KEY NOTE SPEAKERS
Blažević Marin: From Shifts to Shifting Dramaturgy
The concept and format of shifts was introduced and enacted at the PSi#15 conference in Zagreb (2009), developed for its follow up in Rijeka (PSi#1 Regional Research Cluster, 2010) and adopted by the PSi annual conferences in Toronto (2010), Utrecht (2011) and Leeds (2012) as a regular format for irregular forms of conference activities.
Interplay of performative practice and theory or criticism of (artistic) performance was and is one of the distinctive factors in setting up and professing performance studies. One of the main challenges of PSi#15 was to make the interaction and mutual reflection between (artistic) performance practice and theory of (artistic) performance more creative and complex. The shifts were thus conceived as collaborative crossover formats inviting both artists and scholars to jointly experiment with and in-between the functions and protocols of various intersected forms of performance and its research, whether in the framework of artistic practice, academic discourse and teaching, or social activism.
The concept and (mis)performativity of shifts will be correlated as well as differentiated with/from practice-based-research and postdramatic dramaturgy. In passing, I will argue for correspondences between the postdramatic dramaturgy and nascent ideas of performance studies. Also, a glimpse will be given into their – until recently – mutual ignorance.
In the final part of the keynote the spotlight will be put on the two kinds of performance that the chalenge of shifts or shifting can take on as its form or generate as a venture: performance essay and shifting dramaturgy.
Haseman Brad: Life Drama in Papua New Guinea: “It may be performative, but is it performative research?”
The title for this paper is drawn from a provocation from Barbara Bolt in response to my 2006 paper “A Manifesto for Performative Research” when she challenged “Can we make the assumption that just because a practice brings into being what it names...that it is performative?”. I will seek to address this challenge and elaborate on the performative research paradigm by outlining a major research project called Life Drama. Life Drama is a drama-based sexual health research project, funded by the Australian Research Council and the National AIDS Council of Papua New Guinea, and developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the team adopted a practice-led research strategy to tap into the everyday performativity of PNG communities in order to communicate more powerfully about the personal and social issues involved in sexual health.
All projects receiving external funding from the Australian Research Council are required to meet established protocols and regimes which are expected of traditional research. This case study will detail how Life Drama, as performative research, addressed the credibility tests which all quality research must meet: the tests of methodology, documentation, ethics, significance and impact.
Roms Heike: The Impact of "Impact" - Performing Artistic Research in the Ruins of the University?
"Impact" has of late established itself in the United Kingdom as a new operative term that now determines much of what happens here in the name of research. Whether one applies for a research grant or participates in the regular governmental assessment of research quality, every researcher has to prove that their work has "impact" not just on the scholarly community but also on non-scholarly publics.
I will discuss the impact this demand for "impact" has on the field of artistic research. The United Kingdom is, of course, the place where artistic research - or as it is termed here "practice-as-research" - gained institutional acceptance more than two decades ago, and it is often cited as an important reference point for developments elsewhere.
Recently, I will suggest, a shift has been taking place in the debate on practice-based research in the UK. In the past discussions have often focused on its epistemological dimension - associated with alternative forms of knowledge ("embodied knowledge", "tacit knowledge" or "knowledge in action") practice-as-research has been considered a welcome challenge to the modes of knowledge-making based on logos and writing on which the modern University is based. But increasingly practice-as-research is being legitimated not epistemologically, but through the fact that artistic practice can help open research toward new, non-scholarly audiences. Especially the emergence of relational strategies in contemporary art is seen to offer productive models and techniques for achieving "impactful" research.
To ask whom our research is for and how others may participate in it is indeed important. Yet what makes me a little suspicious is that with our attention to the "impact" of artistic research we find ourselves in agreement with the current policy of the conservative-liberal government in the UK and its move toward a greater privatisation of the University. I will argue that at a time when the teaching of art in British universities is no longer publicly funded, a call for the public impact of artistic research is in effect used to further such privatisation.
As the title of the talk suggests, Bill Readings’ sharp diagnosis of the state of contemporary academic education, The University in Ruins (1996), will present an important reference point. With the help of Readings I will ask whether, by pursuing impact, artistic research may inadvertently collude in such neoliberal politics, and, furthermore, if indeed artistic research ever really was as challenging to the University system as it thought itself to be.
