which are taken whilst conceiving the work, developing the compositions, and performing it in various environments. The objective is to focus specifically on the agent of instrumentality as part of the social mechanics of interaction between composer, performer and the score. The development of this collaborative method will be documented and examined using socio-scientific inductive tools. My key objective is to create a vocabulary of practice that apprehends new viewpoints on historically problematic meaning of virtuosity and to fill the existing gap in current research discourse when it comes to artistic investigation of the agencies which inform the uniqueness of sonorous production.
Biography: Sergej Tchirkov (University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, The Grieg Academy - Department of Music) studied accordion performance and music pedagogy at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St.Petersburg. He was awarded prizes at many international competitions and received the scholarship from the European Centre of Arts Hellerau. His research interests focus on digital and postdigital art, transdisciplinary genres, co-creative aspect of performance practice, curatorial practice in music, and artistic research. His interest in new music has led him, as a performer, to numerous collaborations with composers. Around 300 works for/with accordion have been premiered by Tchirkov. A regular guest musician of Collegium Novum Zürich, Proton Ensemble Bern and Batida Ensemble Genève, Sergej Tchirkov has also performed with Ensemble Interface Frankfurt, Ensemble für Neue Musik Zürich, ensemble Garage Köln, AJO ensemble Bodø, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, United Berlin, KNM Berlin, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the St.Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, musicAeterna Orchestra, State “Svetlanov” Orchestra, BRSO and more. Tchirkov has been a guest lecturer at many European universities and academies of music including Zurich University of Arts, Lucerne University of Arts, Gothenburg University, Norwegian Academy of music Oslo, Kazakh National University of Arts Astana. In 2011-2014 he taught at the International New Music Academy organised by the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble. From 2013 to 2021 he was deputy artistic director of the Studio for New Music ensemble and worked as a university lecturer of Contemporary Music Department and researcher at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He currently works as a research fellow in artistic research at the University of Bergen, Department of Fine Art, Music and Design, the Grieg Academy.
The questions that I refer to in the abstract could be exemplified with the following video of my performance (credit: Sehyung Kim QI II for accordionist (2012).
Solveig Wiig (NTNU / Volda University College)
An exploration of line and characters in feminist universes of discourse /
En utforskning av linje og karakterer i feministiske univers
During the period of four years of artistic research I will utilize my background as an illustrator and animator. In addition to my artistic practice, I also have a background as an art and film theorist that will contribute to my reflection regarding the methods and processes in artistic research. The project will involve both preparing a third comic book within an established feminist comic book universe, called "Fragments" as well as developing one of these stories into an animated short film. The comic will be printed in a risograph technique as a book of roughly 32 pages, and the film has an intended scope of 7 minutes. / I dette kunstneriske utviklingsarbeidet vil jeg utnytte min tredelte bakgrunn som illustratør, animasjonsfilmskaper, og kunst- og filmteoretiker. Prosjektet vil innebære å både utarbeide en tredje tegneseriebok innenfor et etablert feministisk serieunivers, kalt «Bruddstykker», og dessuten: å videreutvikle en av historiene i denne del 3 av tegneseriebøkene til en animert kortfilm. Tegneserien vil ha et omfang på 32 sider, og filmen har et tiltenkt omfang på 7 minutter.
Biography: Animator, illustrator and teacher with wide-ranging education and experience. Artist within the fields of comic books and film who has received Artist Grants from The Norwegian Fund for Illustration, Grafill, and The Arts Council Norway. The graphic novel Fragments No.1 was nominated for the Award Visuelt 2017 under the category illustration. Experience includes freelance work as an illustrator and designer for publishers, magazines, record companies, and film industry. Publications within promotional work, children’s books, editorial illustration, graphic-and web design.
