scroll down for bios and research interests of participants

NORWAY 

Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL)  doctoral supervisor

Solveig Wiig (NTNU/Volda Film) doctoral researcher

Juan Sebastián Vassallo (University of Bergen, The Grieg Academy, Department of Music) doctoral researcher          

Héloïse Baldelli (University of Stavanger, Faculty of Performing Arts, Department of Classical Music) doctoral researcher

Gro Marie Svidal (Norwegian Academy of Music) doctoral researcher

Eliot Moleba  (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Academy of Theatre) doctoral researcher

Robert Seaback (Norwegian Academy of Music) doctoral researcher

Yuka Oyama (Supervisor Norwegian Fellowship programme & Professor, Hdk-Valand, University of Gothenburg) doctoral supervisor

Lotte Mik-Meyer (Professor, Inland Norway University, Norwegian Film School) doctoral supervisor

Solmund Nystabakk (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Music) doctoral supervisor

FINLAND

Pauliina Laukkanen (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki) doctoral researcher

Naiara De La Puente (Sibelius-Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki) doctoral researcher

Susanna Suurla (Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Dept. Film, Television and Scenography) doctoral researcher

Hanna Pajala-Assefa (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki)   doctoral researcher

Heidi Hänninen (Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki) doctoral researcher   

Jana Unmüßig (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki) doctoral supervisor

Otso Lähdeoja (University of the Arts Helsinki) doctoral supervisor

SWEDEN

Ylva Gustavsson (UniArts Stockholm) doctoral supervisor

Savaş Boyraz (UniArts Stockholm) doctoral researcher

Marc Johnson (UniArts Stockholm Film/Art) doctoral researcher

Natalie Novick (Hdk-Valand, Design, University of Gothenburg) doctoral researcher

Birgitta Nordström (Hdk-Valand, Craft, University of Gothenburg) doctoral researcher

Felicita Brusoni (Malmö Music Academy) doctoral researcher

Jörgen Dahlqvist (Malmö Theatre Academy) doctoral researcher

Lina Persson (UniArts Stockholm) doctoral researcher

Eleanor Bauer (UniArts Stockholm) doctoral supervisor

Mick Wilson (Hdk-Valand, Fine Art, University of Gothenburg)   doctoral supervisor

Sanskriti Chattopadhyay (Hdk-Valand, Film, University of Gothenburg) doctoral researcher

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NORWAY

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Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI/NL)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec is an artist and researcher with a particular focus on sound, new media, real-time interaction and questions of contemporary mediation in relation to the sense of (bodily) presence. His recent work consists of spatial and sound installations, events and interventions, where (un)mediated sonic events act as central elements that affectively evoke human bodily presence, while signalling its physical absence. The experiential works address visitors through sound, tactility, kinetic movement and vibration to question how human bodily presence can be felt and sensed beyond direct visuality and vicinity. Further, the works inquire after what kind of new poetics these re-articulations can form. His works have been presented internationally at museums, galleries, project spaces and contemporary art biennales and festivals, amongst others in Kapelica Gallery - Ljubljana, Errant Sound – Berlin, Aksioma Project Space – Ljubljana, Sonic Acts Festival - Amsterdam, Sound Disobedience Festival - Ljubljana, Ars Electronica Festival, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media - Rotterdam, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM - Ljubljana, AV Festival - Newcastle Upon Tyne, ŠKUC Gallery - Ljubljana, State Museum of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki,  Gwangju Museum of Art - South Korea, Reseach Pavilion - Venice, Madrid Abierto, Gaudeamus Music Week - Amsterdam, Forum Neuer Musik - Köln, CMMAS - Morelia, Mexico, MuseumsQuartier – Vienna, Sound Gallery – Bergen. He earned his PhD in Artistic Research from Faculty of Fine Art at University in Bergen, Norway (2013 – 2016). He is recipient of Mondriaan Fund Stipendium for Established Artists. In 2010 his work was awarded at Ars Electronica Festival. Together with artist Sascha Pohle he co-founded Home Sequence – a yearly exhibition taking place in the private homes of Amsterdam-based artists. He is currently tutor at Gerrit Rietveld Academy Fine Arts department in Amsterdam.

Research: Current research interests and projects include: Reading Reading

• How much time does it take to think something?
• How much time does it take to say something?
• How much time does it take to hear something?
• How much time does it take to see something?
• How much time does it take to read something?

Reading Reading is an artistic research project on reading as interface between interior mental state and exterior world that asks if what separates them is a temporal, flexible and virtual gap rather than a fixed corporeal border. Within several installations, the project manifests ways to capture, embody and unsettle the temporal relations that unfold between written text, eye movement and (inner) voice while reading. The experiential works alter ocular desire and stretch the time between sensing and making sense. In so doing, the indescribable zone between word as an event in time and word as an object in space is affected, providing an acoustic, poetic and critical opening that anarchically disrupts reading as a sub-cognitive activity. Reading Reading is about how the reader moves through the written text as the text moves through them, capturing and stretching the temporality just before the text is activated into meaning, and before the reader’s subjectivity is shaped by the encounter with the text. The time before the view, the time before making sense, the time before speech-voice. Other projects: 0.004 Hz Temporal gap and delay caused by political conflict, disrupting the (measured) flow of time itself, resulting in an ecstatic interval. Tuning In – the neighborhood: Blurring and unsettling the division between private and public space, performer and listener, intimacy and publicness. Rhythms of Presence: Listening to human bodily presence from non-human point of listening. Capturing the invisible aspects of walking and investigating how they contribute to constituting presence, temporality and spatiality. See also: www.taogvs.orgLinks to an external site.; www.realitysoundtrack.orgLinks to an external site.; www.unvoicedterritories.netLinks to an external site.; www.homesequence.netLinks to an external site.

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Solveig Wiig (NTNU/Volda Film)

Bio: Solveig Wiig (b.1980) is an animator, cartoonist and illustrator. Wiig is educated as an illustrator and holds an MA in Design from Oslo National Academy of the Arts with a BA (Hons) of Arts from University College Falmouth (UK). She is trained as an animator from Volda University College and The Animation Workshop in Viborg (Denmark). She holds a BA in animation from University College Volda and a BA in History of Art from The University of Oslo. Wiig is also a teacher with pedagogical education from Rudolf Steiner University College and in Media Didactics from The University of Oslo. Wiig is an 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. For several years, she has explored the field of sequence-based drawing within the autobiographical comic book series Fragments. The comics Fragments No.1 and Fragments No.2 have previously been printed in two editions: risograph-and digital issues. Wiig has various teaching experience from University level to Sixth Form College in subjects within Media and Art. She has been a lecturer at Oslo Metropolitan University, Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Oslo National Academy of the Arts and The Nordic Institute of Stage and Studio. Solveig Wiig currently teaches Life Drawing and croquis at Volda University College and is a course coordinator in Figure Drawing. She has exhibited her work at Deichman Grünerløkka/Serieteket, Grafill R21, Black Box teater, Norwegian Film Institute and The Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture. Wiig has also exhibited work in England at The Royal Society of Arts andat the venueBusiness Design Centre at the Leading London Graduate Design Show New Designers.

Research: In the artistic work entitled “An exploration of line and character in feminist worldsIn”, I will utilize my background as an illustrator, animator, and art and film theorist. The project will involve drawing a comic book and to develop one of these stories into an animated short film. The design of this project means that several interesting interfaces between comics and animated films will arise in the process, both in terms of the line, characters, narrative (s) and the universe (s) presented – related to both technique and aesthetics in the two artworks. The competence from both drawing and film can be combined to provide new knowledge and experience to both artforms. The exploration of line will happen trough the design of feminist worlds and the work will be part of an important gender discourse. Women are still underrepresented within both the film and game industries. The journalist and author Perez argue that women are still structurally discriminated (Perez, 2019, p.10). By drawing a female body, a female movement that is not included in the preconstructed forms of how a positive female role model appears, I connect to a feminist tradition to create characters that can present a wider range of identification. The project involves tackling complex topics and drawing complex female characters with simple means and the use of paper media. There are long traditions in both drawing and animation where observation is a central method for creating credible interpretations of our surroundings, in form and in movement. Through linework, you can work with a language that is condensed. A distillation of observation through a simplified line representing body language, acting and character. I want to explore "simplification issues" or “amplification through simplification” to find new ways to iconize female characters.