Whilst this may suggest a fairly bleak prognosis of the current state of affairs I will try to end on a more hopeful note. I will aim to suggest that one may use the demand for impactful research in a strategic way, not just to allow the participation of publics in research processes, but to allow publics to take ownership of the research themselves.
PRE-COLLOQUIA PROGRAMME
WORKSHOP − on Wednesday 27th February 2013 at 14−17
Claid Emilyn:FACE to FACE
Between is not an auxiliary construction, but the real place and bearer of what happens between men; it has received no specific attention … it does not exhibit a smooth continuity, but is ever again re-constituted in accordance with men’s meetings with one another. Buber 1965
Emilyn draws on her practice based research as a choreographer and Gestalt/existential psychotherapist. Interweaving the two fields, this workshop offers opportunities to experience relational encounters through simple movement-based choreographic tasks. Through a practice of here and now presence, phenomenological enquiry and dialogic relations, participants experience how awareness of intersubjective processes - between performers and between performers and spectators – can affect performance making and instigate impactful change in the world. Theoretical and philosophical engagement with issues of self, subjectivity, uncertainty and nothingness will be discussed through the embodied tasks.
Our bodies live ‘opened up to’ situations, especially other humans – two people are derived from their specific situational relationship – so what happens when one person is no longer there? Madison 2005
GET-TOGETHER
on Wednesday 27th February 2013 at 18−21
Performance Philosophy launching event: “Conceptual Bring-a-Dish Party”
Welcome to the get-together party organized by Performance Philosophy on the eve of CARPA3
Performance Philosophy (http://performancephilosophy.ning.com/)
is a new international network open to all researchers concerned with the relationship between performance & philosophy.
The program and the service of this party is organized by you! Bring along a philosophical concept, a thought or a problem. And bring along something to eat or drink for common enjoyment.
Choose a philosophical notion you love or that interests you, that is in some way current to you or that puzzles you, haunts you or irritates you, and tell us about it or introduce it to us in any way you prefer. The length of each presentation: from 1 sec to 10 min. After the presentations there will be time for meeting new people and discussing philosophical or any other matters.
N.B. You can also come without any philosophical issue but do not forget food and drinks!
PRESENTERS
Anttila Eeva, Guttorm Hanna, Löytönen Teija and Valkeemäki Anita: Happy incidents and unexpected encounters in the academia
This performative presentation is a shared venture between four female academics working in the intersection of arts, arts education and artistic/qualitative research. The unexpected encounters of our worlds and thoughts have given birth to this shared process of inquiry. Through playful improvisation based on simple patterns, everyday actions, verbal reflections and experimental writing, we are fumbling towards collaborative research practices. We are challenging ourselves in a search for intuition, spontaneity and playfulness that too often becomes lost in the academia. Drawing from some of the principles and ideas of the late 20th century French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze our collaboration has moved us to consider the indeterminate and continually shifting, nomadic process of not-knowing in the midst of sometimes striated academic (writing and presenting) practices. We have approached this process by putting into play simultaneously our multiple experiences, accounts, stories on be(com)ing academics in our fluid fields. These fold in and back on one another, and ripple into diverse (theoretical) discourses as well as (scholarly and artistic) practices. This, we believe, disrupts the comfort, taken-for-granted (striated) academic spaces of reading, thinking and knowing. We are willing to see how our collaboration may help us in finding new, maybe happier ways to act, relate, think and write – or, to be(come) in the academia.
Eeva Anttila (Ed.Lic, Doctor of Arts in dance) has been involved in dance education since 1980’s. Currently she works as a professor in dance pedagogy at the Theatre Academy Helsinki, Finland. Her dissertation (2003) focuses on dialogical dance pedagogy, and her current research interests are, e.g., somatic approaches to dance pedagogy, embodied knowledge and embodied learning. She has published widely in national and international journals and edited books. She is an active member in many organizations in dance and arts education.
Hanna Guttorm (M.Ed.) is a Ph. D. Student at the Research Unit of Cultural and Feminist Studies in Education (KuFe) at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests focus on deconstructing and going beyond the traditional scientific and educational practices and discourses of expertise. She is currently finalizing her Ph. D. about educational knowing and writing as socially and culturally constructed, and as a nomadic process.