Trygve Nielsen (NTNU / Volda University College)
Animated Notation / Animert notasjon
The project will through experiments in animated film create expressions that are suitable for animated notation - animated film images for reading or writing music. Animated pictures as guide to performing music can be traced back to the 1920s and Fleicher studios bouncing ball sing-along films. The last decade the development has taken up speed, and animation has e.g. been used widely in digital music learning apps and explored by experimental contemporary composer. This development has mainly come from a technical or musical perspective. This project would like to develop the field from an animation perspective: how are the unique properties of animation, e.g. to produce metamorphosis, the ability to create an illusion of life, or make invisible or impossible movements possible, suitable to express music. The project outcome will mainly take the form of short animated films. These could either be directly connected to the creation of music, or the could be apt to stimulate the viewers to create their own sound-picture analogies or musical ideas. / Prosjektet vil gjennom kunstnariske eksperiment med animasjonsfilm skape uttrykk som er egna for animert notasjon - animerte filmbilete for å lese eller skrive musikk. Animerte bilete som guide til framføring av musikk kan sporast tilbake til 20-talet og Fleicher Studios bouncing ball karaokefilmar. Dei siste tiåra har utviklinga skutt fart, og animasjon har til dømes blitt brukt i ei rekke digitale musikkopplærings-reiskap, og nytta eksperimentelt av samtidsmusikk-komponistar. Den seinare utviklinga har i stor grad skjedd frå eit dataingeniør eller musikarperspektiv. Dette prosjektet ønsker å utvikle feltet frå eit animasjonsperspektiv; korleis kan dei unike eigenskapane til animasjon, til dømes å kunne framstille metamorfosar, ein illusjon av liv, eller gjere usynlege eller umoglege rørsle mogeleg, vere egna til å uttrykke musikk. Doktorgradsarbeidet vil i hovudsak ta form av korte animerte filmar. Desse kan enten vere direkte knyta til skapinga av musikk, eller dei kan vere egna til å stimulere sjåaren til å skape eigne lyd-bilete analogiar eller musikalske idear.
Biography: Trygve Nielsen is a phd-student in filmmaking who is specially interested in the connections between drawing, animation and music. He has made independent short films, commissioned films, illustrations, made music for film and theater, along with being part time employed at Volda University College where he the last years have been responsible for the animation program. / Trygve Nielsen er ein Ph.d-student og filmskapar som er spesielt interessert i samanhengane mellom teikning, animasjon og musikk. Han har laga uavhengige kortfilmar, oppdragsfilm, illustrasjonar, laga musikk for film og teater, ved sidan av å vere deltidstilsett ved Høgskulen i Volda kor han dei siste åra har vore ansvarleg for anmisjonsutdanninga.
Dler Mariam Dalo / Shwan Dler Qaradaki (nickname) (Oslo National Academy of the Arts)
Babel Confusion - Suppression of the mother tongue via drawing and sound
Research question: Can the suppression of the mother tongue of visual artists affect their visual modes of expression? Via the Babel Confusion project I wish to investigate what kinds of artistic obstacles individual artists with a minority background face when totalitarian regimes prevent them from talking and expressing themselves in their mother tongue. I wish to investigate if suppression of mother tongue influences their visual modes of expression and how. What kind of people result from a ruling nation state preventing an individual minority from expressing itself in the language closest to its heart and brain?
I am a Kurd who grew up in Iraqi Kurdistan under the Saddam Hussein regime. Until I was 20 years old, the use of my Kurdish mother tongue was restricted. This was part of the oppression we were subjected to. To take my mother tongue away from me also meant removing part of my identity. I now wish to examine what consequences this has had for other Kurdish artists who are among minorities in Iran, Turkey and Syria. A continuous, systematic suppression of Kurds is still taking place, particularly in these three countries. I would also like to look at similarities in language loss among Norwegian-Sámi and Kurdish artists in relation to the Norwegianisation of the Sámi and Kven peoples in Norway. Are the suppressive strategies similar when the aim is to blend the language, religion and costumes of the minority with those of the majority? Certain minorities do not have the privilege of expressing their many affiliations, of exercising their religion and culture, or of speaking their mother tongue.This suppression can so severe that the minorities can experience being discriminated against or imprisoned, being exposed to violence or even being killed. Such suppression can lead to certain minorities refusing to learn the language of the majority or submitting to their supremacy. In some instances, those suppressed can rebel, resort to violence or revenge. Will a cultural and artistic vacuum be created if the suppressed artist does not accept learning the enforced language of the majority while at the same time he or she has not gained mastery of the mother tongue? Does insufficient knowledge about one’s own culture, origins, art history, literature and philosophy influence what one wishes to carry out and communicate? Will it limit creativity and influence the artist’s choice of artistic issues, modes of expression and choice of artistic material? Can such suppression results in a humiliated and mentally impoverished artist? Can such a strategy of suppression backfire and result in a more rebellious and activist art and form of art? In this research project, and via my artistic practice which is anchored in drawing in a broad sense, I wish to investigate the consequences of language loss in visual artists. In so doing, I wish to contribute to creating a new understanding of what personal affiliation/connection artists who have been linguistically suppressed have to their mother tongue and how it has influenced them as individuals. The project will be able to contribute to an understanding of how visual art, and drawing in particular, can contribute to reflection about language and language affiliation by being an accessible and visual method of expression and investigation.
Suggestions for works. Please use a headset.
My Brother Still Whispers To Me
Password: 0911