KEY NOTE SPEAKERS
Lynette Hunter: A Logic of Participles: Practice, Process, Knowing and Being
Practice is recognised as Research in most countries with tertiary education, and there are many benefits that have come with this recognition. Society benefits from the new articulations of value and of different personal ways of life. What I would like to do in this paper is think about the longer term contribution of PAR to education and culture.
One way of putting this is to push PAR into the question: can practice/artmaking be recognised as knowledge? There is a problem here for a modern perspective because the modern is a commodity-based culture and practice is about process rather than product. The sciences are recognised as knowledge through their ability to be technologically applied, to create commodities. Social sciences create social effects, humanities create discursive effects. While practice or artmaking could do this, the main point is the process. Yes, someone can produce an artwork, say a ceramic object, and this will have a potential for commodifiability. But more importantly it engages its audience in looking at or feeling the world differently, in responding to the world and taking responsibility for it.
The paper will open out some of the implications here with reference to current critical and philosophical discussions.
At the same time, practice is at the heart of all disciplines, even if they often disguise the process with product. PAR has the potential to open up many other fields in the sciences and elsewhere to the work of philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics and process. In doing so, PAR may well find ways to value process more widely in public understanding, to value knowing and being as well as knowledge and identity for what they can bring to our social perspectives on living. This has great potential for change in concepts of individuality and collaboration that can, possibly, also make changes to larger structures of community and political organisation.
Roddy Hunter: I think I now know
In this talk I will present a retrospective view of where passages of my artistic practice could or should (and equally could not or should not) be conceived as research, according to differing criteria whether ethical, aesthetic or political. The talk then concerns how forms of practice correlate or otherwise with modes of research. My practice in the art of action and concept of twenty years has often concerned relationships between mental, physical and social space in different ways. Much of this has – I now realise – has concerned notions of ‘public’ and more recently ‘publication’. For much of that time I have also engaged in enquiry-led practice as a curator, educator and writer and this has undoubtedly determined much of my practice in ways both welcome and otherwise.
Judith Marcuse: Art in Action: A Perspective from Canada
In Canada and around the world, the arts are increasingly used as potent tools in social change and social innovation agendas – in poverty alleviation, health, in many forms of education, in social justice, inter-cultural and environmental work and in many other settings. In the process of art-making, diverse populations are engaged in imaginative expression, helping to create insight and understanding, social cohesion, engagement, hope and new solutions. Whether the work creates employment, explores issues of racism, facilitates conflict-resolution or HIV/AIDS education, empowers women to assert their human rights, builds resiliency in youth voices, strengthens marginalized communities, celebrates local histories, or simply provides new opportunities for expression and dialogue, art processes are highly-effective tools for expanding and deepening knowledge and insight, for the creation of imaginative empathy and engagement, and – perhaps most important – for engaging with the social issues themselves.
This presentation will provide a personal, global overview of the field, based on Judith Marcuse’s work and her extensive connections with other artists (many of them in the global South) and will illustrate the diversity, challenges and successes of this burgeoning practice.
PRESENTERS
Joelle Aden & Stéphane Soulaine: Performing Arts for developing Intercultural Attitudes & Language Acquisition
This 1,5-hour worshop tackles the role that dance and drama can play in the teaching of foreign languages and cultures. Through an alternance of simple dance and drama exercices and discussions, the participants will experiment rhythm and movement as pre-verbal communication tools that can be related to learning a foreign language. Be they biological, physiological or symbolic, rhythms define the prosody of language, influence cultural behavior, and shape the feeling of self and of individual and social identity. Becoming aware of rhythm through artistic exploration fosters language learning, develops intercultural attitudes and communicative skills, and facilitates an aesthetic understanding of text and of the symbolic nature of knowledge. Inseparable from notions of time, energy, and space, rhythm encapsulates the experience necessary for learning. It is a key competence to be developed and taught in schools and in the training of teachers. A short presentation of the doctoral research linked to this workshop will be made and handouts will be given.
Joelle Aden is a lecturer in SLE at ‘Université Paris Est’, France. She explores intercultural communication through the arts in SLE. She is developing a cognitive framework of reference for modern Languages based on the theory of enaction, namely the notions of embodiment and empathy in interaction.
Stéphane Soulaine is a PhD Student at ‘Université Paris Est’, a teacher trainer in SLE at ISFEC BRETAGNE Rennes, and a Choreographer & Dancer. He has been in involved in choreographic work for the last 25 years. His research focuses on the impact of the practice of contemporary dance on modern language acquisition, and more particularly English as a foreign language.