Teija Löytönen holds a Master’s degree in education (University of Helsinki) and earned her doctorate in dance by studying discourses in dance institutions (Theatre Academy Helsinki, Finland). Currently she is an Academy Research Fellow at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her particular research interests include higher arts education, disciplinary differences in university pedagogy as well as collaborative inquiry in relation to professional development and knowledge creation. Her current research project draws from Deleuzian and Foucaultian philosophy, among others. She has published in several national and international refereed journals, and presented her research in various networks such as Congress on Research in Dance, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction and International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.
Anita Valkeemäki holds a MA in Dance, pedagogy (Theatre Academy Helsinki, 1995). She is a Dance and movement educator and a doctoral student in Theatre Academy (2008-).
Badura Jens: Research on stage – Remarks an aesthetic practice
The presentation will focus on artistic research through the Performing Arts and aims for a conceptual contribution to the colloquium debate. Artistic Research, this is the conceptual hypothesis of the talk, is understood as an aesthetic practice – an explorative activity in the intersection of aesthetic experience and rational conceptualization. It aims for an entanglement of sensous and rational knowledge in order to (re)value the multiplicity of world-perception. This revaluation is necessary since it meets – this is the epistemological hypothesis – the requirements of a knowledge production within the “culture of contingency” that constitutes the world-making of the modern era that still is our era – and that still underestimates the necessity of an emancipation of the sensous, one of the concerns already postulated in the early period of aesthetics in the 18th century. In a first time the presentation will describe the above mentioned concept of aesthetic practice as a model for artistic research. In a second time this general perspective will be concretized with regard to different formats of research “on stage” and the idea of “stage as a laboratory”. The main topics to be discussed will be introduced via examples coming from different research setting: projects based on cooperation between Performing Arts and Technology development, between Performing Arts and Social Sciences/Humanities; between Performing Arts and Research through creation in different art fields. The underlying questions of the presentation are the following: What is the particular quality of research procedures and outcomes undertaken/produced in the field of a research “on stage”? What concept of stage is adequate for an artistic research through the Performing Arts? Where lies the difference between contemporary theatre and dance at the one hand and artistic research “on stage” on the other? What are practical challenges to be considered with regard to the cooperation between artistic and academic research?
Jens Badura (1972, Austrian, Dr. habil., MAS), is a philosopher, head of the research focus „Performative Practice“ at the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film (IPF) at Zurich University oft he Arts, and Senior researcher at “SINLAB” (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). His main research areas are Aesthetics, Philosophy of Culture and Artistic Research. He teaches at various Universities and Art schools in Europe, is Speaker of the Platform for Artistic Research in Austria (PARA) and directs „konzeptarbeit.at”, an agency for aesthetic practice (Salzburg). As a performer he develops and stages formats for performative concepts of philosophy in cooperation with artists form different arts fields.
Belgrano Elisabeth: An Exhibition of Madness in a Cabinet of Wonders: Results from an Artistic Research Process Into the Performative Space of a 17th Century Operatic Mad Scene
As suggested by Schramm (2005) the performative space in the 17th century was considered a scene of knowledge for both artists and scientists. Examples of such scenes were theatres, laboratories, and cabinets of curiosities (kunstkammer, wonder-room), designed as collection rooms ”of the astonishing and the horrible, the wonderful and the strange”. The aim of this performance-presentation is to exhibit a singer’s close reading and experimentation with Deidamia’s mad scene in Francesco Sacrati’s and Giulio Strozzi’s opera La Finta Pazza from 1641. The purpose is to present this mad scene as an example of such a collection of curious wonders, connecting the past with the present, nature with arts, and emphasizing the importance of truly considering the imaginative artistic research process in close connection to historical facts and theories in the production of a 17th century music drama. The presentation provides information from a singer’s close encounters with ’theatrical spaces’ such as Teatro San Cassiano in Venice; a re-created 17th century costume; a libretto and a musical score. As an artistic method, the physical meeting and experience of the theatrical space allows for the performer’s mind to engage in a dialogue with the self but also with others, resulting in a mental transformation of the scene and the stage. This dialogue supplies the performance with an input of analogies representing fast shifting multilayered and inter-subjective movements between realities, revealing the complex structure of the on-going performance activity as well as the complexity beyond the historical material observed from an artistic perspective.
