Conference Programme Overview

Sharing Artistic Research Across Disciplines

Saturday 11:30 – 13.15 2nd parallel sessions – Choose one of the parallel sessions 2A – 2G

2A. Performative session: Writing Here and Now [back]

Session moderator: Jan Kaila, Uniarts Helsinki

Lizzie Ridout, Maria Christoforidou & Dion Star:
Various Writings Chapter One
 

'Various Writings Chapter One' is a eulogic taxonomy of writing acts and gestures presented as a 'performed publication'. It will contain visual and auditory archival material and new works that have arrived via an adapted antonymic translation.

Lizzie Ridout  – MA (RCA), Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Graphic Design & MA Illustration: Authorial Practice, Falmouth University

Maria Christoforidou – MA, Lecturer in Art History & Theory, Fine Art & Illustration, Falmouth & Plymouth Universities

Dion Star  – MA, Course Coordinator & Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Graphic Design, Falmouth University 

Mimi Cabell & Phoebe Stubbs:
Artfrom

A text-based working group using the specific case study of Artforum Magazine. Using its contents pages, we will visualize its critics, their voices’ frequency in the magazine over time, and the breadth of artists they review. In groups we will use mapping exercises to examine what this information looks like as patterns, drawing out the voices and themes that have dominated the magazine and constitute its authority in the western art canon.

Mimi Cabell – Assistant Professor of Design; Rhode Island School of Design
Phoebe Stubbs – Managing Editor, Journal for Artistic Research

Elisabeth Schäfer:
Life Writings – Writing a Life. On Writing and Autobiografiction as Artistic Research.
 

The proposed paper aims to flesh out Hélène Cixous’ understanding of “autobiografiction”, its significance for artistic research as well as "écriture féminine". AutobiograFICTION challenges our common understanding of autobiographical writing and let subjects arrive, which do not yet exist but emerge in the process of writing and become simultaneously potent in the same process. The singularity of such a written life is always a radically shared and sharing in an affective-political way.

Elisabeth Schäfer – Post-Doc-Researcher and Extern Lecturer, University of Vienna and University of Applied Arts Vienna

2B. Presentation: Research Catalogue [back]

Döbereiner, Strøm, Heikkinen & Schipper:
How Institutional SAR Members use the Research Catalogue as Portal

The Research Catalogue (RC), run by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), offers the opportunity for our institutional members to operate their own RC Portal for the organization and presentation of artistic research under their own institutional banner and publication policy. Such a portal is also used by SAR for the publication of the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).

In this session we will present three significantly different on-line approaches to portal profiles: by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP), the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (KC) and Finnish artistic research journal RUUKKU. 

Geir Strøm – NARP
Tero Heikkinen – RUUKKU
Casper Schipper – KC

Session moderator: Luc Döbereiner – SAR, RC Managing Officer 

Descriptions of sessions:

FRIDAY, 28 April 2017

Friday 13:00 – 16:00 1st parallel sessions – Choose one of the parallel sessions 1A – 1F

1A. Round-table: Aesthetics [back]

Session moderator: Alex Arteaga, Berlin University of the Arts

Michael Kelly, Gerard Vilar & Sarah Bainter Cunningham:
Evaluating the Contribution of Aesthetics to Arts Research

We understand aesthetics here as critical thinking about the epistemic, ethical, social, and other norms always already implicit in arts research. By talking with people engaged in arts research, we aim to render these norms explicit so that arts research can be evaluated on its own terms rather than merely on terms drawn (typically) from the social sciences (e.g., impact).
 

Michael Kelly – President, Transdisciplinary Aesthetics Foundation & Professor of Philosophy, UNC Charlotte USA
Gerard Vilar – Professor of Philosophy, Departament de Filosofia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Sarah Bainter Cunningham – Executive Director for Research, School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University (USA) & Founding Director, Arts Research Institute, VCU

1B. Performative session: Diagrammatic Thinking [back]

Session moderator: Sher Doruff, Gerrit Rietveld Academy / DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam Univesity of the Arts

Vytautas Michelkevicius:
Along Contours of Knowing: Mapping Artistic Research by Curator, Tutor, Artist, Researcher, ..., and Translator in Lithuania and Beyond

Debates on artistic research are dominated by artists doing research, however there are very few thoughts about curators and (social and humanities) researchers doing artistic research. How a debate through artistic research would look like? Among other participants here features my book “Converged by Artistic Research in Lithuania and Beyond: Along the Contours of Knowing" (2017). During the performative presentation some key issues from it will be revealed, translated and performed.
 