Anna Allgulin: Monologue as dialogue, dialogue as monologue. Freedom and precision
Julia Lee Barclay: Apocryphal Theatre workshop and presentation: playing with concepts
I will lead an experimental workshop first teaching the basic tools of Apocryphal Theatre created in our labs (regarding levels of address, cutting up of text and gesture and levels of presence). The text and gesture we use will emerge from the environment of the colloquium itself, and the questions emerging from it. We will then experiment with another level in which we can incorporate the questions and responses that generally emerge from this work (from direct participants and/or witnesses), so that any reflection or reactions are drawn consciously into action. The research topic is the relation of philosophy and political action to theatre and how rearrangement of the rules of any given room in action can both shift the way we perceive where/what/who we are in relation to one another and the political/philosophical implications of this shift.
Dr. Julia Lee Barclay is the Artistic Director of Apocryphal Theatre (www.flyingoutofsequence.org) and recently received a practice as research PhD from University of Northampton, which argued in writing and practice that theatre can be an act of philosophy. Originally from NYC where she began working in labs on the ideas that still inform her work, she has lived and worked in London since 2003. Her stage texts and directing have been given awards, published, produced and written about in journals such as PAJ and Performance Research. She has also been commissioned to create work, teach workshops, write articles about her practice and guest lecture internationally. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at University of East London.
Yvon Bonenfant: CANCELLED --> Per Zetterfalk instead
Queer Voices, Queer Vocal Timbres and Queer Listening
Based on Bonenfant's article 'Queer listening to queer vocal timbres' (Performance Research 15:3 'On Listening', September 2010) and the practical project Masz (a voice-video tribute to Diamanda Galas created with composers Cox Ring and Virginia Pipe) I shall animate a one-hour work session for participants interested in exploring the notion of 'queer vocal orientation' in order to explore issues around the ways bodies use voice to touch outside of the realm of tactile normativity.
We will explore a few small ways of touching with the voice, derived from touch based exercises and exercises that engage various vocal resonances, that invite the non-normative in timbre to emerge. We will use written reflections to link these with notions of identity, and explore the sensations and reactions (in voice and movement) that these sounds elicit in others. Interested participants will be invited to read the relevant article online before participating. Questions raised by this exploration include:
1. Under what conditions do we allow ourselves to be 'touched' by voices?
2. How do we allow our voices to touch others?
3. What states do these kinds of touch elicit in our bodies?
4. What is the relationship between identity, vocal timbre and the erotics of power?
Yvon Bonenfant is a vocal artist, performer and researcher who extends his work across media. His works have been shown internationally in performance art, musical and gallery environments. His most recently shown works include the voice/video/painting work B(earth) (with Ludivine Allegue), shown at the Centro de Arte Joven Rey Chico Paseo de Los Tristes in Granada, Spain, November 2010; the performance Beacons, commissioned by EMPAC in 2009 and touring the UK in September/October,
2011 and the artist's book/CD Soie Soyeuse, published January 2010. He is programme leader of the MA in Devised Performance at the University of Winchester and an associate of the IDEAT laboratory at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.
University of Winchester, a private charitable company limited by guarantee in England and Wales number 5969256.
Registered Office: Sparkford Road, Winchester, Hampshire SO22 4NR
Camilla Damkjaer & Marie-Andrée Robitaille: Artistic Research in Circus 2010: Learning the Methods of Teaching the Methods of Artistic Research
Circus as an art form has only recently entered into the circuits of artistic education at a university level and artistic research. The purpose of this presentation is to address the following question: which pedagogical methods can we develop for preparing (Bachelor) students for the methodologies of artistic exploration and research, specifically in circus?
A working group at the University of Dance and Circus is currently teaching, analyzing and documenting a particular module of the students’ education (Bachelor level) that concerns the methodologies of artistic exploration in circus. The purpose of this module is to prepare the students for the possibilities and methodologies of artistic research that they may need in the future, whether it be as artistic researchers or independent artists. Our task as a working group is to find methods to do so, while the field of artistic research in circus is forming and constituting itself, itself searching for its own methodologies.
In this work we are most aware that other art forms also deal with similar questions. But despite the fact that we can draw on the knowledge accumulated in other fields, we nevertheless have to ask ourselves: which are the particularities, difficulties and specific possibilities and restrictions that we encounter when teaching methodologies of artistic research in circus? The objective of this presentation is to identify and analyze some of these and to discuss methods through which we can address them.
Camilla Damkjaer, Ph.D., Visiting Senior Lecturer, Circus Program, DOCH.
Marie-Andrée Robitaille, Circus artist, Visiting Senior Lecturer/Artistic Director, Circus Program, DOCH.
Julius Elo: Reciprocal Interaction Between a Performer and Spectator
All performances include interaction between the performers and audience; however reciprocal interaction remains a problematic issue in the field of performing arts. One of my research aims is to explore the reciprocity of interaction between a performer and participant through participatory and interactive performances.
This workshop examines the role of the performer, participant, and staging on reciprocity. What kind of a performance agreement can be made between a performer and participant? What sort of intercorporeal relations does it allow between them? To what extent can power be given to a participant and how is this power used?
The workshop demo is based on ”Dialogues” (2009), a performance event, which offered the participant the possibility to construct a personal performance together with the performer. It included a verbal dialogue followed by a bodily dialogue based on the preceding verbal agreement.