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Juan Sebastián Vassallo (University of Bergen, The Grieg Academy, Department of Music)          

Bio: Juan Sebastián Vassallo is a composer, pianist, and media artist currently based in Bergen (Norway). He holds a Bachelor's degree in Music Composition (National University of Córdoba, Argentina) and graduated from the Provincial Conservatory of Music of Córdoba (Argentina) in piano. He obtained his Master's degree in interdisciplinary studies (MUS and PSYC) at the University of Victoria (Canada) and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Artistic Research at the University of Bergen (Norway). His previous work has been characterized by collaborative and interdisciplinary artistic endeavors that explore artistic possibilities that arise from the interaction between traditional and contemporary musical expressions and real-time processing of sound, coupled with instrumental improvisation and chance, resulting in non-predictable and unrepeatable new musical and sound spaces. His current research aims to explore possibilities for human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence for contemporary music composition.  He has collaborated with ensembles several music ensembles, such as Proyecto RED ensemble, Schola Heidelberg, Neue Vokalsolisten, Edvard Grieg Kor, among others. His music has been performed in Argentina, Chile, México, Spain, Norway, the United States, and Canada, and some of his compositions have been awarded in composition contests in China, France, and Argentina. Parallel to this, he has developed an intense activity as a Tango performer. He has participated in many albums as pianist and arranger, and together with the Orchestra "Sanluistango", they have carried out several international tours, performing in some of the most important venues of Europe and Latin America.

Research: The current research project aims mainly to bring together the fields of music composition, cognitive sciences, and philosophy into interdisciplinary research that is informed, expanded, and enriched by knowledge, practices, and methodologies coming from these disciplines. During this project, I will creatively explore the affordances of computer-assisted tools in my compositional practice, relying mainly on the development of a method for composing that aims to explore correspondences between human language and musical material and structure from a creative perspective based on the concepts of symbolic remapping and resynthesis. The outcome of this project will serve the purpose of reflecting upon a two-folded investigation perspective: on one hand, on the philosophical problem of the agency of computational systems involved in the creative process for music composition, and on the other hand, on the study of cognitive processes involved in a composer’s decision-making when creating a musical work.

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Héloïse Baldelli (University of Stavanger, Faculty of Performing Arts, Department of Classical Music)

Bio: Héloïse Baldelli is a PhD student in artistic research at the University of Stavanger, Department of Classical Music, since December 2020. Her project focuses on the performance practice of modernist French songs. She is particularly interested in the composer Satie and in how to infuse elements of current pop-cultural phenomena into the performance tradition of his works. Héloïse comes from two generations of artists, amongst which important representatives of the Italian modernist movement. Prior to becoming a singer, she was a dancer and a professional make-up artist and plans to draw inspiration from these personal circumstances in her artistic practice.

Research:  In the study “Researching and Performing Satie’s Cycles” I will investigate the vocal performance practice of the French modernist composers of the group Les Nouveaux Jeunes: Satie, Poulenc, Milhaud and Honegger. I will start with a comparative study of Satie’s last song cycles (Trois Mélodies, Quatre Petites Mélodies and Ludions) and apply the findings to the design of a performance including melodies by all four composers. I want to challenge myself in finding new ways to present a non “public-friendly” repertoire. To achieve that while staying true to the original spirit of the compositions, I will combine the findings previously mentioned, the analysis of the contemporary sociocultural context and current research on audience response. I will frame my project using the intervention study method applied to artistic research, in combination with an autoethnographic approach. My goal is to develop the field of vocal performance practice, and my own. One aspect I wish to focus on is the communication of the texts of the melodies using visual media, dance and/or theatre, instead of the commonly used subtitles or printed translations. Another is the relationship between the performer (myself) and the audience, breaking the traditional distance between the public and the stage. Parallel with that, I aim to shed light on Satie’s less-known compositions for voice thus contributing to his rehabilitation as a “serious” composer. On a personal level, this project will allow me to achieve a deeper understanding of vocal practice and to acquaint myself with researching methods such as HIP, relevant to the study of unfamiliar repertoire in general. The investigation of the values appreciated by a contemporary audience and their incorporation into the design of the performance will open for new possibilities in making little known repertoire more approachable. The attempt at breaking out of the traditional recital format will push me out of my comfort zone as a classical singer and lead me towards exploring different possibilities of artistic expression. Such expertise will inform in turn the way I will plan future concerts.

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Gro Marie Svidal (Norwegian Academy of Music)

Bio: Gro Marie Svidal (Research Fellow at The Norwegian Academy of Music) is a well-established and renowned performer and interpreter of the traditional Norwegian Hardanger fiddle music. She started playing the Hardanger fiddle at the age of five and has immersed herself in the traditional music from the west coast of Norway. She is an alumna of The Ole Bull Academy for Norwegian Folk Music and has an executant master’s degree from The Norwegian Academy of Music with dissemination of music as her in-depth study topic. Her first solo album, “Hardingfele” was released in 2009, and her second album “Eilov” in 2016. Both albums received critical acclaim from amongst others Songlines, Lira, and Aftenposten and were nominated to the Norwegian Folk Music Award, FolkeLarm-prisen. Svidal has also contributed on several records both folk music albums and pop albums. In 2014, Svidal won first prize at the prestigious national competition, Landskappleiken, and become national champion on her Hardanger fiddle. Furthermore, she has also accepted Norwegian grants and other awards for her music. Svidal gives concerts in Norway and abroad both as a soloist and in collaboration with musicians from different genres, dancers, storytellers and players. She has performed as actress in theatre plays at Sogn and Fjordane Theatre (Teater Vestland) and toured extensively in rural Norway giving school performances under the auspices of Arts for Young Audiences of Norway.  In recent years, Svidal has commissioned music for dance and theatre performances, and composed music for the Hardanger fiddle both solo and by mixing the acoustic sound of the instrument with live electronics.  Her interest in improvised and on-the-spot-composed music for the Hardanger fiddle emerges from the hardanger fiddle music itself and the way fiddlers for generations have improvised variations as intrinsic to the practice of playing the old tunes.

Research: “Tryllespel/Magic play” (working title) is a research project in the field of traditional, folk and improvised music, and looks at folk music as framework for improvisation. Improvisation in today’s understanding of the word has almost been unseen in the field of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle music. (Kvifte, 2013) Nevertheless, fiddlers have for generations improvised variations as intrinsic to the practice of playing the old tunes. (Johansson, 2021) Micro improvisations and other qualities found in the Hardanger fiddle tradition points out a possible way of approaching today´s understanding of the word improvisation in both the Hardanger fiddle music itself and in the versatile genre of improvised music. My PhD project in artistic research takes the Hardanger fiddle and the Hardanger fiddle music as its starting point for developing a musical practice for myself as an improvising Hardanger fiddle player. What emerge from the meeting between my Hardanger fiddle, its traditional music and “modern” improvisation? What qualities of the Hardanger fiddle and the language of its tradition do I want to use in my improvised music? How do I want to use them? What qualities from other musical genres do I also want to use?  In my project I examine the landscape of improvisation together with musicians, dancers and singers from different genres and traditions. I work both solo, in duos and in small ensembles mostly with other acoustic instruments and Live Electronic. The music ranges from improvisations within, in connection with or based on old Hardanger fiddle tunes to free improvised music.  Of cause, I also examine the artistic process, the different approaches to improvisation, regarding methods for preparations and groundworks for “basic improvisational kills “and specific musical preparations.

References:

Johansson, Mats (2021): Improvisation in traditional music: learning practices and principles. Music Education Research, Volume 24, 2022 – Issue 1

Kvifte, Tellef (2013): Improvisasjon i folkemusikk – tradisjon, nyskaping eller påvirkning?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260085332_Improvisasjon_i_folkemusikk_-_tradisjon_nyskaping_eller_pavirkningLinks to an external site.

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Eliot Moleba  (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Academy of Theatre)

Bio: Eliot Moleba is a researcher, playwright, and theatre director. He is one of the founding members of PlayRiot, a collective of playwrights committed to telling bold, contemporary stories. He was the resident dramaturg at The South African State Theatre. He is currently a Research Fellow at KHiO and an Editorial Committee member of VIS – The Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. He is also a member of MEMORYWORK, an international interdisciplinary research project.

Research: Alternative Histori[es]: A Place Where Something Happened is aimed at exploring narrative accounts of Norwegians who self-identify with a multicultural/immigration background. I have collected over 50 stories of their lived experiences, with special interest in an event that happened in a public space and has been experienced as a life changing moment. The stories are being used to produce monuments to be installed on the sites where the narrated events took place, taking over and infusing them with gripping personal narratives to shift how we read those places and (re)negotiate their past/meaning. Using both the gathered stories and monuments as source material, the aim of the core artistic project is to devise a ‘performance’ in collaboration with the cast.

https://eliotmoleba.com/my-current-project/monuments-in-flux-porous-memorials/Links to an external site. 

https://khio.no/forskning/aktuelle-prosjekter/alternative-histories-a-place-where-something-happenedLinks to an external site.

https://memorywork.no/Links to an external site.