Vytautas Michelkevicius – Dr., Artistic director of Nida Art Colony & Associate professor, Vilnius Academy of Arts

Kamini Vellodi:
Diagrammatic Writing
 

Putting into practice Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of the diagram, I argue for the potential of diagrammatic writing for the conception of artistic research, beginning with idea of writing as 'the playing of a concept on a new stage'.
 

Kamini Vellodi – Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice, University of Edinburgh

Dean Kenning:
Drawing Politics
 

A live drawing lecture, mapping out a landscape of politics and political theory in an era of ideological crisis.
 

Dean Kenning – Research Fellow, School of Art & Architecture, Kingston University

1C. Performative session and workshop: Interactive Documentary [back]

Session moderator: Harri Laakso, Aalto University

Daniel Fetzner & Martin Dornberg:
Panoramic Meshwork

In the talk we will discuss the interactive documentary (http://waste.metaspace.de) of the artistic research project WASTELAND (2016/17) as a tool of thinking material entanglements.

Daniel Fetzner – Professor, Offenburg University

Martin Dornberg –  Dr., Freiburg University

1D. Collaborative session: Multicultural Contexts [back]

Session moderator: Tero Nauha, Uniarts Helsinki

Elina Mikkilä:
Exercises in Language

In this multilingual workshop we will explore the impact of (self-imposed) idiolectical restrictions on artistic identity formation. The exchange is based on a close reading of an excerpt of my literary piece ‘Mütter Land’ that the participants will be deciphering in a computer-generated translation in their respective mother tongue(s).

 The discussion will focus on: 1) semantic innovation and/or the weakening of the poetic function of language in the process of (interdisciplinary) translation; 2) non-comprehension as a catalyst for creative reflection; 3) feelings of disorientation and/or the empowering potential of minority discourses.

Elina Mikkilä – Dr. / Free literature-based researcher (Berlin)

Katri Hirvonen-Nurmi, Lea Kantonen & Pekka Kantonen:
Performing the community museum
 

Can Wixárika community museums widen our understanding of art and research? Can we let the objects speak?

Katri Hirvonen-Nurmi ­– M.A. Doctoral student, University of Helsinki / Artsequal; Curator at Helinä Rautavaara Museum
Lea Kantonen – D.A. Professor of Artistic research, Academy of Fine Arts at University of the Arts Helsinki
Pekka Kantonen – M.A. Doctoral student, Academy of Fine Arts at University of the Arts Helsinki

1E. Collaborative session: Politics of Artistic Research [back]

Session moderator: Pilvi Porkola, Uniarts Helsinki

Minna Heikinaho:
A collective authorship as a medium of resistance
 

What kind of articulation we as the artistic researchers produce from ourselves within the institutions? Do we recognize the structure of power, the articulation nodes in your artistic activity? How the collective articulation sequence will form between artists and society (Mouffe)? What is the collective embodied experience and what it can be achieved? The question is the antagonism and hegemony of power and how we will able to accept the embodied articulation as a resistance.

Minna Heikinaho – Artist, Researcher, Cupore Helsinki

1F. Collaborative session: Exploring body-based practices [back]

Session moderator: Kirsi Heimonen, Uniarts Helsinki

Paula Kramer & Joa Hug:

Body-based Research and Dissemination – A Collective Exploration Participatory Methodology Lab – A collaborative session dedicated to exploring body-based research and dissemination practices in artistic research. Facilitated by AREAL Berlin.

Paula Kramer – Dr., University of the Arts Helsinki / AREAL Berlin
Joa Hug – research associate and doctoral candidate at Tutke, University of the Arts Helsinki / AREAL Berlin

SATURDAY, 29 April 2017

2C. Collaborative session: De-coding Movements [back]

Session moderator: Paula Kramer, Uniarts Helsinki

Simo Kellokumpu:
Choreography as a reading practice – workshop
 

The workshop invites participants to approach choreographic thinking and embodiment through the on-going doctorate artistic research project Atmospheric Choreography: Choreography as a reading practice towards contemporary movement ecology.

Simo Kellokumpu – Doctorate candidate, University of the Arts Helsinki

2D. Collaborative session: Embodied Encounters [back]

Session moderator: Eeva Anttila, Uniarts Helsinki

Eeva Anttila, Teija Löytönen, Hanna Guttorm & Anita Valkeemäki:
Researching in and through embodied encounters
 

During this collaborative session we will explore how embodied encounters can be an integral element in artistic research and how such practices may influence what we come to know, how we approach our work (and life), and others inside and outside the academia. We think that it is yet another thing to proclaim unexpectedness or uncertainty or not privileging the author in research processes, and doing it. One must do it. Experiment and fail. Let go, and experiment again.
 