The number of participants is restricted to 12. The workshop includes a participatory demonstration, writing about the experience, and discussion.
Julius Elo, born 1969, is a director working in the field of Live Art. He aims to create performance concepts, where the spectators and their interaction with the performers are the focal point of the piece. His current interests include experiential performances for one person at a time, bodily installations, where spectators need to take radical steps to become participants, as well as intimate encounters between the participant and the performers. He has particularly focused on the effects of a performance on the spectator’s conscious¬ness and body.
Julius Elo is a founding member of Todellisuuden tutkimuskeskus (Reality Research Center). He has graduated from the MA Degree Program in Performance Art and Theory at Theatre Academy, Helsinki. He is currently working on his doctoral studies on “The spectator´s body in performance”.
Davide Giovanzana: The invisible stage
My intervention will present a particular dramaturgical device used by Tim Crouch in his last play, The Author, 2009, which instead of placing a particular attention on the actor’s work (as usually does mainly all performances), it focuses directly towards the spectators who have to rely on their imagination in order to “see” the performance, or better to say to “see” the story and to “see” the actors. This clever “device” that allowed Tim Crouch to remove the stage from his performance, as I will demonstrate, finds its roots in the traditional structure of the play within the play. The presentation will conclude by questioning what is the ultimate action of the actor and if it would be possible to condense it in the act of observing.
Key words:
Meta-theatre, observing, imagination, recognition, action
Davide Giovanzana after having studied painting at the fine art school of Geneva, undergone a theatre training in the Lecoq pedagogy. This experience led him to focus his work on the anthropological approach to the mask theatre, which culminates in the exploration of the relationship (and emergence) of the body with the fictional space on the stage. He is currently enrolled in the PhD program at Teak. His artistic research examines the phenomenon of the play within the play and the dimension of “auto-representation”.
Maria Kapsali: Re(de)fining Action: From Yoga Postures to Physical Scores
The aim of this workshop/presentation is to employ the practice of yoga postures in order to address the concept of action in performance and provide the performer with a working method for developing actions for physical scores. More specifically, this presentation will seek to demonstrate ways in which the practice of yoga postures can allow the performer to become familiar with a number of extra-daily, physical actions and thus cultivate an enactive and embodied understanding towards specific aspects of the theatrical event, such as the creation and embodiment of roles of different dramaturgies, the development of sensitivity to the actual place of the studio/rehearsal space and the virtual space of the text, as well as one’s relationship to fellow members of a group. How can the physical actions that take place in/through the practice of yoga postures transform into actions of a physical score for performance? How can the embodied knowledge acquired through yoga facilitate the performer’s artistic process?
Maria Kapsali is in the process of completing a PhD in Performance Practice, at the University of Exeter. Her research examines the use of yoga in actor training and theatre making. She comes from a physical theatre background (MA in Physical Theatre) with a particular interest in different kinds of somatic disciplines and their application in performance. She is a practitioner and teacher of Iyengar Yoga and her research has been disseminated in international conferences and a peer reviewed publication.
Assi Karttunen & Päivi Järviö: Scenes from a rehearsal – In search of experimental performing practice of French baroque music
We aim to question the seemingly unproblematic nature of a baroque musician’s process. It is our intention to slow down this process, to complicate it, and to put it under a magnifying glass. Concentrating on a piece of French dramatic vocal music from the eighteenth century, we will present a sequence of scenes from a rehearsal process concentrating initially on customary rehearsal techniques. We will, however, also venture on territory till now unexplored, attempting to introduce documented Eighteenth-century rehearsal techniques to the process. We aim to experiment with the music by approaching the fragment in different ways, both speaking and singing.
Päivi Järviö specializes in the singing and researching of Baroque and Renaissance music. She has performed as a soloist with numerous baroque ensembles and orchestras in Finland as well as abroad. She also coaches singers, choirs, ensembles and conductors. Her doctoral thesis is currently being examined. The public defence of the thesis will take place in the beginning of 2011.
Assi Karttunen is a harpsichordist and specializes in performing and researching Baroque music. She teaches harpsichord playing and basso continuo at the Sibelius-Academy. Karttunen has recorded solo albums, played in several orchestras and ensembles and she is currently working in her Elysionin Kedot -workshop. The emphasis of her thesis was on exploring the aesthetic and philosophical background of the eighteenth century French cantata.
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren: Techniques for the Possible: Still Points in the Neighborhood
Techniques for the Possible explores the intersections between artistic research and action research by asking what movement based structures—or rules of the game—for encountering and mapping the contours of a neighborhood can open toward a space of change and regeneration. What, more specifically, happens when a non-resident (who is a South Asian American, hard-of-hearing artist) inserts herself into the landscape of a neighborhood; what are the imaginative, thoughtful, or engaged methods of observing, notating, and interfacing? How does a specific artistic technique change the emerging map? The presentation for Capra 2 will share some findings from a artistic residency in Turin Italy at Reiss Arti Performative September 8-18, 2010 called Techniques for the Possible: Still Points in E-14, and also offer a modified workshop which investigates the findings of passing through, touching, and scanning the shadows and what they may have to offer as artistic research methods.