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Robert Seaback (Norwegian Academy of Music)

Bio: Robert Seaback is a composer and sound artist from the US currently based in Oslo, NO. His music expresses corporeality, the hyperreal, digital stasis, and continuums between—employing voices, instruments, soundscapes, and synthetic sources integrated through digital techniques. He has worked in different mediums including spatial audio, mixed works for ensemble, electroacoustic improvisation, and sound installation. Robert has a PhD in composition from the University of Florida and degrees in music from Mills College (MA) and Northeastern University (BS). He is currently an Artistic Research Fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music. His music has been presented at international events such as ICMC, NYCEMF, Sonorities, MA/IN, and the ISCM World New Music Days, and has been recognized with awards from IEM & VDT 3D Audio Production Competition, Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition, ASCAP/SEAMUS, University of Florida, and Mills College.

Research: The Semiotics of Presence investigates how the material dimensions of sound which encompass presence can be creatively reconfigured through processes of digital abstraction and re-embodiment. In the immaterial context of digital information, sound becomes mere data disconnected from any particular meaning, allowing creative interventions which can preserve, enhance, transform, degrade, or erase traces of material origins when information is converted back into sound. The Semiotics of Presence seeks to foreground the poetic dynamics which arise from this process—tracing the reflexive loop between sound making, listening, and composition and identifying how presence emerges differently at each site as a source of meaning formation. Current technologies for sound spatialization, analysis, and decomposition offer a window into the material dimensions of sound. They provide information streams tightly coupled with perceptually salient features—a starting point for composing links between abstracted material and digital process.  Of particular interest are the dimensions of presence tied to the sensual or corporeal aspects of listening, which can be heightened with compositional and technological intervention. An opposing status which articulates a digital-informational ontology is invariance characterized by stasis, quantization, or replication—metaphors or technical descriptions of the digital medium.My research draws from posthuman scholarship by Hayles, embodied music cognition, digital signal processing & machine learning, and musical semiotics to answer the guiding research questions:

• To what degree do informational renderings, re-mappings, or manipulations corrupt the ‘implicit substance’ of presence (to which concepts of gesture and embodiment are closely tied)?
• What continuums exist between the communication of human presence and digital invariance?
• How are orientations toward materiality and informational abstraction expressed technically and metaphorically?

My project will culminate in a body of electroacoustic music featuring immersive acousmatic works, performer collaborations, and documentation tracing connections between concept, method, and artwork.

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Yuka Oyama (Supervisor Norwegian Fellowship programme & Professor, Hdk-Valand, University of Gothenburg)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Yuka Oyama (www.yukaoyama.comLinks to an external site.) is a Japanese German visual artist who works with wearable sculptures, performance, photography, and film. Her life-sized, wearable sculptures function as material provocations that explore the disconnections often felt in contemporary life: the degeneration of human-to-human emotional communication and our sense of belonging. Everyday objects are used to upset these disconnections, facilitating our ability to act beyond set conventions. As object-human hybrids – objectified humans and personified objects – the sculptures are often worn in public theatrical settings to encourage participants to feel more imaginative, gain a different understanding of self and improve capacity to connect to others. Recent group exhibitions include: Forum Wissen, Göttingen (2022); Kunstpavillion, Munich (2022); MARTa Herford Museum, Herford (2021); The Dowse Art Museum, Wellington (2018); Musee d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2017); Easy!Upstream Gallery, Munich (2016); Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York (2015); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Zentrum für Medien und Technologie, Karlsruhe; Pinakothek der Moderne, München. Solo exhibitions at the Akademirommet, Oslo (2016); Receptions Gallery, Oslo (2016); Oslo Kustforenning, Oslo (2015); the SPACES Gallery, Cleveland (2013). Yuka Oyama studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA (BFA in Jewelry); the Munich Art Academy, Germany (MFA in Sculpture and Art Jewellery); Oslo National Academy of Arts, Norway (PhD in Art and Craft). In her current role as Professor of Craft (Jewellery Art) at HDK-Valand, she leads the MA in Jewellery Art.

Research:In Oyama’s current artistic research, Mobile Personal Belongings (2017-ongoing) she investigates how personal possessions, especially in moments when people experience profound uprooting are a vital source of emotional continuity and stability in affirming a sense of selfhood and a sense of home. This practice-based artistic research comprises three volumes: in HELPERS CHANGING HOMES (2017)(https://yukaoyama.com/project/helpers-changing-homes/Links to an external site.) Oyama worked with individuals who had experienced more than thirty transnational and national relocations. For the second volume, a home is a home is a home (2019), (https://yukaoyama.com/project/a-home-is-a-home-is-a-home/Links to an external site.) she investigated the experience of home for vocational commuters who live between many cities and countries. The third series, SurvivaBall Home Suits (2021) (https://yukaoyama.com/project/survibaball-home-suits/Links to an external site.) she explored ideas of ‘home’ with children and young adults who had been raised (or were being raised) in 50:50 shared child custody living arrangement between two or more households. Oyama is particularly interested in these moments when home is shifting and the persons who live in such setups, since they embody skills to adapt to constant external changes. Her hypothesis is when elements that have previously provided orientation point for individuals such as national identities by birth, culture, ethnic communities, gender roles, traditions, (home)land, and properties erode, things that remain with individuals as constants become prompts to anchor selfhood.                                                                                ___________________                                              

 

Lotte Mik-Meyer (Professor, Inland Norway University, Norwegian Film School)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Professor, Head of Conceptual Documentary (MFA) at The Norwegian Film School, a study program I have developed and taught since 2018. Experienced in documentary film making, cinematography and talent development. MA in International Development Studies and Media Science from Roskilde University. Graduate studies at University of Copenhagen, Université Paris VII, France and University of Durham, UK. I worked with post-colonial studies, psycho analysis and sociology, represented by thinkers like Lacan, Bourdieu, Zizek. After university I started as project manager at the national broadcaster DRTV, then turned to my interest in artistic expression. I studied at the Classical Drawing School of Glyptoteket in Copenhagen for one year, after which I began making my own documentary films. I have worked as Film Commissioner at the Film Workshop Copenhagen, the national talent program for documentaries, fiction, short film and web series.  I have for more than 20 years been teaching the artistic development workshop “Personal Pictorial Language” at the post-graduate program at The National Film School of Denmark, Binger Filmlab, Sundance Institute, Screen Institute Beirut, International Media Support and at other locations in Denmark and internationally. This workshop is intended for film artists and tv journalists, including directors, cinematographers, composers, musicians, designers, editors and actors. The focus of these workshops is the artist’s personal expression with the camera. I have worked one woman/one camera in the Middle East and Africa, and I am experienced in filming alone in conflicted areas like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Madagascar.  I am the director and cinematographer of ”What We See” (2006), ”Drawing” (a non-linear Structure) (2006), ”The Arab Initiative” (2008) and ”Return of a President” (2017), this last about the President of Madagascar, who was ousted by a military coup possibly instigated by neo-colonial powers.

Research: In my films there is often a substantial personal part of the material that for different reasons is cut out of the films. This is a strange discovery, since in general I tend to be preoccupied with the personal voice of the artist. The outtakes are about love and loneliness, and they have been cut out for various reasons; I do not know if these are the right reasons or just well argued rationalization - most often referring to the outtakes to as side tracks. I have a hard time getting outtakes of this kind out of my head. It's something I've seen, something I've filmed, material that sometimes has been in the film for quite a while - until it's cut out. Maybe it was - at some point - the main track, and maybe the side tracks are just another main track - in another movie? I am at a point in my artistic practice when these side tracks occupy me more and more. Where do they take me? What do I see and what do I want to see - before my own critical gaze cuts out the material? I work with areas like:

SIDE TRACK/MAIN TRACK

FAILURE/MASTERY

FAILURE AS ACCESS TO THE SUBCONSIOUS

EMBODIED PRACTICES

MEMORY AS KEY TO GAZE

I’m just beginning this kind of research. I’ve been collecting footage and other material for a year, and now I’m ready to enter the zone of existential disquiet and - hopefully – pleasure of finding new tracks in my artistic work. As an attractive side track to this field of research, I am interested in how we - within the field of artistic research – can use film and video both as a means of documentation and as an artistic expressions in its own right.