Eeva Anttila – Professor, University of the Arts Helsinki
Teija Löytönen – Senior Specialist for Art and Creative practices, Aalto University
Hanna Guttorm – Associate professor in Education, Sámi University of Applied Sciences
Anita Valkeemäki – Movement educator, doctoral candidate, University of the Arts Helsinki

2E. Text-based session: Experimentation [back]

Session moderator: Michael Schwab, Uniarts Helsinki

Maximilian Lehner:
Artistic Research in Experiment. Art-Technology Collaboration as a new Paradigm for Knowledge in Artistic Research
 

Why are collaborations between engineers and artists seldom considered in the discourse on research in the arts? Could they turn out to be useful for a new paradigm for the notion of knowledge in artistic research?

Maximilian Lehner – Department for Art in Contemporary Contexts and Media, KU Linz

Paulo De Assis:
Experimental systems in music: specifying MusicExperiment21’s use of Rheinberger’s ‘experimental systems’
 

A discussion of the EU-funded project MusicExperiment21, focusing on its appropriation and practical use of Rheinberger’s notion of ‘experimental systems’.
 

Paulo De Assis – Dr, Principal Investigator, Orpheus Instituut Ghent

2G. Text-based session: Logics of Presentation [back]

 Session moderator: Giaco SchiesserUniversity of the Arts Zurich

Sara Morawetz:
Propositional logic — a study of art in the language of science.
 

Definitions, remarks, propositions, theorems, lemmas, corollary, proofs — this is the terminology of science. But could it also be the language of art?
 

Sara Morawetz – PhD Candidate, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

Dominik Schlienger:
Digital? What Digital?
 

The technical according to Bruno Latour and its implications on the notion of "techno-" in the arts.
 

Dominik Schlienger – Researcher Composer, Center for Music & Technology, University of the Arts Helsinki

Ulla Pohjannoro & Antti M. Rousi:
Music information entities in composer’s thinking. Composing as information processing
 

Musical semiotics constitute music information as different types (e.g. audial, visual, verbal) that can be presented through varied sign systems (drawings, musical notation, writings on and about music). How are different music information types reflected in composer’s thinking in action?
 

Ulla Pohjannoro – DMus, MA, Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki
Antti M. Rousi – MLIS, PhD candidate, School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere

2F. Text-based session: Negotiating Reflection [back]

Session moderator: Harri Laakso, Aalto University

Susanna Helke:
Please Testify – On Those Who Were (and Weren’t) There
 

A presentation discussing the potential of testimonial strategies and gestures. How can art be testimonial? Is there a difference between the confessional and testimonial?
 

Susanna Helke – Associate Professor, Aalto University
 

Mareli Stolp:
Navigating the constellation: Artistic Research, Self-reflexivity and dissemination of knowledge
 

This presentation explores self-reflexivity as an entry point into subjective artistic experience; it also examines self-reflexivity as method for translating such experience into a medium shareable beyond the realm of the personal.
 

Mareli Stolp – Doctor, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
 

Heta Kaisto:
Between theory and art: A writing of disaster
 

My text for the conference is going to be a little disaster. I take cue from Maurice Blanchot’s unique method of re-thinking philosophy through poetics, where the textual weave is constantly leaking sensation rather than meaning.
 

Heta Kaisto – Doctoral student / Visual culture, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture

3G. Text-based session: Material Culture [back]

Session moderator: Tero Heikkinen, Uniarts Helsinki

Maarit Mäkelä & Camilla Groth:
In Dialogue with the Material Environment: Creativity, Materiality and Skill
 

The paper presents a case study of material thinking in the context of contemporary ceramics that one of the authors encountered during an artistic research period in Tasmania and New Zealand.

Maarit Mäkelä – DA, Associate Professor, Aalto University, Helsinki
Camilla Groth – DA, Aalto University, Helsinki

Anastasia Seregina:
Exploring Interdisciplinary Collaborative Possibilities. An example of Artistic Research in Consumer Culture Studies.
 

The use of artistic research has been on the slow rise within various fields of humanities. Yet, cross-disciplinary work and collaboration is still quite scarce, probably because it has often faced difficulties. I will present the use of artistic methods in the field of consumer culture studies, and discuss the possibilities, benefits, and seeming drawbacks of using artistic methods in traditionally non-artistic fields, opening up the conversation to topics of interdisciplinary collaborations.
 

Anastasia Seregina – Postdoctoral researcher, School of Business, Aalto University, Helsinki
 

Mariana Renthel:
Tactile Poetry – an approximation to textile writing in the context of art creation
 

Tracing a bridge between textile artifacts from the past and the sensible experience of making, somehow expands knowledge horizons regarding art production as a mean rather than an end. While exploring different ways in which a sort of “graphic grammatic constructions” expand the experience towards materiality and storytelling.