Elisabeth Belgrano has been specializing in 17th century vocal music. She has presented her performance-research at festivals and conferences in Europe and in the US. In 2005 she received the prestigious Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society ”for distinguished contribution to the study and performance of early music.” In 2011 Belgrano was awarded a PhD from University of Gothenburg, for her thesis ”Lasciatemi morire” o farò ”La Finta Pazza”: Embodying Vocal Nothingness in 17th Century Operatic Laments and Mad Scenes - the first artistic PhD in Sweden within the field of Performance in Theatre and Music Drama. (www.elibelgrano.org)
Belvis Pons Esther: Challenging the (im)possibilites of accounting embodied experiences
This presentation introduces an experimental method based on three performative conditions that appear in the process of researching the attributes of participatory performance through a practice-based approach. Concretely, the method emerges while studying the productions of the international touring companies Roger Bernat (Barcelona), Stan’s Cafe (Birmingham) and Rimini Protokoll (Berlin). The performative conditions, are named as ‘nomadism’, ‘net-gaming’ and ‘transduction’, and are drawn respectively from the theories and method of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Bruno Latour and John McKenzie. In unfolding these operational conditions significant ‘ecological’, social, political, geographical concerns are identified as critical to how the researcher accounts for key elements of current experimental theatrical performance. In this regard the paper explores the following questions: how does the researcher translate ‘embodied’ knowledge? What are the (im)possibilities of accounting? In which ways can researchers create a shared sphere of knowledge between the artists, the researchers and the participants involved in participatory practices?
Esther Belvis Pons has recently been awarded her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick University (UK). Her interests in the field include experimental partipatory theatre and performance, practice-based methods of research and experimental writing. She is a scholar working in-between the fields of research, arts and education.
Boisvenue Jean-Francois: Performative interpenetration of practice and theory in artistic research
As a performing and performance artist and Ph.D. student in intermediality, I find myself agreeing with the German-born Uruguayan conceptual artist and academic Luis Camnitzer when he says: “I often feel that an excessive preoccupation with art can interfere with the production of art.” In this vein, my conception of art and its limits is not fixed, but performative, moving every day, such that in one of the extreme “theoretical extension” of this conception, everything might be considered art. First, I will introduce myself and show some examples of my work as an interdisciplinary artist and as a comparatist. Second, I will demonstrate the impact that theoretical research has had on my artistic production, which claims to be research, and vice versa; showing how—¬in a performative way—theoretical preoccupations can orient an artistic practice and how the practice lead to a particular theorization. I will furthermore provide examples of this genre of work in the oeuvres of other artists/theorists who deal with practice and theoretical concerns, like Richard Schechner. Finally, I will not omit to point out the dangers and the advantages of artists’ enriching their art practice with a theoretical preoccupation with art. For example, the artist/theorist certainly will learn more about art and develop a greater awareness of herself and her practice; but does she not, through this awareness of herself, through this infusion of art theory into her work, make herself the sole spectator of her pieces?
Since graduating in 2006, his BA in drama at the University of Québec in Montréal, Jean-François Boisvenue continues to diversify and to enrich his artistic and academic career particularly in the field Digital Humanities. He holds a Master degree in German Studies at the University of Montreal (2011) and began in September 2011 a Ph.D. in Literary and Intermedial Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal. The title of his thesis is: The Visual Presence of Text through Digital Technologies in Quebec Theater: Towards New Representative Functions of Speech.
Boyce-Tillman June: Embodied Knowing - Performativity as Research
"RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1. If you use Performance as Research (PaR) in the context of your doctoral programmes, how do you use PaR? If you don't why not? 2. What kinds of data can be generated by PaR in the context of your doctoral programmes? 3. How do you document PaR in the context of your doctoral programmes? 4. Is PaR a method, methodology, neither or both? 5. What are the values of PaR with regards to the kind of knowledge that you generate? This is with respect to 1) the subject community; 2) the wider society? 6. Is creative practice an example of embodied cognition? If it is, is PaR relevant? 7. What do you think the role of virtuosity is in PaR? DESCRIPTION This is a presentation of a grounded theory based on a series of interviews with a variety of institutions in the UK based on these questions which was funded by P A L A T I N E (Performing Arts Learning and Teaching Innovation Network), the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music (2000-2011) and the University of Winchester. It will briefly examine the implications of this work for other areas – such as applied arts projects, liturgy in the area of practical theology and sports studies and leisure management and the relationship of the development of this area with the area of Professional Doctorates in the UK. "
June Boyce-Tillman read music at Oxford University. She has published widely in the area of education. Her doctoral research has been translated into five languages. She is a composer, exploring the possibilities of intercultural/interfaith sharing which she has written about in Music and Conflict Transformation. Her large scale works have been performed in British cathedrals and her one-woman performances have been performed in three continents. She was Director of Postgraduate Research revising the regulatory practice to include Practice-based research. She runs the Research Centre for the Arts as Well-being. She was awarded an MBE for services to music and education.