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Solmund Nystabakk (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Academy of Music)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: From village churches in Norway to the baroque palaces of Venice, from Molde Jazz Festival to Wiener Musikverein and the Tampere Biennale, lute and guitar player Solmund Nystabakk has performed with a repertoire ranging from early music and classical, via pop and folk music to contemporary music and free improvisation. He has also composed music for numerous theatre projects, contributed on more than fifteen recordings and holds a PhD in Artistic Research from The Norwegian Academy of Music and UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Solmund's main research interests lie within performance practice, artistic research and philosophy. He currently pursues a research project with support from the Arts Council Norway about possible alternatives to the understanding of historical music as 'works'.

Research: Singing with the lute is an attempt at bringing new perspectives and work methods to the performance of lute songs. In terms of repertoire, the project has dealt with English and Italian songs with lute accompaniment in tablature from the 16th and early 17th century, with the main focus on English lute songs from the period 1597-1620. My work has also involved translations and adaptations of songs into languages other than those mentioned above, as well as other repertoires that have been relevant to the project, notably solo lute music and vocal music not notated in tablature. Work materials have included printed and manuscript songbooks and modern copies of historical lute instruments. The principal work tools for the project repertoire have been 7- and 8-course renaissance lutes. My point of departure is Historically Informed Performance, also known as HIP. My main contribution to the field is a widening of the HIP approach to encompass aspects of the performance of music that have received little attention within HIP. More specifically, I have shown how historical sources and concepts can be applied at various levels yielding highly diverse results in terms of style, expression and experience potential. Although the project is no attempt at a comprehensive survey of performance possibilities (historical or otherwise) in lute songs, it shows a wider range of methods and approaches than what I see as the current state of lute song performance. See also https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/687266/687267Links to an external site.

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FINLAND

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Pauliina Laukkanen (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki)

Bio: I am a dancer, dance pedagogue and fourth-year doctoral candidate at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Since 2002 I have worked extensively on bringing dance to people’s everyday surroundings, especially to elderly care units through Myrskyryhmä - Tempest Group, of which I am a founding member. Through the work in Tempest Group I became especially interested in questions of interaction, pedagogy and the processes of art-making (vs. products of art). This led me to study and research pedagogy. I see pedagogical thinking and practices as an essential and integral part of any art processes that involve power dynamics and people encountering each other, for reaching ethical and safe circumstances and desired results of work. I want to support and promote true agency of all participants of artistic processes. Recently, outside of my research, I have been teaching dance to 80-90 -year-old Finnish orphans of WW2, developing co-working methods with a visual artist colleague in portrait work with the elderly and teaching dance pedagogy to MA pedagogy students at the University of the Arts Helsinki. I am in the final stages of training to become a certified TRE Provider (Tension, Stress and Trauma Releasing Exercises, a neurogenic tremoring practice) and am very interested in the borderline and fusion of TRE and dance as a study of embodied language. I am a mother of three young children.  See also https://www.myrskyryhma.fi/in-english.htmlLinks to an external site. 

Research: In my doctoral research Window to Self – Trauma-Sensitive Dance Pedagogy that Supports Sense of Self and Sense of Connection, I am developing a model for trauma-sensitive dance pedagogy. Trauma-sensitivity in my research signifies the understanding of safe processes of art making. Learning and creativity, be it vigorous or fragile, becomes truly possible through safety. Trauma-sensitive dance pedagogy supports the deepening of an embodied, experiential connection to self and therefore also to the experiences of others and to the environment. This promotes a new kind of agency, creative thinking, experience of belonging to place and community, sense of inclusion and sense of the importance of a responsible relationship to nature. With my research I want to support breaking away from the trauma of separation in our society. I approach research as an intuitive process. The pedagogical foundation of my research is based on dialogical, critical and feminist pedagogy as well as on eco-social education. I approach embodiment through somatics including trauma research, as a wide lens that offers a wholistic approach to experientiality and humanity. The context of art gives perspective of the possibilities of visionary thinking, imagining and actualizing something into reality. I work with adults in different stages of their lives. Through a long-term teaching process, I am developing a sharable model for trauma-sensitive dance pedagogy. The first artistic part of my research will be a community dance piece in my hometown Kirkkonummi, which still suffers from the trauma of Soviet Union total occupation for 12 years after WW2. My second artistic part will be an installation-workshop where I will present the model in an experiential manner. I use a lot of reflection through writing, drawing and discussion as part of my pedagogy. I will publish my thesis as a Research Catalogue exposition. 

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Naiara De La Puente (Sibelius-Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki)

Bio: Naiara De La Puente is one of Spain's renowned contemporary accordionists and a winner of several international competitions. She plays actively as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe and has received widespread acclaim for his performances at prestigious festivals and venues.  Her musical interests have led her to take part in different kind of musical projects and ensembles, from classical to contemporary performance, including multidisciplinary projects with visuals arts and poetry. She is also a member of contemporary music group Smash Ensemble, Akartia Trio and Stratos Project, and premiered pieces by both renowned and the young generation of composers.  She has done solo recordings to the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), Spanish Broadcasting Company (RTVE) and Basque TV and Radio Company (EITB).  As a researcher, she has presented her works in different events: Doctors in Performance Conference 2016 in Dublin, V Conference of Doctoral Students at the Tallinn Academy of Music and Theatre (2018), ICMuc 2018 in Porto, and at the 1st International Conference on Artistic Research in Manchester. Currently, Naiara is pursuing an artistic doctorate at the Sibelius Academy, focusing on the role of the accordion in contemporary chamber music.

Research: The 20th century introduced a new instrument to the contemporary music panorama, a versatile and rich, polyphonic wind instrument, which became an experimental laboratory for many composers: “A small colorful orchestra” compressed into one instrument, which fascinated the new and old generation of composers. The accordion as an instrument is relatively new, and so is the music composed for it. In the past sixty years the accordion has experienced a huge development as a musical instrument and has been considered in the field of professional music. One part of my research collects an overview of the transformative changes in the musicianship of professional accordionists. I explore and reflect on the professional perspectives of the accordion in the 21^st century and observe the new identities an accordionist can embrace within this actual world. I also observe the actual pedagogical field and reflect on it. Last, I reflect on my own identity as an artist with a focus on the doctoral studies as a transformative process.  On the other hand, and as a professional accordionist specialized in contemporary music, I reflect on my own practices and experiences as a performer embodying new ways of playing in line with the ideas of artistic research. I explore the fresh and surprising roles the accordion plays in the context of contemporary accordion repertoire. I am focusing on the following research questions: What kinds of roles does the accordion play in contemporary chamber music? In what ways do composers tend to use the accordion in an ensemble? What aspects of performance practice are related to the accordion vis-à-vis the many other instrumental families? In trying to answer these questions, I select several musical excerpts which are representative of the accordion repertoire.

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Susanna Suurla (Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Dept. Film, Television and Scenography)

Bio: Susanna Suurla (MA) is a costume designer, doctoral candidate and part-time lecturer in Costume Design at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography, Aalto University. With a background of over 20 years of professional experience in costume for live performance, she has worked as costume designer, spatial designer, prop- and dressmaker throughout her career and wetted her toes as a performer a few times. Her recent artistic works and current research focus on the relationship between mind, matter, and meaning-making, employing different mediums of material engagement, including costume design, installation and video art. Since 2019, she has worked as a part-time lecturer for the Costume Design major at Aalto University, where she has held workshops on corresponsive approaches to material creativity for MA students in costume design and scenography. She also tutors BA costume design students in devised and collaborative performance processes and courses and regularly supervises MA students in their thesis works and artistic projects. Her educational background is in costume design (MA, Aalto University, 2017), virtual fashion design (BA, EVTEK University of Applied Science, 2007) and dressmaking (Artisan, Vantaa Vocational School, 2002). See also: ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8250-0847Links to an external site.  / Web page: https://susannasuurla.com/Links to an external site.