Mariana Renthel – Mg./ Assistant Professor Graphic (Printmaking and Drawing) Area, Visual Arts Department. Arts Faculty Universidad de Antioquia.

Saturday 14:15 – 17:15 3rd parallel sessions – Choose one of the parallel sessions 3A – 3G

3A. Performative session: Figuring the Body [back]

 Session moderator: Sher Doruff, Gerrit Rietveld Academy / DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam University of the Arts

Rauli Katajavuori:
Notations used as a tool to make the difference. (Graphic Juggling Notation and Diabolo State Diagrams)
 

I will explain and show how written notations used as a tool can make a difference in learning and in finding movement material. I will use PowerPoint slides, audience interaction, speech and juggling to demonstrate the key ideas of my thesis ‘Graphic Juggling Notation’ (Theatre Academy, Helsinki 2013).
 

Rauli Katajavuori – Master of Arts (Theatre and Drama)

Kirsi Heimonen:
Writing of the ungraspable: silence of the corporeality
 

The presentation focuses on the silence of corporeality and on the possibility for communication through writing of the lived experiences in dancing.
 

Kirsi Heimonen – Postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki

Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer & Mariella Greil:
Choreo-graphic Figures: On Qualitative Specificity (How-ness) within Artistic Research
 

Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line stages a beyond-disciplinary, inter-subjective encounter between the lines of choreography, drawing and writing, for exploring the specific 'how-ness' — the qualitative-processual, aesthetic-epistemological and ethico-empathetic dynamics — within shared artistic exploration, directing attention to an affective realm of forces and intensities existing before, between and beneath the more readable gestures of artistic practice.
 

Emma Cocker – Reader in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University
Nikolaus Gansterer – Guest Professor, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
Mariella Greil – University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria and University of Roehampton

3B. Performative session: Aural Events [back]

Session moderator: Alex Arteaga, Berlin University of the Arts

Martin Breindl:
Metamusic – a sound project for and with grey parrots
 

The presentation addresses questions of creating musical interfaces, sonic tools and sound sculptures in an animal-centered design process in order to gain a better understanding of non-anthropocentric intelligence and musical structures beyond human conception.
 

Martin Breindl will be representing the project realized in collaboration with:

Martin Breindl – Mag.art / alien productions

Norbert Math – alien productions

Andrea Sodomka – Mag.art / alien productions

Martin Kaltenbrunner – Dipl.-Ing. (FH), Professor for Interface Culture at the University of Art and Design in Linz

Reinhard Gupfinger – Mag.art, Institute for Interface Cultures, University of Art and Design Linz

Nadja Ziegler – Mag., ARGE Papageienschutz

Julia Bellmann – ARGE Papageienschutz

Daniel Gilfillan – Associate Professor, Arizona State University, USA

Guadalupe López-Íñiguez:
Performative Autoethnography of a Cellist-Researcher: The Dualism of Implicit and Explicit Motivation throughout Life
 

In this performative autoethnographic presentation, I will highlight the importance of motivational congruence in the prediction of pursuing a joyful, healthy, and successful performing career as a musician and researcher in the classical music arena.
 

Guadalupe López-Íñiguez – PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki

Assi Karttunen:
The aural garden of auditive materiality – a case study on ’Et in Arcadia ego'-performance
 

'Et in Arcadia ego'-music performance is an auditory garden deriving its inspiration from 17th-century European meditation gardens. Could the idea of auditive, organic pre-recorded materiality be applied to the concert venue understood as a compound of resonating elements and shapes? The 'Et in Arcadia ego' performance develops performativity of classical music by subtly varying its parameters.
 

Assi Karttunen – Doctor of Music, Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki

3C. Performative session: Across the Disciplines [back]

Session moderator: Jyrki Siukonen, Uniarts Helsinki

Jan Kaila, Japo Knuutila & Jan Fast:
Poetic Archeology – a platform for trying out the borders of disciplines
 

Poetic Archaeology is founded on the methodology of artistic research and on the principles of archeology. The term ‘poetic’ refers to the process of evoking associations and memories, partly on the basis of aesthetics and partly by employing various media in flexible configurations. The project both resembles archaeology and is archaeology – it effectively excavates history both physically (objects and texts) and visually (photographs and moving image).
 