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren' critical work spans a range of topics, including art as a site of research, transnational performance forms, disability issues, the environment, and ways to increase access to theater. As Director of the UWB student group, the Empty Suitcase Theater Company, she is working on the 100 Hands Project and a series of community based performance projects on health and diversity. Her own performance and digital arts work includes “Wind Nomads,” “Still Points,” "Soundscaping the Land," and a collaborative project, “Water: TransPacific Flows.” In summary, her work revolves around developing new spaces of artistic, pedagogical, and scholarly collaboration. she is particularly committed to performance as a set of translational practices that engage us across the senses, media, and diverse communities both locally and globally.
Books include:
The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game. Lead editor (with Davis Schneiderman and Tom Denliger), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, December 2009.
Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf and Multicultural Theater. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2006.
Tuija Kokkonen: Widening human time perspectives with a performance with/for nonhumans − a presentation & experiment/workshop
In this presentation, as one example of the doctoral research projects at Theatre Academy, I will shortly introduce my research project entitled “The potential nature of performance. Relationships to the non-human in a performance event from the perspective of duration and potentiality”. The research started 2006 and incorporates series of performances, called Memos of Time. I will discuss more closely about my latest research performance Chronopolitics – III Memo of Time (2010). I am exploring, what does it mean if we begin to perceive ”nature”, its beings and phenomena, as agents - and how that perspective can possible change our understanding of the human and the performance. I have been exploring this through developing the practise and theory of non-human performer and non-human spectator.
In the experiment/workshop we will concentrate on the possibilities and potential impacts of widening human time perspectives through performance made with or for a nonhuman.
Tuija Kokkonen is a director and a writer based in Helsinki. Since 1996 she has worked on series of site-specific ‘memo performances’, as the director and the artistic director of Maus&Orlovski, an ever-changing performance collective of artists from various fields. The memos are explorations on relationships between performance, nature and time. Her current (2006-) doctoral research project at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki incorporates new series of performances called Memos of Time.
Her research interests include relationships to the non-human in performance, place, environment, (im)potentiality, time, ethics and politics of performance. www.tuijakokkonen.fi
Kaisu Koski: Artist in a White Coat
My (media art and performance) works revolve around scientific body concepts. I investigate the aesthetic conventions through which the biomedical domain influences the understanding of the body and health. I aim for juxtaposing the intimate and personal body experience with the clinical understanding of the body. Furthermore, the purpose is to conduct research through art, in other words to use artistic practice as a research instrument. I eventually aim for communicating the research results through hybrid presentations, which confuse artistic expression and academic research conventions.
Kaisu Koski is a Finnish media artist and researcher, based in the Netherlands.She studied in the Faculty of Arts and Design in the University of Lapland, and defended her PhD in Media Studies in 2007. Kaisu has also completed the graduate program in performing arts in the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Her art practice is intertwined with an academic research, in which she unravels the dialogue between art and biomedical sciences. Kaisu currently carries out her postdoctoral research in collaboration with the University of Lapland and Leiden University.
Anne Makkonen & Jaana Turunen: Spaces of the Past the Present
At the beginning of the 1980s, a ballet, jazz and Graham trained dance student Jaana Turunen moved from Helsinki to Amsterdam. At the Amsterdam Theatre School, she heard instructions. Let it go. Close your eyes. Relax. Breath. Touch. Roll. Sit. Crawl. Walk. Run. Stand still. Imagine your centre line. Release your weight. Let the gravity do the work for you. Constructive rest position. Release.
The lecture demonstration creates and construct dialogical space - between dancer Jaana Turunen and dance historian Anne Makkonen, between present corporeal dancing and past dancing on the video, between our audience and us. It is about Finnish contemporary dance in the 1980s and how its traces are present in Jaana Turunen and Anne Makkonen.
By juxtaposing and contrasting our experiences, knowledge, verbal and bodily memories we construct a collaborative and performative historical study of the 1980s, which travels from Helsinki to Amsterdam, from Savonlinna to Helsinki, from Amsterdam to Helsinki, from Helsinki to Viitasaari, Kokkola, Kiihtelysvaara and so on.
Spaces of the Past and the Present is part of the research project “Can we Dance History”?: The Presence of History in Dance Practices by Anne Makkonen and Hanna Järvinen.
Dr. Anne Makkonen (University of Surrey 2007) is devoted to expand the notion of dance history and to construct performative dancing histories alongside written ones. She is currently affiliated researcher at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki and teaches dance history and analysis in higher dance education and at the Universities of Jyväskylä and Helsinki.