Research: My doctoral research project (2021-25), tentatively entitled Sensing Matter–Making Meaning: exploring methods for devised material-led costume practice, is located in the field of costume design for performing arts. The research focuses on how meaning is negotiated in dialogue with materiality in devised costume design. More specifically, it examines how material engagement (Malafouris, 2013)  and costume thinking (Pantouvaki, 2020)informs processes of ideation and meaning-making when using embodied and material-led methods for costume creation in devised performance processes. The study shifts the focus from the outcome, costume, to the personal processes of costume designers to unpack how the diverse embodied, cognitive, and socio-cultural aspects at play influence costume designers’ instinctive and intuitive understanding of materiality and its expressive qualities.  The practice-led research is built around a series of workshops that explore how the embodied experience of material engagement offers divergent perspectives and incites meaning in the creative work and explores the potential of this engagement in building performative landscapes and narratives through costume. The first phase of these workshops focuses on the costume designers’ subjective experience, whereas the second phase centres on the engagement between the costume designer and performers. The workshops employ a methodology that sensitises the participants towards instinctive, associative meaning-making processes through material engagement. The observational exercises employed are material-led and adopt an embodied and mindful perspective that draws from the devising methods I have employed and developed in collective creative processes in contemporary dance and theatre in Finland. I have elaborated some of these to formulate a devised costume design approach, whereas some have emerged through my practice and teaching.

References:

Malafouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind: a theory of material engagement. Cambridge /London: MIT Press.

Pantouvaki, S. (2020) ‘Costume Thinking as a Strategy for Critical Thinking’. Critical Costume 2020 Conference. 

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Hanna Pajala-Assefa (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki)  

Bio:  Hanna Pajala-Assefa is a choreographer and artist-researcher working in the intersection of contemporary performance art and mediated technology. She has an extensive career as a contemporary choreographer with a parallel path in performance, festival and film production. As an artist, since 2013, she has worked with interactive audio-visual media and mediation technology producing work for the digital and live formats. Recently she also teaches and curates content within new media performing arts. She has participated in international interdisciplinary projects, such as ”Moving Digits: Augmented Dance for Engaged Audience” (https://movingdigits.euLinks to an external site.) with both academic and artistic outcomes and presented work in academic conferences in dance, art and technology. Her VR artwork ”Skeleton Conductor XR Art” (https://www.facebook.com/skeletonconductorLinks to an external site.) was nominated with the People's Choice Award at Altered Festival 2020 in USA. She is currently working on artistic dissertation at the Helsinki University of the Arts on technologically mediated choreography. https://artisthannapajala.wordpress.com/about/Links to an external site.

Research:  In my research, entitled Choreographing emergent corporeality in mediated, interactive performance environments, I’m examining the experiential and perceptual states taking place during a mediated art experience and theorising the means and practices of choreographic art within this framework. My aim is to unfold the choreographic thinking in the technologically mediated environment and develop practices of choreographing a real-time, interactive performance. In an iterative manner, first through a case study experiment followed by artistic components, it’s a phenomenological inquiry of interconnectedness and affectivity when the body is touched by and incorporating the effects of technology. As the focus of the research is on the art of choreography it is framed by specific art making activities, which allow reflecting and theorising issues of human-computer relationship, intra-activity and trans-corporeality. The process is twofold to allow a dual lens of artistic practice and theoretical thinking; foremost to be engaged in a choreographic process combining performative, technological and participatory elements, yet simultaneously, having a critical lens on the practice in dialogue with relevant theoretical frames. One of my main concerns is how to adequately delineate existing epistemologies while retaining theoretical frameworks vital for the research, wherein the examined domain encloses diverse and extensive epistemic frames such as HCI, human perception&cognition, performance, dance and new media. Currently, I’m adopting a diffractive epistemological approach through a post-phenomenological lens; that is combining pragmatism and phenomenology, with incorporating techno-science and techno philosophy.My current praxis aims to recognise the knowledge and skills I have and use in the making of an interactive performative artwork. I’m relying on ‘organising things in time-space’ yet imagining an autonomous, generative choreography of human and non-human agents. What extant knowledge is relevant here? How to utilise prior experience and existing choreographic practices? What novel practices are generated or induced by this particular techno-performative framework?

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Heidi Hänninen (Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki)   

Bio:  Heidi Hänninen (M.A / M.F.A) is a community artist with the background of art education (University of Lapland, 2017) and concrete sculpture (Uniarts, Helsinki, 2016). Heidi has studied at the Department of Monumental Painting in St. Petersburg (2008-2009) and after her year in exchange she has been painting murals both in Finland and abroad for over 10 years now and working within different assembles. Since the beginning Heidi has been using and developing street art as a form of socially engaged art practise. For Heidi street art is a method for the community art and a way to (learn to) communicate, not only between residents, but also between people and institutions who might be otherwise far away from each other. In her art practise street is the arena for visibility and existence, where new realities can be born and seen, enabling people to encounter. As her PhD Heidi is preparing her research related to community art and public art for the Doctoral Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Uniarts Helsinki. Heidi lives and works in East Helsinki suburb called Kontula, where she is leading her communal Kontula Art School project focusing on public art and street art. The aim of the research is to build ethically sustainable methodological tool kit for the future to be used in culturally diverse and socially layered contexts, including substance abuse cultures. See also Facebook and Instagram: @kaskontulartschool, www.heidihanninen.com

Research: “The New Realities Within the Urban Culture (KAS! 2019-2025)” is study about the possibilities of the community art in culturally diverse contexts KAS! Kontula Art School is a communal art school focused on street art and public art and it's also the main case of this art-based action research project. The aim of the study is to put together a methodological tool kit for community art practices in culturally diverse and heterogeneous contexts in a changing urban environment, including also substance abuse cultures. This artistic research examines the experiences of the participants in KAS! collective in East Helsinki concerning their membership and agency in the community, as well art's role and the impact of art practices on them. In this study street art is used as the main tool for the socially engaged art making process and the interest is to find out how it can work to benefit the community. I explore community art and its means by analyzing the practices and principles that reinforce the experience of communality and cohesion within the activities of the KAS! Art school. I am also interested in the impact of communal art activities on the factors about personal growth and identity issues, artistry, and quality of life of the authors. At the heart of my research are co-designed art works, the creative process, and the impact of the implemented art works on the use and ownership of the urban space as well on caring about the shared environment. Goal of the research is to create new directions to debate questions related to the community art, artistry, and the nature and possibilities of art itself in this changing world among those new realities that we share and shape together to be lived in.       

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Jana Unmüßig (Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Jana Unmüßig (she/her) is an artist and artist-researcher with a background in choreography. Between 2008-2015, her choreographic pieces for stage have been shown at numerous venues, such as Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampangel Hamburg, Springdance Utrecht, Impulstanz Vienna, Zodiak-Center for New dance, Helsinki. 2011-2012, she was resident artist at k3 – Center for Choreography, Hamburg, and she was previously in residency for shorter periods at Movement Research New York (2008), Theatre Tangente Montreal /Lynda Gaudreau (2009), Re-al, Lisbonne (2010). Since 2014 she has situated her artistic practice in frames of artistic research. This process brought with it a reconsideration of media and formats which resulted in a series of paintings, writings, a Long Table Performance, collaborations and experimental situations. Jana did a D.E.U.G in Theater Studies at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris (2002); trained in dance and choreography at SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) Salzburg (2008); received a Master of Arts (choreography) from the Inter-University Center of Dance Berlin (HZT) (2010) and holds a D.A. from University of the Arts (Uniarts) Helsinki (2018). 2019/2020 she held a post-doc position at the Center for Artistic Research (Cfar) Uniarts 2020 - 2021, she was a fellow and scholarship recipient of the Berlin Artistic Research Program. Latest publications entail a peer-reviewed article published by Choreographic Practices, UK (2021) and a performance-based exposition at Radialsystem Berlin (2022). She works as part-time lecturer in choreography at Uniarts Helsinki since 2020.  Jana lives together with her partner and their two kids in Helsinki. See also: www.jana-unmussig.comLinks to an external site.

Research:  I am about to conclude a research project on breathing that I started in 2019 during my post-doc position at Cfar as a solitary project and that branched out into a collaboration with Berlin-based choreographer and performer Miriam Jakob in 2020 when we started working on a project called Breathing With in the frame of the Berlin Artistic Research Program. Having started off with a study of the artistic conversations /outputs discussing breath in the visual arts of the 60s during my time at Cfar, in the collaboration with Miriam the research oriented towards frameworks from outside of the arts (e.g. gender studies, posthumanism, anthropology). Currently, Miriam and I develop writings for a (non)concluding book about Breathing With, published by Errant Bodies Press Berlin. In addition, I have an ongoing research interest in pedagogy in higher art education. The projectness of this interest has so far found form through informal conversations with peers, teaching/supervising/mentoring in higher art education contexts and through conference presentations. At times I focus my interest on methods of teaching choreography as expanded art practices, at times I engage in a set of doubts about the necessity of teaching art in higher art education. All thoughts, conversations, outputs are fed by an interest in post-humanist education studies combined with a wide array of readings of e.g. the work artist Anette Kraus, the Casco Art Institute, the Silent University, writings by Neil Mulholland.