Jan Kaila – DfA, Scientific Advisor in Artistic Research at the Swedish Research Council
Japo Knuutila – Artist, independent researcher
Jan Fast – Archeologist, doctoral student at Helsinki University

Taneli Luotoniemi:
Sharing the Appearance of Higher Space
 

How to flatten four-dimensional structures described in mathematics to produce handheld artefacts that invite novel modes of spatial reasoning?
 

Taneli Luotoniemi – Doctoral student, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University

Alberto Condotta:
Beyond interdisciplinarity and originality: ‘diffraction’ as the paradigm for (art) research
 

The paradigm of diffraction – as conceptualised by Haraway and Barad – has the potential to revolutionise the understanding of art and art methodologies, as it stands as an alternative to reflection. That is, by providing a positive description of generativity not grounding on an origin, it allows for the development of analytical discourses on research / art making that are independent from paradigms such as interdisciplinarity and originality.
 

Alberto Condotta – AHRC-M3C PhD candidate at Birmingham School of Art, member of Radical Matter research group

3D. Collaborative session: How to do Things with Performance? [back]

Session moderator: Annette Arlander, Uniarts Helsinki

Tero Nauha, Annette Arlander, Hanna Järvinen & Pilvi Porkola:
What Is Given?
 

The post-doctoral artistic research project “How to do things with performance?” proposes to address the theme of Specificity by asking “What is given?” in performance, in the conditions that allow knowledge to become comprehensible? As such the session aims to create conditions for a specific investigation on a given for performance. How do given conditions specify relations between things in the world?
 

Tero Nauha – DA, Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki
Annette Arlander – DA, Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki
Hanna Järvinen – PhD, Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki
Pilvi Porkola – DA, Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki

3F. Text-based session: Beyond Propositions [back]

Session moderator: Giaco Schiesser, University of the Arts Zurich
 

Inkeri Koskinen & Pirkko Pohjakallio:
How to assess knowledge produced in artistic research?
 

It is not clear how knowledge produced in artistic research differs from other forms of knowledge, nor is it clear how to assess it epistemically. For such assessment to be possible, the produced knowledge should be accessible to the research community. It is not clear that this is always the case, as it is likely to be largely tacit and non-propositional. Illustrating our ideas with examples from artistic research that uses visual arts as its methodological vehicle, we suggest a solution.
 

Inkeri Koskinen – Postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki
Pirkko Pohjakallio – Professor, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University Helsinki

Taneli Tuovinen:
Artistic Episteme and Desire to Learn by Practising in the Context of Research Design
 

My contribution is a text dealing with the credibility in fingertips and on epistemic control in the heart of skill-based art and social life.
 

Taneli Tuovinen – University Lecturer, Doctor of Arts, Aalto University Helsinki

Linda Lien & Ashley Booth:
Pictogram-me
 

At the SAR conference we wish to present a hybrid text. We aim to highlight the experiences of those who have a difficult daily life, a challenging existence. By the help of pictograms we wish to contribute to increased reflection on life’s complexity. At the SAR conference we wish to present a hybrid text. How to also use non-written communication, such as pictograms, to present and discuss the artistic research project itself? How can we include pictograms in the reflection on the outcomes of the project?
 

Linda Lien – Associate Professor in Graphic Design at Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Ashley Booth – Professor in Visual Communication at Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen

3E. Collaborative session: Aural Iterations [back]

Session moderator: Michael Schwab, Uniarts Helsinki
 

Martin Rumori:
StopTalking: Discourse through Artefacts
 

This workshop exposes participants to a prototypical property of sound: the interrelation of the mediated and the mediating space. We regard the special case of binaural audio technology, that is, referring to bodily preprocessed signals at the outer ears for capturing, constructing and projecting auditory environments. Participants are invited to explore similar dichotomies in their media and enact an artistic discourse by formulating statements as aesthetic forms.
 

The submission has been conceived in collaboration with:

Martin Rumori – MA, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Davic Pirrò – MA, MSc, Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics Graz
Georgios Marentakis – Dipl. MSc PhD, Graz University of Technology

Also during the conference:

Intervention

Steve Dutton & Andrew Bracey:
An Obstract for Midpointness
 

‘Midpointness’ is a generative project that is dismantled and reconstructed/imagined by the gradual accretion and of the surrounding connections, associations, influences of the curators, artists, students and other audiences who contribute to it. These are in the form of artworks, public events, texts, artefacts, performances or other interventions. For “Please Specify” we present a spoken text (by a voice avatar) from a standing speaker in a public thoroughfare in the conference venue.
 