Dance artist Jaana Turunen is currently preparing her artistic doctoral thesis at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Her research focuses on the construction of bodily agency and subjectivity in the processes of improvising, choreographing and performing dance. Jaana Turunen is a pioneer of new dance and contact improvisation in Finland. She has worked extensively as a performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer of art events since 1983.
Kjell Yngve Petersen & Karin Sondergaard: Participation as Medium of Research
We will introduce method to indentify and formalise a series of action, and method to calibrate the participants’ sensibilities towards specific modes of attention. The elements involved are a space shaped by zones of lightness and darkness, and a development of sensibility towards placeness and action qualities within that space. Through a progression of rules of improvisation, a differentiation/calibration between inner sensing, outer relation, and social relationships is developed.
The developed staging capacity will be used to investigate how intentions of respectively artistic research and action research evolve different operations of insights, and how these specific differences might inform each other.
The suggestion is that these methods can enable artistic research within a frame of action research, and respective enable action research within a frame of artistic research.
The workshop builds on previous research. Firstly, methods to extract high-level performer techniques into formalised qualifies participatory engagement. Secondly, methods using staged prototype events to formalise/compose complex operations of attention as post-progressive analytic narrativation. The second part of the workshop will explore how the developed hightened presence of the participants purposefully can be used in context of real-world sites, outside the context of the theatrical environment of the blackbox.
Dr. Karin Søndergaard
Associate Professor, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen
Dr. Kjell Yngve Petersen
Assistant Professor, Innovative Communication Group, IT University Copenhagen
Pilvi Porkola: Monument of Knowledge − Collaborative writing as a method for artistic research? Participatory experiment
Thinking on knowledge in artistic research I’ve been focused lately on an idea of situated knowledge. Feminist theorist Donna Haraway has criticised traditional idea of objectivity in science and stated only partial perspective promises objective vision. According Haraway knowledge is always situated, it’s partial and based on embodiment. Knowledge is always in process. Furthermore, Lynette Hunter has stated situated knowledge systems are not closed, they do not assume sets of rules or fixed outlines of content. Also Hunter considers “unlike scientific knowledge in which the effect of the observer is often a “problem” and many experiments are devised in order to minimize it, in situated knowledge the whole point that observer is engaged”.
While working with my research I have been thinking writing a lot; acts of writing, methods of writing and variable outcomes. It’s clear the whole tradition of research writing is based on the idea to collect various thoughts, texts, quotations, traces and documents together and formulate them to one text. In theatre we do have many collaborative methods to research. Still, in research we don’t have too many variations for writing.
In my experiment I like to have a collaborative session to create a collage of writing, notes and other documents people create during the colloquium days. My presentation takes two parts. The first, in the beginning of the colloquium, I like to spend 10-15 minutes to make a short introduction of an idea of situated knowledge and collaborative writing and ask people to focus on notes they will make. In the main session, the last day, I like to create an installation, “Monument of Knowledge”, of people’s notes with participants. In the end we’ll have a discussion about it focusing questions like: What do we see in the installation? Can we describe it as a kind of document of colloquium? Can we relate this act and monument to an idea of knowledge as a process? How do we understand the idea of situated knowledge in practice?
Pilvi Porkola is a performance artist and a writer, based in Helsinki. She is working as a doctoral student at Theatre Academy, the thesis is titled : "Notes on Politics, Documenting and Personal in Performance". Porkola is also a chief editor of Esitys journal.
Louise Ritchie: Moving in/to all Languages
This workshop will introduce participants to the movement vocabulary titled In all Languages. Developed in the mid 1990’s by Professor Mike Pearson, the vocabulary comprises of 9 sets of physical action; three solos, three duets and three groups. In all Languages is characterised as ‘a coherent set of proposals to stimulate physical activity rather that a codified methodology’ (Pearson:2006: 211) suggesting starting points for individual and group choreography. The main research objectives for this workshop are rooted in the acknowledgement that there are no broadly recognized means of representing and transmitting In all Languages beyond oral traditions of workshop practice. Not surprisingly this form of communication has positioned itself as the exemplar mode of transmission. Therefore, this workshop seeks to examine and interrogate the assumed primacy of face-to-face workshop practice, exploring the creative possibilities made available with the introduction of photography, verbal instruction and video as modes of transmission for movement. The material is exhibited for participants to interact with; photographs are displayed on the walls of the room with accompanying instructions for solo movement. Duo instructions are available throughout the area on headphones and group movement is presented on video as a large projected image. Throughout the workshop, I will assume the role of a side coach; supporting, encouraging and guiding participants through the material. Outside of this designated workshop, the installation will remain as an active space for participants to engage with throughout the conference.
Louise Ritchie is based at Aberystwyth University UK where she is now in her final year of AHRC doctoral research, under the supervision of Professor Mike Pearson and Dr Heike Roms.