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Otso Lähdeoja (University of the Arts Helsinki)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Otso Lähdeoja is a professor of artistic research at the University of the Arts Helsinki, composer, electronic musician and researcher in digital arts. He holds a doctorate in music from Paris VIII University and has led a myriad of crossover artistic projects over the past years. His works include musical ensembles, solo and group albums, multimedia projects, music-poetry, installation art and music for dance performances. He has lived and worked in Finland, Canada, Belgium and France. Otso Lähdeoja's research approach is rooted in research-creation; combining exploratory artistic creation and academic enquiry into a mutually feeding loop. While the tools and methods of his research stem from music and technology, the themes of enquiry open up to larger, cross-disciplinary questions concerning human intersubjectivity and transindividual cognition, as well as the interplay between technology and society.

Research: Currently, I find myself curious about the inter-; phenomena that arise in-between salient categories of perceptual or conceptual objects. Originally, the inquiry grew from the experiential context of intersubjectivity in music, that is, mapping the space in-between musicians in music-making. The question has since gradually spread towards a broader speculation about a range of phenomena in-between delimited entities, towards a “world without objects”, as Tim Ingold puts it. Humans appear to be cognitively conditioned towards an object-oriented bias. In a quasi-automatic manner, perception carves out objects from an enactive interplay of stimuli and internalised presuppositions. Language casts a grid of contrasting or oppositional categories to slice the world into a set of meaningful units of operation. However, the world is hardly reducible to any neat classification. An “unclassifiable remainder” (Bernhard Giesen) occupies the spaces in-between established units. Over and over again, I find myself immersed in intermediary practices, ambivalent spaces, and hybrid situations, where the object-centred approaches seem to lose their operability. Instead, I perceive a call for a turn towards the intermediary with its relations, spaces, dynamics, qualities, distributed phenomena that stubbornly evade neat definitions and delimitations.  A question I am concerned with is: could one conceive artistic research as a way for working expressly on the intermediary? Could artistic research act as a revelator of things in-between? Artistic practices are essentially liminal, with a core connection towards the ineffable. Art can show the unspoken, it can produce effects that make the non-obvious felt. If the dynamics of the intermediary spaces escape definitions and delimitations, can they be made known, through their effects, in works and processes of art? Can artistic practices grant an indirect access to the evanescent intermediary spaces, and bring forth a meaningful body of  knowledge from the in-between?

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SWEDEN

 

Ylva Gustavsson (UniArts Stockholm)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Ylva Gustavsson is a Film Director and since 2020 a professor of directing for film and media at Stockholm University of the Arts where she teaches Film Directing and engages in artistic research connected to her field of practice Ylva has been teaching Film Directing for 15 years and did her first research project called “Devising Film – Collaborative Filmmaking” about 8 years ago. She also has professional practical experience in script writing and film editing. Her film portfolio consists of both fiction and documentary films, feature and short films. Since 2021 Ylva has been head of the master program in film and media with a team profile and part of the research department at SKH. She also a trained coach; including individual coaching, team coaching and leadership coaching.

Research: My primary research interest is in collaborative film making and in how to create non hierarchical structures for film teams through methods of self-organization, agile and iterative processes where artists/filmmakers/researchers use their specializations, experiences and skills from different fields of film making in an open minded and creative collaborative process. I believe in slow engagement and in training ones sensibility to react upon individual and collective impulses in artistic collaborations. My research method consists primarily of creating and facilitating workshops where practical artistic work is being done by a group (or team). I use methods that I picked up during my professional years in the film branch, methods and exercises I picked up as a film school teacher and in my practice as a coach. My current research project is called “Collaborative film making and the quest for a collective narrative”.

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Savaş Boyraz (UniArts Stockholm)

Bio: Savaş Boyraz (born in 1980) based in Stockholm. He contributed to various movie productions of the Mezopotamya Cinema Collective between 1998 and 2006 in Istanbul. He graduated from the Photography Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul in 2009. Got his degree in Fine Arts in Art in Public Realm Master Program at Konstfack, Stockholm, in 2012. He has been selected by Lausanne Photography Museum for the reGeneration2 exhibitions and book 2010. He also took part in 53. Venice Biennale through “Planet-Kurdistan”. With his work “Invisible Landscapes” he was awarded the Victor Fellowship by Hasselblad Foundation, and took part in the New Nordic Photography exhibition in 2013. Alongside his artistic works, between 2015-2018, he has collaborated with social researchers from Bergen University, Norway, to produce research related films. Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Film and Media at Stockholm University of Arts.

Research: Eye of the Mountain is a visual investigation of the relationship among humans, machines and nature, in a colonial context. The project aims to unfold the reflection of nature on colonial military practises, as well as on the various modes of resistance.  The design history of colonial military technologies is decorated with taxidermies of appropriated and assimilated life forms. This appropriation spans from biomechanical imitation to representational evisceration.  Looking at the ecological impact of the military operations in Kurdish mountains and observing the disappearance and displacement of several species, we can identify these war machines as invasive species. What we see is an engineered generation of colonial invasive species.( A few of them to note: F16 Fighting Falcon Military Aircraft; Bell AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter; Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk Utility Helicopter; IAI Heron (Machatz-1) Drone; Leopard 1 and 2 Tanks; Saab 39 Gripen Non-Stealth Fighter Jet. The list can go on forever.) For people, on the other hand, nature emerges as a platform upon which the resistance is imagined and executed. Compared to biomechanical appropriation of animals in military technologies, for the people, nature gets translated into the human body. Bodily and vocal reflections of animals through folk dances and traditional singing styles, and the role of these practices in choreography of cultural self-defence are other focal points of the research. The first batch of works produced as part of the research carries the title “Partridge Nation”.

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Marc Johnson (UniArts Stockholm Film/Art)

Bio: Marc Johnson (France, 1986, lives and works in Stockholm and Paris) is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, trained architect, multimedia artist, and film essayist with ancestors in Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Congo. Johnson’s work has been shown extensively around the world. Important individual exhibitions include The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art (2017), UC Davis, United States (in collaboration with the Kramlich collection); La Maréchalerie, contemporary Art Center (2016), Versailles, France and The Zentrum fur Medienkunst, (Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V.), Halle, Germany.  Johnson has participated in the Sundance Film Festival (2016, 2018), the Biennale of Moscow for Young Art (2017, 2018), The Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale Shorts (2015), the Yvonne Rainer Project at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (2014) and more than 50 International Film Festival worldwide.  Major group exhibitions include “OLHO“, Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; “constellation•s, new ways of living in the world”, arc en rêve centre d’architecture, Bordeaux, France; “trans(?)duction“, CNEAI= Centre National Edition Art Image, Chatou, France and “ATM tempo I/II/III”, Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum, Tokyo, Japan.  He received the LVMH Young Artist Award in 2009, was awarded the Best Short Film Award from the Las Palmas International Film Festival de Gran Canaria in 2016, the Cornish Family Prize for Art & Design Publishing from the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 2017 and the Best Short Film Award from the 10th Annual Milwaukee Film Festival in 2018 and receive the i-Portunus, European Commission’s mobility scheme for artists in 2019. 

Research: Marc Johnson is currently a PhD candidate (2021-present) in the Film and Media department of the Stockholm University of the Arts, in Sweden. Johnson is investigating artistic research strategies to re-think archival materials — through a series of experiments — within the tradition of archival film practices — focused on re-reading formations of violence within natural history film archive(s) from the silent film era. Johnson is practicing modes of attending and re-configuring such as re-filming, re-montage, re-framing, and reading film as text through laying out image sequences to decrypt their his/her-stories and meaning. A lecture-performance at the "VIOLENCE: the fourth biennial PARSE Research Conference" at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden from 2021 could be accessed through: https://marcjohnson.fr/portfolio/archival-multiverse/Links to an external site. See also Marc Johnson's website: https://marcjohnson.fr/Links to an external site.