Steve Dutton – Professor of Art, Bath Spa University, UK
Andrew Bracey – Senior Lecturer, University of Lincoln, UK

Intervention

Clara Ursitti:
Air Play

– A site specific scent intervention within the context of the conference
 

Clara Ursitti – Artist/Lecturer/Researcher, Glasgow School of Art, Univeristy of Glasgow

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2B. Presentation: Research Catalogue
11.30-13.00

Döbereiner, Strøm, Heikkinen & Schipper: How Institutional SAR Members Use the Research Catalogue as Portal

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Main page

1D. Collaborative Session:
Multicultural Contexts
13.00-16.00
Hirvonen-Nurmi, Kantonen & Kantonen: Performing Community Museums
Mikkilä: Exercises in Language

Above: Conference Programme and the Book of Abstracts in pdf/printable format. Click on the images to download.

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Victoria Pérez Royo

Dr, Faculty of Philosophy

University of Zaragoza (ESP)

Vicente Arlandis

Choreographer

Independent Artist (ESP)

Victoria Pérez Royo is performing arts researcher, based in Berlin and Madrid. She is co-director of the MA in Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture (Madrid), associate professor in Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Zaragoza University and invited teacher to BA and MA programs in the Performing Arts in Holland, Germany, Finland, Chile, Peru and Costa Rica, among other countries. She is member of the research association ARTEA and of the Virtual Archive of Performing Arts. She has devised and coordinated research contexts such as Artistic Migrations, Expanded Theatricalities, Rethinking spectatorship, There is no other poetry than action among many others at art centres like Reina Sofia Museum and Matadero (Madrid). Editor of the publications: Componer el plural (2016), To be continued (2012) and Practice and research (2010).

Vicente Arlandis is a performing artist and teacher with a Master's degree in Arts Production (Contemporary art) in UPV (Valencia) and a Master's degree in Performance practice in APASS (Brussels). From 2001 he works with Sandra Gómez in Losquequedan collective where they produce numerous artistic projects such as the series Borrones, Thank You Very Much, Tragedia de los Comunes and Performance Municipal. He has imparted workshops about his own artistic practice in spaces such as DOCH (Master in New Performance Language, Stockholm); Festival VEO (Valencia) ; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia; Universidad de Sevilla; Facultad de BB.AA (Bilbao), etc. He has collaborated with numerous artists such as Hipólito Patón, Miguel Ángel Martinez, Lisbeth Gruweth, Macarena Recuerda, Jan Fabre, Amalia Fernández, Saioa Olmo, Rafael Tormo and Cuenca among others. At the moment he participates in the collective project TALLER PLACER together with Mariví Martín, Miguel Ángel Martín and Paula Miralles.

Simone Douglas

Associate Professor, Dr

Director MFA Fine Arts

School of Art, Media & Technology

Parsons School of Design, The New School (USA)

Sean Lowry

Dr, Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies in Art

Victorian College of the Arts

Faculty of VCA and MCM

University of Melbourne, (AUS)

Simone Douglas is a New York-based artist who works across installation, photography, video and site specific engagement with land, space and place. Her ongoing project IceBoat seeks to activate dialogue around environmental concerns and the Australian interior. Douglas’ work has been exhibited extensively internationally. Most recently, her work was included in Emanations (curated by Geoffery Batchen).  Douglas was project director and curator on behalf of the Getty for Picture Sydney: Landmarks of a New Generation at the Australian Museum; curator for Landmarks of a New Generation (Sydney, Mumbai, LA, Berlin, Cape Town); and curated ‘Home’ for the Auckland International Festival. She is currently director of the MFA Fine Art program at Parsons, The New School in NYC; coeditor of Anywhere (with Sean Lowry); co-curator of Anywhere and Elsewhere (with Sean Lowry). Douglas is also a key contributor to the Project Anywhere Editorial Committee. For more information, please visit simonedouglas.com

Sean Lowry is a Melbourne-based visual artist, musician and writer. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney, and is currently Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies in Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Lowry has exhibited, performed and published extensively both nationally and internationally. His conceptually driven artistic practice employs strategies of concealment, subliminal quotation, erasure, remediation and intermedial expansion to explore the outermost limits of the world of a work of art. He is also Founder and Executive Director of Project Anywhere (projectanywhere.net) ncoeditor of Anywhere (with Simone Douglas), co-curator of Anywhere and Elsewhere (with Simone Douglas), and one half (with Ilmar Taimre) of The Ghosts of Nothing (ghostsofnothing.com). For more information, please visit seanlowry.com   

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger 

Director emeritus, Dr

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (GER)

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger holds an MA in philosophy and a Ph.D. in biology from the Free University of Berlin. From 1996 to 2014, he was Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He held visiting posts, among others, at Stanford University, the ETH in Zurich, the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He holds a doctor honoris causa from the ETH Zurich and is a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society as well as an Ordinary Member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Among his books are Toward a History of Epistemic Things (1997), An Epistemology of the Concrete (2010), On Historicizing Epistemology (2010), A Cultural History of Heredity  (2012, with Staffan Müller-Wille), and most recently Der Kupferstecher und der Philosoph. Albert Flocon trifft Gaston Bachelard (2016).