Per Roar: This is my body − reiterated
a performance-lecture situation
This is my body – reiterated derives from the reflective process of reporting on my artistic research at TEAK, entitled Life & Death: Docudancing grieving. The presentation stems from an experiment conducted at the Nordic Summer University in July 2010 on “warming up” an audience kinaesthetically in order to enhance their proprioceptive sensing. The next phase in this investigation will be presented at TEAK in December 2010 as a ‘performance situation’ with one choreographer, two dancers and a sound artist – titled This is my body. Here I will continue the experimentation with how to “warm up” or prepare the audience in order to enhance another way of viewing choreographed material, more tuned to listening than to the visuals. I will simply explore ways of involving an audience in a physical refocusing – to perceive with their whole body and being, not only with their eyes. In other words, search for how to share kinaesthetic experiences with an audience by moving more freely between different audience contracts for viewing/witnessing movement based work.
The presentation will be based on the experiences from these previous two experiments. The presentation is hence artistically based, while searching for a performative format for sharing these experiences and opening for a dialogue with the audience attending.
Per Roar is a choreographer and a doctoral student at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. His choreographic work is marked by an interest for social-political concerns. A field of interest supported by his degree in choreography at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, a MA in performance studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a background of history and social sciences at the University of Oslo, Corvinius University Budapest, and Oxford University. His research explores the interrelationship between a contextual probing and choreography by looking at the phenomena of grieving.
Cecilia Roos & Katarina Elam & Anna Petronella Fredlund: Perspectives in co-operation; Dance, Artistic Research and the Humanities
At CARPA 2009, the research project “From movement out of reflection in becoming: The dancer and the creative process” was presented by the project leader Cecilia Roos, professor of interpretation at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm. By then, the project hadn’t yet started. Now we have been working with the project since January and we would like to participate in the Carpa conference 2011, in order to give a picture of and discuss the on-going research process.
Very short, the aim is to approach an understanding and a conceptualisation of the artistic process, illustrated by the dancers working with a particular creation, through a practical as well as a theoretical perspective. The viewpoint is both that of the dancer from within the process, and that of outside observers. These perspectives are not deadlocked but contain an interaction between the pre-reflected and the reflected as well as the theoretical and the practical levels. The project takes its starting point in the dance piece “now she knows” by Ina Christel Johannesen, where Cecilia is one of the dancers.
The other members of the project are theoreticians, working principally in the fields of philosophy and aesthetics. Through continuous meetings the participants are searching for ways to discuss, reflect upon and conceptualise the issues of embodiment and movement. The dialogue is not only verbal; the participants who are not dancers have attended rehearsals, and they all use the first hour of their meetings to exercise and try to learn Cecilia’s solo from the performance. The idea is to let the different backgrounds and perspectives enrich one another, so that a fruitful way to theorize upon dance and the creative process can be achieved.
The presentation at CARPA will be a mixture of performance, rehearsal and discussion.
Anna Petronella Fredlund teacher in philosophy at Södertörn University
Cecilia Roos professor of interpretation at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm.
Katarina Elam PhD in Aesthetics
LeenaRouhiainen & Helka-Maria Kinnunen: Breath as a Medium for Awereness and expression
We have come to working with breathing through different routes via different frameworks in the field of the performing arts. Helka-Maria is an actor and scriptwriter who investigates breath, voice, dialogue and other holistic methods as means of adding and releasing our state of presence and activity in creative practice. (Gergen 2009; Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Linklater 2006; Nair 2007; Richardson 2000.) In turn, Leena is a dancer and dance-maker, who investigates how the release of body tension enhances breathing and supports dancers’ decision-making and processing of expressive tasks. In this presentation we will create a workshop around breathing by both introducing exercises that focus on bodily awareness, the release of bodily tension and creative images. We will question how our consciousness changes, or if it changes, during the exercises?How do the exercises affect our sensing, thinking and communicating? The purpose of the workshop is to test our assumptions and gain feedback on the impetus of the exercises with a focus on the expressive and creative challenges of the actor and dancer.The aim of the presentation is also to ignite discussion on
- the challenges and possibilities of instructed exercises
- the experiences breathing and the exercises foster
- the significance these exercises and experiences entail for the performing artist
- the significance these exercises and experiences entail for the participating group
Helka-Maria Kinnunen is an actor, scriptwriter and doctor of theatre and drama. She completed her doctoral thesis, `Stories in the artistic process of theatre-making’ in May 2008 at Theatre Academy of Finland. Helka-Maria has worked as actor in several Finnish theatres and for The Finnish Broadcasting Company as well. She is acting, making manuscripts and directing as freelancer for theatre and Radio Theatre of the Finnish Broadcasting Company. She also works as teacher at Theatre Academy of Finland. She has specialised in poetry performing and holistic use of the actor’s voice. Her current project is an art project for young people in Brahenpuisto secondary school in Helsinki, as a part of the Myrsky-project founded by Finnish Cultural Foundation. For the year 2011 she has a stipend for artistic work from Arts Council of Finland.