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Natalie Novick (Hdk-Valand, Design, University of Gothenburg)

Bio: My work lies at the intersection of architecture, design and art fields. In my current practice I work closely with topics of self-organisation, especially in the field of cultural institutions, urban commons, collective use and collective care. My previous work was situated around exploring the notion of sharing spaces, low-impact ways of living and downshifting within the built environment, with inspiration from self-organised mostly rural communities started with the “green wave”. Since 2019 I run my own studio that focuses on dialogue processes for urban development projects and uses games as a method. I work with different population groups, including children and young people, self-organising groups and community initiatives. Through applying principles of urban curating I focus on developing prototypes for innovative co-design methods that can help to conduct collective design processes, but more importantly act as a megaphone tool for artistic expression. Another topic which constantly goes through my research and practice is the notion of “otherness” and representation of otherness in spatial practice. Otherness I see as not belonging to a prevailing norm, and spaces for otherness intend to challenge those norms and challenge power relations. Talking about practical applications of my work, I have explored various mediums, for example mobile and DIY architecture, working with unconventional materials, building installations, working with repurposing buildings and so on. Methodologically speaking my practice includes working with communities, codesign, collective action, dialogue process, as well as developing applied tools for those methodologies.

Research: Collective Matters. Co-creation of Commons through Self-organizationis the title of my current research project. Understanding urban commons through the prism of neo-liberal urbanism and participation has interested researchers and practitioners since the rise of the creative class and concept of “creative city”. This research project intends to explore the phenomena of community, it’s essence and what it means in the contemporary urban context of neoliberal urbanism, as well as what is the new role of design professionals in the era of participation. Intending to be an interdisciplinary study the project connects areas of spatial planning, art, curatorial practice and interaction design. On a broad scale, the theoretical framework lies on the intersection of critical spatial practice and urban curating, touching upon critical reflections on participatory design practices and tactical urbanism. Project’s ambition is to explore non-conventional ways of co-creation. My assumption is that urban curating can be seen as an altering practice, activating the space in a non-permanent way, on the contrary to contemporary urbanism that aims to create a permanent sense of belonging through temporality of material artefacts in physical space. Project has a focus on self-organised cultural bodies and exploration of how they contribute to the development of the urban fabric and build environment. I am mainly interested in investigating the notion of self-organisation as a reaction to the neo-liberal governance. What is the history, process of creating, an agenda, and how do they contribute to the discussion of the normative design in the sphere of public space? What does it mean to be self-organised in relation to urban commons and why the need for self-organisation emerges, as well as how self-organising functions as a process of forming a community, in order to achieve the desired goal of creating alternative stories, in this case within spatial practice.

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Birgitta Nordström (Hdk-Valand, Craft, University of Gothenburg)

Bio: Birgitta Nordström is a textile artist and doctoral candidate at HDK-Valand, Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg. Since 1995 she has been exhibiting nationally and internationally; in Europe, Australia, Russia and United States. Her art practise and research are focusing on ritual textiles – investigating the textile as an object that can help to confront, and hold, death.

Research: I am a weaver and textile artist that is researching the use of textiles – blankets, shrouds, funeral palls – in situations of death, especially perinatal death. The main research question is about the relevance, use and design of a blanket to hold, wrap and shroud a stillborn child, a miscarriage or late term aborted foetus. My inquiry will also – in relation to textile actions – study the spaces in clinical environment where we hold, view and take farewell. 

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Felicita Brusoni (Malmö Music Academy)

Bio: Felicita is soprano, vocal performer and PhD candidate in Music at the Faculty of Performing Arts in Malmö (University of Lund, Sweden). Her research concerns the extended vocal techniques for the contemporary repertoire, which she deals with for solo voice, with electronics or other instruments. She also had experience with Early and Baroque music (she recorded Carissimi's Oratorios for Bongiovanni label). She is co-founder of Helmut Duo together with pianist Matteo Bogazzi, and she is part of vocal ensembles Fragmente and Voxnova Italia. The opera and musical theater repertoire ranges from the early 20th Century music (Britten, Menotti, Puccini) to the contemporary one. She has sung premières written for her by Italian and foreign composers in national and international festivals, such as Biennale di Venezia, Contrasti MotoContrario (Trento), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, John Cage Orgel Foundation, Livorno Music Festival, Lund Contemporary, Musica Futura (L’Aquila), New Made Week, New Music Project San Marino, Ravenna Festival, Rive Gauche, Rondò by Divertimento Ensemble, Sound Spaces (Malmö), Spazio Musica (Cagliari), Stockhausen-Konzerte und -Kurse Kürten. She was awarded as "Best Singer Interpreter" at New Music Project San Marino 2018 and with the "Jury Prize" at the Festival Note tra i Calanchi (Bagnoregio) 2019. After her studies at the Philharmonic Academy and a degree in DAMS at the University of Bologna, she obtained a Bachelor in Singing and a first-class Master in Vocal Chamber Music at the Conservatory of La Spezia.

Research: My research project, “A Voice Beyond the Edge”, is situated within the topic of exploring new fields in the scenario of the extended vocal techniques, which is everything that is not considered a “standard” use of the voice, artistically speaking.  Research and experiments in this area have already enhanced our knowledge of what humans can do by going beyond the limits of voice. So far, not enough investigation has been devoted to devising a method to handle and improve the extended vocal techniques, and to find tools that could provide upgrades for singers who are approaching the experimental voice, for those who already practice some techniques and want to improve them or learn others, and for composers who could refer to a specific system of techniques. The aim is to fulfil part of this gap and to add knowledge that is useful for researchers in voice science, singers, and composers, since many voice techniques are still unconsidered and unidentified. One of the outputs of my research project is to build a strong experience around the extended vocal technique, giving Malmö Academy of Music a leading place on the international map about this topic, becoming the Multimedia Center for the Extended Vocal Techniques, the first one in Scandinavia. All the research issues will gather in an Archive of Extended Vocal Techniques, in the form of a website. The aim is to communicate the artistic knowledge nationally and internationally using new technology and to translate the research into directly applicable information. The Archive will have a physical presence inside the Library in the Malmö Academy of Music and a digital presence, using new technological possibilities in the most useful and clear way to enhance knowledge about the voice issues. My inquiry regarding the extended vocal techniques will involve three main areas of interest, (where the first two areas involve empirical research):

-        voice science

-        education

-        new environments and new artistic products.

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Jörgen Dahlqvist (Malmö Theatre Academy)

Bio: Jörgen Dahlqvist is a playwright, director, and the artistic director of the performing arts collective Teatr Weimar since 2003. He has written and directed more than fifty performances for stage and radio and his productions has been invited to do guest performances in Sweden and internationally: Belgium, Germany, Austria, USA, Vietnam, France, Iceland, Poland, Finland, Denmark and Norway. He is a PhD Student in artistic research in theatre at the Malmö Theatre Academy since 2021.

 

Research: ”Based on a True Story: In Between the Fictive and the Documentary.” Theatre always had the ability to present a variety of perspectives, not least through the very nature of the dramatic text. The material has traditionally been fictitious, but theatre practitioners have since the beginning of the 20th century explored how documentary material could afford addressing societal challenges and injustices through performing arts. Wolfgang Iser (1993) dismisses the divide between fiction and reality in literature, suggesting we should discard the old opposition and instead think of it as a triad: the real, the fictive and the imaginary. The question is then how to understand this third position in the performing arts? Also, with the introduction of new media and other formats of representation, there is also a question of how theatre practice and the understanding of what is presented will change. The aim with this research project is to artistically explore: 1) How storytelling in between the fictive and the documentary, through and across media, could afford different modes of representation, and 2) what this does to the understanding of narrativity, and 3) How could performing arts, that integrate fictive and documentary material to explore new forms of representation, contribute to an arena to address political and societal challenges.

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Lina Persson (UniArts Stockholm)

Bio: Lina Persson is a visual artist and researcher of narrative story-worlds and animated world-building. Her work explores interspersed perspectives and sustainable systems and takes the form of installations, in galleries, specific sites or as public art commissions, both in Sweden and internationally. As teacher she regularly lectures and tutors in art schools in Europe, Asia and the Us. She was head of the animation program at Stockholm University of the Arts 2012-1019. As an artistic researcher Persson develops, plans and implements collaborative and transdisciplinary projects. She speaks on panels, presents at conferences, and peer reviews for journals such as JAR, The Journal for Artistic Research, or as editorial board for VIS, Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. She is currently a senior researcher at the film and media department at Stockholm University of the Arts, working with her research project Climate-Just Worldings financed by the science council & her transdisciplinary project Transforming Practices financed by NAVET, KTH. She is also pursuing a PhD fellowship on 50% with the project Performative Storyworlds.