Catherine Laws

Dr, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, University of York (UK)

and Senior Artistic Research Fellow, Orpheus Institute, Ghent (BE)

Catherine Laws is a musicologist and pianist. She is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of York, UK, and a Senior Artistic Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. As a performer Catherine specializes in contemporary music, working collaboratively with composers and often drawing other artists, especially theatre and film makers, into her projects. Her artistic research is focused variously on processes of embodiment, subjectivity and collaboration in contemporary performance practices. She currently leads the research cluster ‘Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation’ at the Orpheus Institute, exploring how subjectivity is produced through performance practices associated with new music. She performs and records regularly, and has published widely. Her monograph, Headaches Among the Overtones: Music in Beckett/ Beckett in Music, came out in 2013 (Editions Rodopi).

Learning to be together. Experimental communities.

Victoria Pérez Royo and Vicente Arlandis

Friday 10.25

The meanings and uses of the term choreography have changed substantially throughout its history, but it is be possible to find a common thread among them all, namely the articulation of three concepts, which are very adequate to think about the dynamics of the social. Writing, body and relation could serve as analogies to tackle the relationships among norm, individual and collective organization. Choreography, both as a social as well as an artistic practice, constitutes an interesting field from which to study the dynamics of our ways of corporally and collectively learning and experimenting with democratic ways of being together. The objective here is not to aestheticize political reflection with the use of metaphors coming from the field of dance, but to think the problems that concern us with the help of new and less worn-out words, as well as to try to open a new perspective about the ways of being together and experimentally working with its potentiality.

The articulation of these three terms should serve to address the complexity of social organization in a way that permits the consideration of the fundamental role of body in it. The body, with its attitudes, ways of being present, its physicalities, kinesthesias and motions plays a fundamental role in how we learn to be together, which have often been overlooked both by sociopolitical theory, as well as by transformational practices. The body constitutes a very interesting element here because it crosses academic, everyday, political, social, choreographic, artistic or aesthetic practices. Choreography, in this expanded sense, allows us to tackle the ways in which some dimensions of research are taking place in many activist and social initiatives, as well as in our everyday life, where it is possible to detect a constant activity of choreographic learning, observing and experimenting.

Keynote Speaker Biographies and Keynote Abstracts

Where is art? Exhibiting and evaluating art and artistic research elsewhere in space and time

Sean Lowry and Simone Douglas
Friday 16:15 

This presentation will explore challenges related to exhibiting and evaluating art and artistic research outside traditional exhibition circuits. Today, the world of a work of art might exist concurrently across multiple versions, objects, gestures, times, spaces, documentations and media forms. New ways of making and interpreting art are emerging together with modes of presentation and dissemination shaped by digital reproducibility, remedialization, and the dissolution of physical space. Just as the question "what is art?" underpinned much artistic speculation during the twentieth century, the question "where is art?" is arguably becoming emblematic of much artistic speculation in the twenty-first century. From geographically remote and interdisciplinary to collaborative and socially activated projects, much artistic activity is not necessarily invested in discrete objects, materials or gestures but rather in art’s speculative potential as an omnivorous domain of cultural production. Yet once artists press the edges of ontological categorisations it can become challenging to find appropriate language and evaluative criteria for discussing and evaluating artistic research that straddles other realms of knowledge. A key feature embodied in artistic research is the assertion that certain ideas are uniquely developed and communicated via processes of making, doing and experiencing. Yet given the distributed, mediated and geographically remote nature of much contemporary artistic activity, it is often difficult to point to a singular or optimum point of entry into the world of a work. Against this backdrop, we will also explore the challenge of adequately documenting artistic research occurring elsewhere in space and time in a format that can facilitate meaningful dialogue and evaluation. We contest assumptions that new knowledge is necessarily best communicated via text-based formats and that that non-traditional exhibition formats present barriers to value. Moreover, we believe that artistic research exemplifies the speculative potential of embracing multiple ways of experiencing, knowing, and communicating ideas. 

The ideas discussed in this presentation have been developed in conjunction with Project Anywhere (a global exhibition model that utilises the type of peer review process typically endorsed by a refereed journal), and Anywhere and Elsewhere (a biennial conference held at Parsons, The New School, that explores art at the outermost limits of location-specificity).

