PHILOSOPHY IN THE ARTS : ARTS IN PHILOSOPHY CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEART IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH (AR) AND PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY (PP). PEEK-Project(FWF: AR822). by Arno Boehler

Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public. Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact. The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).

HOME

The first task of cARE consists in creating a notebook. The notebook will be an artefact that

stands for itself, but also serves as a script for the field-performances, which finally will be staged at the research-festival POS#6 and POS#7 at BRUT Wien in Vienna as well as in India at ADISHAKTI Theatre Research and SAVRAM. The notebook will include visual notifications of impulses, intuitions, arguments, concepts, reflections and analysis that emerge in the course of our research among the members of cARE. The notebook will include discursive elements, but also drawings, stage-plans, photos, handwritings, poems and the notifications and reflections of our Scientific Advisory Board. It will articulate the voices of contemporary Physics, Cardiology, South-Asian Studies and Nietzsche-Studies. The notebook will be published finally as a bi-lingual art-book in English and German.

NOTEBOOK

We aim to make an experimental film on the utopian city-project Auroville (Tamil Nadu, India).

Auroville is a field-experiment in Tamil Nadu for the construction of a utopian city, inaugurated by Mira Alfassa in 1968 on the basis of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. We read Auroville as a social sculpture on the scale of an entire city. The city stands under the protection of UNESCO and has been an object of investigation already in the PhD thesis of PI Böhler. Aurelio, one of our key researchers, lives there since more than 30 years. As an artefact, this experimental-film will be sent to the annual Auroville Film Festival and other experimental film festivals in Europe and abroad. Like the notebook the film will also serve as a material for the field-performances, staged on POS#6-POS#7.

FILM AUROVILLE

cARE will realize 12 cross-disciplinary field-performances on The Significance of the Heart in

AR and PP. The notebook and the experimental film on Auroville will be core sources of inspiration for 12 field-performances, while the poetic concepts of the *Heart* in Savitri and Thus Spoke Zarathustra will serve us as a dramaturgical thread that runs through all of them. Finally, these field-performances will be shared with the public.

FIELD PERFORMANCE

ART LABS

Art-Labs. To develop our notebook and the field-performances for POS#6 and POS#7, four Art-

Labs will be initiated within the first 2 1⁄2 years of this PEEK-project, in which cARE will meet each time for about 4 days to collectively let these artefacts emerge out of singular-plural practices. Böhler and Granzer have developed special formats how to organize such art-labs in a productive artistic manner in the course of their former research (e.g. https://homepage.univie.ac.at/arno.boehler/php/residence-programme-india/

HEART LAB

To share our research with the non-academic public from

the very beginning, we will install mobile *Heart-Labs* at public places like shopping-malls, art- institutions, hospitals, universities or at political events etc. These *Heart-Labs* serve as a mobile library equipped with books, artefacts and scientific articles relevant for the role, the *Heart* plays for each of us in our everydayness. Volkstheater Vienna has agreed to serve as a host for such a mobile *Heart-Lab* at Red Bar (cf. Rote Bar: https://www.volkstheater.at/produktion/1774973/three-ecologies/1775096/ ). And Christoph Krammer, director of the ece shopping center Kapfenberg has invited us to install such a mobile *Heart-Lab* at the shopping mall he is running.

In addition to these mobile *Heart-Lab*, regular Yoga-Research-Retreats on the Heart will be offered to the public at the research-center KHÔRA, a center for AR and PP in the countryside of lower Austria. These two low-threshold research formats are meant to integrate the interested public from the very beginning in our research-process.

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