Collins Rebecca: Dear Institution
Dear Institution, I have fled. I’m sorry I just need to go for a while to try a few things out…..but I’ll be back…I promise. Dear Institution is a presentation in the form of a love letter addressed to an anonymous academic institution. It light-heartedly describes a love/hate relationship between arts practice and academia from the personal perspective of a practice based PhD student who flirts with both. At times I love your borders and framework but I also need some time out to explore my artistic capabilities in a different context. I won’t forget you though; you are always in my heart. During 2012, Rebecca Louise Collins undertook part of her research at a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies) in Brussels – a ‘non-academic’ environment for artistic investigation. In a letter she wrote (but never posted) she outlines not only the struggles and frustrations of being an artist in academia but also the pleasures and challenges to be found in articulating and developing a practice within the higher education system. I never said there was anything wrong with you. I’d just like to see some other people too. It’s not you, it’s me. What does it mean to be an artist working within an academic framework? How can alternative sites of knowledge be recognized and valued without the need for ‘justification’? These are key concerns that emerge along with questions as to what forms of ‘collaboration’ are possible – how can we work both together and alone?
Rebecca Louise Collins is currently undertaking a PhD at Aberystwyth University investigating listening, the voice and speech as theatrical modes of being. Her artistic work varies between the live and audio-based. She is driven by a curiosity of how an audience accesses and engages with a performance; experimenting with structures of participation and how presence and energy alter what occurs in the ‘now’ moment. Her work has been shown in the UK, Germany, Spain and Brussels and her research has been disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal. http://rebeccalouisecollins.blogspot.com
Cools Guy: Bridging the space between dramaturg and performer in the Rewriting Distance Performance practice
My research focuses on my own practice as a dance dramaturge with a.o. Les Ballets C de la B, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan (see also CV) and how somatic principles such as the energetic exchange through dialogue or through the act of witnessing are as essential to it as the more accepted critical thinking. I will illustrate the lecture both with examples from my practice as a dramaturg with other artists and from my own performative practices, Repeating and Rewriting Distance, which I developed together with the Canadian choreographer Lin Snelling and in which we are a.o. researching the somatic role of the dramaturg in a performative context. See also: www.rewritingdistance.com
After having trained as a dramaturge, Guy Cools became involved with the new developments in dance in Flanders from the 1980’s, initially as a dance critic and from 1990 onwards as theatre and dance director of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent. He curated dance events in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Venice and Montréal. In 2002, he left Vooruit to dedicate himself fulltime to production dramaturgy with amongst others Les Ballets C. de la B., Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (B),Danièle Desnoyers (Montréal), Akram Khan (London).Since October 1st, 2011, he is associate professor in Dance Studies at the Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Tilburg, Netherlands. With Lin Snelling and Ginelle Chagnon he developped a series of workshops to support the creative process of artists, choreographers in particular. He regularly gives lectures and publishes in Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Greece and Cyprus.