Research: In the project Performative Storyworlds Lina Persson makes situated interventions through narrative storyworlds and animated worldbuilding. The artworks often brings some conditions attached that transform the mindset and routines of the environments she enters, as a way to ”world” them.- Constructing alternative inner story worlds has always been the basic mode for me to perceive the world, process the world, and to find ways to act in the world. worldbuilding as an artform also serves my interest in systems and “the whole”. an interest that brings about the desire for sustainability, for things to be fair, balanced, for “the whole” to sustain and thrive. Persson’s works often materializes as a response to something in her environment, a response that carefully takes form within the fictive storyworld. Examples of her responses are a proposal to update the permanent exhibition on mining at Tekniska Museet, staging a shutdown of her university or introducing climate budgeting into film courses. - This method of careful responses aligns with the concept of “worlding”, a term from material feminist thought about making “cuts” in the world, enacting interventions that produce the world I inhabit. “Worlding” is acknowledging the relations, how I am entangled in the world, while acting. Being embedded in a “storyworld” gives me the critical distance that enables me to respond more creatively, “as if” things could be a whole lot different. Due to my interests in the full range of things, from material to structural to epistemological and ontological, I prefer to make interactions on all levels simultaneously in order to trace their effects, how they are connected, how they interact and affect one another. In order to reach initiated understanding into all parts of “the wholes” Persson engages in transdisciplinary collaborations with researchers from many different disciplines.

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Eleanor Bauer (UniArts Stockholm)

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Eleanor Bauer is a choreographer and performer working at the intersections of dance, writing, and music. Her work is a synthesis of embodied intelligences, a practice of making sense with the senses. From solos and talk shows to large ensemble pieces and films, her versatile works range in scale, media, and genre, traversing categories with wit, humour, and aplomb. Bauer has worked as a performer with, among others, Matthew Barney, Trisha Brown, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas, Xavier Le Roy, Boris Charmatz, Every Ocean Hughes, David Zambrano, Mette Ingvartsen, Ictus contemporary music ensemble, The Knife, and Fever Ray. Bauer created her own performances via GoodMove vzw, a production structure she initiated in Brussels from 2007-2020, and was artist in residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels from 2013-2016. Musician, composer, programmer and improviser Chris PeckLinks to an external site. has been a cornerstone in Bauer’s artistic practice since 2004. Together they have collaborated on numerous projects and pieces, developing a rich and long-term anti-disciplinary methodology within and for a world in which beings, things, and machines are respected as emotionally, intellectually, and sensually entangled co-authors. Their forthcoming collaboration with HYOID voices entitled BEYOND BELIEFLinks to an external site. will premiere in 2024. Bauer has been commissioned as a choreographer by, among others, Cullberg in Stockholm, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Corpus at the Royal Danish Theater, and the London-based collective Nora. Bauer has been invited to make works for/with students at P.A.R.T:S. (Brussels), KASK (Royal Conservatory, Ghent), DDSKS (Danish National School of Performing Arts, Copenhagen), and Stockholm University of the Arts. As an insatiable researcher, Bauer teaches, writes, lectures, and co-creates contexts for exchange of knowledge in the arts. Together with Ellen Söderhult and Alice Chauchat, Bauer co-founded the open-source format for exchange of practices in the performing arts called Nobody's BusinessLinks to an external site. in 2015, which has since been adapted by practitioners and organizers worldwide.

Research: My artistic practice-based PhD in Performative and Media-Based Practices with a Specialization in Choreography from Stockholm University of the ArtsLinks to an external site.  passed on 25 May 2022. The project, choreo | graphy, is an inquiry into the relationship between thinking through dance and thinking through written language, taking the notion of choreography literally as dancing-writing.  Respecting that different media afford different thought processes, ideas, and concepts to be reached, my practice-based artistic research project has unfolded within artistic processes and experiments to explore and develop the relationship between dancing-thinking and writing-thinking.  Investigating the media-specificity of thought in dancing together (khoreia) as it relates to the media-specificity of thought in writing (graphia), choreo | graphy experiments with their relation in a way that serves both art forms and respects their differences, while challenging historical hierarchies between embodied sense-experience and the written word.  Post-Doc: Extending insights from my artistic research PhD in on the specificity of dancing as a way of thinking, I would like to connect to current research on arts in education, health and healing, and public action, to advocate for and advance the general utility of dance as a practice of making connections cognitively, personally, and socially. Dancing is an integrative practice that builds social, physical, mental, and emotional intelligences holistically at all ages, abilities, and levels of training. As a process of making sense with the senses, dancing rests on the kinetic and phenomenological foundations of thought as movement to entrain and advance essential capacities for learning, understanding, and socialization. In my post-doc research project (funding to be confirmed) entitled Dance as Enactive Connection, I wish to research and develop practices that strengthen the benefits of dancing in expanded application throughout society via the fields of education, health, and social justice.

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Mick Wilson (Hdk-Valand, Fine Art, University of Gothenburg)  

doctoral supervisor

Bio: Mick Wilson is Professor of Art and Director of Doctoral Studies at Hdk-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and currently visiting professor at SVA, New York (2014-ongoing); and previously at the Latvian Academy of Art, Riga (2021-2022). He was Head of Valand Academy, Gothenburg (2012–18); founder Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media, Ireland (2008–12); and editor-in-chief of PARSE Journal (2015–18). He is a long term member of the EARN network, and he chaired the 2010-2013 SHARE network that established a framework for Europe-wide collaboration and exchange in doctoral education across all the arts, working with 40 institution in 30 countries. Recent edited volumes include: Exhibitionary Acts of Political Imagination (2021), with Cătălin Gheorghe; Curating after the Global: Roadmaps for the Present (2019); How Institutions Think (2017); and The Curatorial Conundrum (2016), MIT Press, variously with Paul O’Neill, Lucy Steeds, and Simon Sheikh; and Public Enquiries: PARK LEK and the Scandinavian Social Turn, Black Dog Publishing (2018), with Helena Selder, SOMEWHERE and Giorgiana Zachia.

Research: Mick Wilson’s teaching and research interests are situated at the intersection of questions of art, knowledge, curating and the political imaginary. Recent work has focussed on such themes as: constructions of public-ness, the social and the state; political community with the dead and the question of the body count; the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict; the exhibition as mode of enquiry; and the aesthetics of foodways. He is part of the research team on Dr-. Maddie Leach’s research project “Fontänen The Fountain” See https://fountain.ghost.io/about/Links to an external site. and https://www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/mickwilsonLinks to an external site.

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Sanskriti Chattopadhyay (Hdk-Valand, Film, University of Gothenburg)

Bio: A doctoral staff at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, HDK-Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Sanskriti Chattopadhyay has degrees in Film Direction and Screenplay Writing from Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, India (a post-graduate diploma equivalent to masters’ by the Indian Association of Universities) and masters’ in Literary and Cultural Studies from English and Foreign Language University, India (2015). Her video art has been curated in Cartographies of Sensation, VAICA festival for contemporary video artists. She has received the PIFF Special Award (2019). Her documentary ‘Reality without a Name’ has been curated in the ‘Cinema of Resistance’ Section of 12th international Documentary and Short Film Festival of India. She has received grants from India Foundation for Arts and Kolkata Center for Creativity for two independent video projects. She has been a part of various artistic research projects like – ‘Globe Playhouse’ (2020) and “Transmedia Storytelling: Camilla Plastic Ocean Plan” (2019) at Film University Babelsberg, Konrad Wolf (2020), Artistic Research project of BRICS in collaboration with WITS Film and Television and Valand Film Programme, India Chapter (2018). She was also invited to Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival and Filmmaking Bootcamp in Winton, Australia (2019).

Research: In his Nobel acceptance speech, Gabriel Garcia Marquez mentioned, ―the interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.‖ This is where the crux of the problem lies. Albeit living in an overtly visual culture, the core of this visual world (which largely informs our sense of culture)–the image – is not subjected to changes of consciousness. As the world scholarship and art are evolving to question the structures that colonialism had rendered ideal and standard, often the bases that build the core of the knowledge producing medium remain unquestioned. If art, especially visual art is considered as a parallel knowledge producing system then it is high time that we question the formal elements within it, and see whether the image as we know it, is actually able to provide us with the new awareness that decolonialism is providing us. Beyond questioning of the image, this proposed research searches the possibility of a more inclusive image, in Marquez‘s words – ‘a familiar pattern to study our reality.’ The focus of this proposed project would shift from the notion of caste-oppression to the specific intelligence and aesthetics developed from the lived-experience of the ‘other.‘ There is a reversal of power- position in this perception that is impenetrable to the ‘privileged’ caste. In this proposed work, using the voice and gaze of the ‘other,‘ possibilities of image in cinema will be explored.

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