Leena Rouhiainen is a dancer-choreographer and dance scholar, who has worked as a professional contemporary dance artist since 1990. She and her artistic collaborators have received several national awards for their artistic work in Finland. Her doctoral dissertation was published in 2003 and addresses the issue of being a freelance dance artist through a phenomenological perspective. Her research interests have related to artistic research, somatics and bodily knowledge as well as a phenomenological understanding of the dancer’s space. She held a postdoctoral researcher position at the Theatre Academy between (2007–2009). She was the head of the research project called Challenging the Notion of Knowledge (2005–2007) at the same institution. Now she holds the position of Academy Research Fellow and works on artistic research that focuses on facilitating the perception and expression of the contemporary dancer through phenomenological and character analytic means. She is the chair of the board of Nordic Forum for Research in Dance (NOFOD). She held the position of associate professor in dance and physical education at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo for the spring-term 2009.
Stefanie Sachsenmaier: Spontaneous combustion
(a performance enquity into spontaneuous live decision-making)
Three artists from different disciplinary fields work collaboratively in a live performance. Composer and musician Nick Franglen creates sound, artist Christoph Lammers develops a wall drawing and performer Stefanie Sachsenmaier works in movement, with all elements informing each other.
The project will take place accumulatively over many hours with various instances of live explorations throughout the day, separated by intervals of installation where the preceding live activity resonates in the space.
This performance constitutes an investigation into how decisions are made in live performance. How can three different artists ‘communicate’ in working, how do they respond to each other and drive the event forward, are there any collectively identified momentary ‘events’ that occur spontaneously?
Steffi Sachsenmaier is a performer and lecturer in Theatre Arts at Middlesex University where she has recently completed her PhD, enquiring into the skills and expertise of the performer in contemporary performance-making (supervised by Prof. Susan Melrose and choreographer Rosemary Butcher). Before this she undertook an MA at Goldsmiths College and a DEA at the Sorbonne Nlle. She has been performing for the past ten years in many performance productions, lately notably her own solo work (www.stefaniesachsenmaier.eu). She teaches on performing arts courses at several further universities and trains and teaches tai chi at the Wu’s Tai Chi Chuan Academy London, Bethnal Green. She recently contributed the Laban Sourcebook, ed. Dick McCaw, to be published by Routledge early 2011, and works as researcher to choreographer Rosemary Butcher.
Composer and musician Nick Franglen is a founder member of the British electronica duo Lemon Jelly, producer of albums by Badly Drawn Boy and John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and Musical Director of Life Along The Borderline, the Nico tribute shows that have been performed across Europe since 2008. For the past five years Nick has been exploring the effects and interactions of chaotic space and circumstance on improvised musical performance. This has found him and his experimental group Blacksand performing in places as diverse as down a mine, on a Soviet submarine and illegally in a disused government testing facility. In September 2010 Nick performed his Hymn To London Bridge, playing the theremin for 24 hours beneath London Bridge in an interactive collaboration with the 100,000 people who unwittingly passed through special sound-affecting sensors mounted on the bridge that day.
Artist Christoph Lammers received his Master‘s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, where he developed black and white drawing as his main subject. After a DAAD postgraduate grant in Spain, he returned to Munich where he is part of the Studio Program, sponsored by the city of Munich. He works primarily with graphite or charcoal in combination with various materials, using walls, surfaces and paper as his support platform. His work moves between surfacing and disappearing, shadow and light, destruction and beauty. In 2010 he curated the group exhibition “Dancing on a Volcano“ for the Department of Culture in Munich. In 2010 his catalogue “Everything I own“ was published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. Lammers‘ work has been exhibited in various places around Munich, Berlin and Madrid. (www.christophlammers.com)
Elina Saloranta: Two rooms and a kitchen
I am a visual artist and a doctoral student at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. My research concerns the interaction between images and sounds in works of art based on the moving image.
My presentation in CARPA explores the possibility of investigating a work of art by making another piece about it. The presentation consists of three parts. It begins with the screening of my most recent video Two rooms and a kitchen (15 mins). After the screening, I will ask the viewers to pose themselves two questions (What did I see? What did I hear?) and to reply by writing. The writing time is about 10 minutes. If people agree, I will collect the texts, and work on them later.
The third part of my presentation is a live performance (or rather a reading) of texts that were created when I did the same experiment for the first time in Nordic Summer University in July 2010. After the reading, there will be a discussion with the audience.
Elina Saloranta (born 1968) is a visual artist and a doctoral student at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. She works mainly with the moving image, which she has studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (M.F.A. 2002). Her research concerns the interaction between images and sounds in works of art based on the moving image.