Experimental Epistemes between Art and Science

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Saturday 9:00 

The paper comes in two parts. The first part offers some clues for a conceptual rapprochement between the history of the sciences and the history of the arts from the perspective of a history of things in the making. The second part presents some arguments for a critical discussion of the phenomenon of “artistic research,” a concept that obviously connects to such a process view in both realms.

A discussion of the relation between the sciences and the arts hinges on finding a common ground for the comparison of innovative practices. It has do be a ground on the basis of which that relation can be formulated in a manner such that the involvement with the unprecedented stands in the foreground. The basic argument is that just as the sciences, can finally not be understood on the basis of the structure of their accomplished theories, the arts as well will not be understandable on the basis of the structure of their products. A fortiori, then, a comparative analysis can obviously not proceed form the results of the respective activities. Here, as there, what is at paramount stake are the practices of making, an understanding of a production process with an uncertain outcome, at whose end things will stand that did not command and determine its beginning. With that, what moves into the foreground of interest are the configurations of materials, instruments, arrangements, and cognitive-practical lists that go into the process, and that determine together and inseparably its epistemic and aesthetic design, respectively, in ever new forms.

THIS IS... IS IT?

Catherine Laws
Saturday 10:10 

Please Specify!: so demands this conference. The call seems to assert the necessity of the particular, the individual instance, and we might extrapolate from this a determination to attend to distinctiveness: to identity and therefore difference. However, the conference situates this demand in the context of questions of dissemination, use and impact: matters of breadth, commonality, instrumentalism. There seem to be a tension here, between the instance, subjectively constituted, and the extrapolation, objectively manifested. To what extent is this characteristic of artistic (or practice-as-) research? In such processes, the researcher is often both subject and object. To different extents, according to the nature of the enquiry, and whether implicitly or explicitly, such research often calls into question the status of its object as a discrete and objectively knowable entity. This presentation explores whether the tensions of specificity and usefulness, subject and object, are problematic, indicative of limited relevance or reach, or productive, revealing significant aspects of creativity, thought and action.

I will focus on examples from ‘Player Piano’, a recent performance piece produced collaboratively with composers, theatre makers and a film maker. The performance explicitly foregrounds the specificity at work in artistic practice: on one level the aim is to interrogate both thematically and performatively (self-consciously, through the mode of enaction) some of the complexities of musical agency and subjectivity. The intention is to explore and expose the nature and conditions of the performer’s habitus – her embodied performing identity, contextual and cultural, developed in and through the relationship with, and resistance to, her instrument, her training and practices, the historical and cultural backdrop of that instrument and those practices, the contexts in which she works, the people with whom she collaborates, and so on. As Sally Jane Norman argues, it is from such complex sites of resistance that creative agency can emerge. This is, then, extremely specific, but the closer we get – the more we look and listen – the less certain things are. Performance seems to say ‘this is….’. But it never really is (is it?). The specific disintegrates into the differential, the contingent … but perhaps the questions become clearer.

Embodied constellations. Artistic Research and Avantgarde

Esa Kirkkopelto

Friday 9:15

If we move from the traditional understanding of dramaturgy as a textual practice towards an idea of dramaturgy as performative or scenic practice, we face a simple problem, which is both theoretical and practical and hard to solve: how to deal with the fact that the body becomes a dramaturgical component? It may sound mechanistic, or even cynical, to consider or treat human performing bodies as “components”. That is nevertheless what is required when in post-dramatic and post-human performance the performers confront the requirement concerning the equality of the all dramaturgical “elements” or “material”. Who is holding the power in such occasions? Or are we heading towards a full anarchy? 

“Play? Move? Express? Float? Fly? Please specify!” – These questions motivating the call of the forthcoming SAR conference are particularly incisive as we try to understand and articulate what happens to our bodies in performance, both as performers and spectators, and how they can adapt themselves to compositional tasks of different kinds. 

Let me specify.

If compositional elements in various arts, i.e. their components, can be considered as bodies, these bodies have to be conceived as essentially weightless. Correspondingly, the compositions themselves do not reside anywhere. They float. The idea, or dream, of reaching weightlessness is so recurrent in the Western modernist and avant-garde tradition that one can legitimately ask whether this idea might even be constitutive of that tradition. But how to prove it? As I will argue, the experience and the related understanding of the weightlessness in question can reach us only by embodied means, through our bodies, which quite strangely but insistently carry a certain very specific knowledge of these matters. 

This lecture-demonstration shows how we can find contact with our weightlessness and what else we could do with it, except trying to retain our equilibrium. What kind of implications might these findings have with regard to our artistic practice, political action, and everyday perception?