Daniel Henry & Ezpeleta Rakel: Project Barca: New Architectures of Memory and Identity - A Case Study on the Impact of Performance as Research - Website: http://www.sfu.ca/~hdaniel Blog: http://projectbarca.blogspot.ca/
“Project Barca: New Architectures of Memory and Identity” is a three-year SSHRC funded Research/Creation initiative (2011-2014) that positions contemporary choreographic practice at the center of a scholarly investigation framed by the question: How can embodied personal and collective memories be shaped into new 'architectures' of identity and belonging in the shape of innovative performance works that speak to wider sections of society? As lead investigator on the project, Dr Daniel’s purpose at CARPA3 is to present some of the results of this investigation, in particular issues that problematize the relationship between Performance Studies as an academic discipline and Research/Creation - or Practice-as-research - as a process that substantially informs how that discipline is presented within the academy. The context for this presentation is Here Be Dragons-Non Plus Ultra, a performance work that explores the concept of 'going west to find east', based on Christopher Columbus’ desire to get to China, India and Japan by crossing the Atlantic. In Here Be Dragons-Non Plus Ultra we first invert that phrase, i.e., 'going east to find west', and then play on the inherent paradox of going in either direction to find the other. Here Be Dragons-Non Plus Ultra probes the boundaries of the academic and professional dance and performance worlds, a field that has become increasingly fraught with issues pertinent to the themes of this conference. Dr Daniel will co-present with Spanish colleague Ms Rakel Ezpeleta performer in Here Be Dragons-Non Plus Ultra and PhD student at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Henry Daniel is an Associate Professor of Dance and Performance Studies at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts and Principal Investigator for Project Barca: New Architectures of Memory and Identity, a three year research initiative (2011-2014) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). He is a Juilliard trained dancer and choreographer born and raised in Trinidad and has performed with and choreographed works for dance and theatre companies including the Jose Limon Dance Company, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre Workshop, Tanz Projekt München, Freiburger Tanztheater, Tanztheater Münster, and Henry Daniel and Dancers.
Rakel Ezpeleta is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Institut del Teatre. Born and raised in the Basque Country, she is a singer and actress with specialist training in Meisner technique and a Masters Degree in Art History. Ms Ezpeleta coordinates the entire research for Project Barca in Spain and also performs in Barca-El otro lado and Here be dragons-Non plus ultra.
Ginsborg Jane: Practice-based research in and on practice: The development of performance cues
The study to be reported is practice-based research in that it has been carried out by a practitioner – a singer who is also a music psychologist – on her own practice, in collaboration with a cognitive scientist. Its purpose was to investigate the development of performance cues (landmarks for retrieval) during preparation for performance from memory, and the extent to which they were retained from one performance to another, following a reconstruction from memory, several months later. While other longitudinal case studies have been carried out by the same authors, separately and together, this project breaks new ground both methodologically and theoretically. Most investigations of this nature involve one musician learning and performing one piece of music. The present study is the second carried out by the singer; comparisons can thus be made across works. Most investigations involve the musician as the “subject” of scientific scrutiny; in the present study the musician was the observer as well as the observed. Two forms of collaboration will be acknowledged and discussed: the singer’s collaboration with her pianist, in rehearsal, performance(s) and reconstruction from memory; the bringing-together of different perspectives enabled by the singer/researcher’s collaboration with the cognitive scientist. Finally, the findings of the research both confirm and challenge aspects of performance cue theory, with implications for the practice of other musicians.
Professor Jane Ginsborg is Associate Dean of Research, Director of the Centre for Music Performance Research and Programme Leader for Research Degrees at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. She is also Managing Editor of the online journal Music Performance Research (www.mpr-online.net) and President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. She has published widely on expert musicians' preparation for performance, collaborative music making and musicians’ health. In 2002 she was awarded the British Voice Association’s Van Lawrence Award for her research on singers' memorising strategies.
Hilevaara Katja and Orley Emily: MAKING MAKING MATTER: A dialogue about brief encounters and enduring impressions
“We will present a performance/dialogue/experiment in making and talking, that articulates and questions our own working process and aesthetic, while asking what it means to make the making of work matter as an end in itself. We propose not only to discuss our research but that the discussion becomes the research itself. Drawing on the history of the Theatre Academy building as soap factory Kokos Oy, we will scrub our hands, arms and face with soap until the bar of soap disintegrates, making ourselves clean but having nothing more to show for it. At the same time we will critically and creatively reflect on some of the theories that have influenced and inspired our practice (those of, for example, Henri Bergson and Jane Rendell), experimenting with the making of a dialogue (with words, with paper, with clean hands), while dissolving matter (soap). As practitioner-researchers, we have been collaborating for the last five years to produce a series of short performance installations as part of an ongoing project called Brief Encounters (or The Breaking of Images). We prepare our work at length, engaging with the sites in which we find ourselves, only to perform it for a few minutes before removing all traces of it. It is the act of making and unmaking images that matters to us. The making is our principle research activity. The making is our research outcome. The making (the being in the presence of making, the being inspired to be making yourself, the remembering of making) is the impact, however intangible, in which we are interested. It reminds us of all the possibilities that we are persuaded to forget.