Åsa Unander-Scharin & Carl Unander-Scharin: " Excerpts from the On-going Artistic Processes of Artificial Body Voices"
Artificial Body Voices is a scenic complex that explores the human desire to transform our bodies and connect to technology. Through stimulation rather than simulation this project will invite the audience to an artistic experiment connecting choreography, robotics, music, electro acoustics, vocal art, video and 3D-technique. This complex of physical, virtual and artificial bodies and voices will be developed in a process divided into six workshops, during 2010/2011, where the contributors share and transform the artistic material into new formats and combinations. In the format of a 45 minutes installation/ workshop we will present excerpts from the artistic process followed by a discussion on how a body-voice-technology encounter produce new scenic subjects, artistic methods and concepts: The Robocygne (robot-swan-dancer), The Throat (computer-operavoice-artefact) and Clockwork Body Parts (video). In addition to the scenic complex, Artificial Body Voices constitutes the laboratory of choreographic material and concepts in Åsa Unander-Scharin’s artistic research project producing and exploring multistable bodies and shifting corporealities. The project also constitutes the laboratory for vocal material in Carl Unander-Scharin´s PhD project “Tenor techniques and Singing Technologies”, hosted by the University college of Opera in Stockholm/Royal institute of Technology. In November 2010 a series of their works was shown in the exhibition Opera Mecatronica at Experimental stage Reactor hall 1 at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm: www.operamecatronica.com
Åsa Unander-Scharin, choreographer, PhD, Postdoctoral research fellow at Luleå university of technology/ Music and media
Carl Unander-Scharin, composer, tenor, PhD candidate at the University college of Opera in Stockholm/Royal institute of Technology
Anita Valkeemäki: "Reflections of Primitive Reflexes an Teaching Dance"
Primitive reflexes are automatic, stereotyped movements, directed from the brain stem and executed without cortical involvements. These reflexes are for infant’s survival and each of them has a vital part to play in setting stage for later functioning.
My research is pedagogical practise, where my focus is to develop new ways to teach dance. The movement fundament for my research comes from neuro-physiological field where the searching for a learning and behaviour problems happens.
In the offered workshop in CARPA I introduce my research work by moving and sharing the roles of experience and learning and teaching with participators. The workshop is not focused only for ones who are interested in dance; everybody is welcome to join in.
I have selected certain words from the primitive reflexes for the workshop to work with. Those words give an idea of moving, for instance spiral, stepping, startle, and reach. The chosen words basically mean the functions which we have already in our bodies, the functions which are needed to maintain ourselves in life.
How to transform the words into the moving?
In “moving” space there is an imaginational moment of performance, which is inviting the movement to appear. The motive and imagination of the moving take place in the space and forms patterns of movement, which is making its own reality in its time and space.
Anita Valkeemäki is a Doctoral student at the Theatre Academy Helsinki and a Dance teacher.
Liselotte Vroman & Thierry Lagrange: "Architecture through Motion; Spatial Visualisations of Experience"
The artistic research, ‘Architecture Through Motion’, started from the question ‘how a change in the spatial constellation affects the experience of the person who moves in it?’ The question concerns the fundamental relationship between man and space. The latter forms a core element in architectural thinking.
Motion can be assumed as one of the most elementary aspects of space. The knowledge generated by a person who moves through space, and thus experiences that space, is utterly unspoken. In this research project, by setting up experiments, the goals is to find a way to understand better this evocation of embodied knowledge and make it implementable in architectural design.
Liselotte Vroman has graduated Master’s degree in July 2010 at Sint Lucas, School of Architecture (Brussels). During her second Master she followed the experimental designlab ‘ Calibrating’, wherein she started the research ‘Architecture through motion’, her Master dissertation. The coming two years she will follow her internship as an architect and continue her research project at Sint Lucas.
Thierry Lagrange is an engineer architect. He runs the office ALT. He is lecturer at Sint Lucas, School of Architecture (Brussels). As a member of Ubicumque he is co-editor of a series of art-publications, such as Images/images, Tekst/tekst and Cahier. He is active as a photographer. Both, architecture and photography are central elements in the ongoing Ph.D. project at Sint Lucas & Catholic University of Leuven (IVOK).
Per Zetterfalk: "Artistic research on Lars Norén"
At the centre of this session is the artistic formation and, as an extension, the scientific formation. My Ph D result at Dramatiska Institutet, the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre, in Stockholm includes not only a thesis, "Inter esse. The Creative Subject, Norén and Reality", but also a documentary film on the Swedish playwright and director Lars Norén, "Norén’s Drama". The purpose of the work is to reflect on the way from ambition to creation, to capture what about this process is unique. The film is a close examination of Norén’s direction of a new work for the theatre. It strives to show the sublime moment when something decisive occurs in the process, when one grasps, when it grows and becomes better. For the research result, the discussion about quality is crucial. “Inter esse” means “in-between that which is”. How could directing of a film depict directing of a play? How could an artistic process be a source for analytical theory? How could a film be a point of departure within science? "Norén's Drama" will be screened and discussed in this context.
Per Zetterfalk is a film director, PhD in Artistic Formation and a senior lecturer in Moving Image Production at Högskolan Dalarna in Sweden. He examines the field of tension between art, research and media.