Katja Hilevaara and Emily Orley are artists, researchers and teachers in London. They have been collaborating on a range of projects for the last ten years, involving performance, installation, writing and design. Previous performance installations for Brief Encounters series include Oxymandias (PSi Utrecht, 2011); Ivory Towers (Bristol, 2009); Opiate (London, 2008); Narcissus (London, 2008); Lusikka (Manchester, 2007); and Teippi (London, 2007). They also worked together to adapt Tove Jansson’s Summerbook to the stage with artist Rajni Shah (South East Arts Council commission, 2005); and collaborated on a devised performance, Napoleon in Exile (Edinburgh and London, 2003). They presented a performance paper ‘Place as a remembering process: a conversation about making and breaking images’ at Psi Utrecht (2011).
Hug Joa: Manipulation
“Manipulation A Workshop-Demonstration by Joa Hug In my doctoral research, I am investigating the relationship between sensing, perceiving and reflecting in dance/performance. The main point is to gain knowledge and understanding about the issue of alteration from the perspective of the dancer/performer as researcher. I am approaching this issue in and through one of the constitutive elements of the Body Weather* training methodology: the so-called Manipulations. The question is, how the process of sensing, perceiving and reflecting is being manipulated -and altered- in and through this training practice. In the workshop-demonstration, we will practice thinking through the Manipulations - in a double meaning of the word “through”: to make the Manipulations both the subject and the object of a practice of thinking and reflecting, both a means and an end of performance-as-research. Some of the questions to be raised: What is it that can be accomplished through the Manipulations? What is the impact of the practice on the artist practitioner? What effect does consciously altering one’s physical state and awareness have on one’s way of reflecting? How can conscious activity of the mind alter the body’s perception in relation to itself and to others? What is the impact of research on the practice of the Manipulations? In which way does the action of research shift the perspective in/on/through the practice of the Manipulations, turning the practice itself into an object of alteration? In other words, and putting the question more generally: How can artistic research alter artistic training and performance practices? Those who join the workshop-demonstration are invited to choose whether they want to become actively involved either in the hands-on experience of the research(ed) practice or as observers. *Body Weather is a comprehensive training and performance practice that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Bodies are not conceived as fixed and separate entities but are - just like the weather - constantly changing through an infinite and complex system of processes occurring in- and outside of these bodies. (http://bodyweatheramsterdam.blogspot.nl)
Joa Hug studied History, Political Science and Sociology at the Universities of Freiburg and Oregon/Eugene (US), and Choreography at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. He worked as independent dancer with Body Weather Amsterdam a. o. and completed his M. A. in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam (2009). Based in Berlin, he initiated the Artistic Research Lab_Berlin and currently follows the doctoral artistic research programme at the Theatre Academy Helsinki. His investigation into the relationship between sensory perception and reflection connects practice-as-research grounded on Body Weather with a theoretical exploration of epistemological and methodological issues of artistic research.
Humalisto Tomi: Artists researching noise, artists making a performance about noise: is that an artistic research about noise?
“The presentation is based on a dialogue between two visual designers collaborating a same performance project. They will reflect from their point of view how the very abstract concept of noise developed into the Dark Project3: LIGHT NOISE performance. The LIGHT NOISE was the third phase of Dark projects produced by the Helsinki based group Performing Arts Society. The working process aimed to study noise, but also to give form to it on stage, whether it is visual, auditive, textual or embodied. There three-years-long collaborative working process resulted a performance period in Tampere University's theater space Teatterimonttu February 2012. The presentation tracks the key phases of the designer's visual working process with the help of video documentation. This presentation is connected to the question if the LIGHT NOISE was an artistic research? Participating artists mainly achieved to create a performance, but were all the studying; researching and figuring out a material form of noise out of ordinary? How was this working method related to an artistic research? Our experience leads us speculate how the resulting performance did contain knowledge about the noise, which was achieved through artistic practice? Or can the knowledge be located more within the process, and clarified when it is reviewed afterwards?
Tomi Humalisto is freelance lighting designer and visual artist who has worked and collaborated in several visual art and performance projects during last 17 years. His lighting designs and stage designs has been seen particularly in contemporary dance productions. He has also been creating and supervising performance projects, lately the Dark project 3: LIGHT NOISE (2010-2012) Humalisto defended his artistic doctoral work concerning alternative approaches on lighting design June 2012 in Theatre Academy Helsinki, Humalisto is a member of Artists Association MUU, Finnish Lighting and Sound Designer's Union and the group Performing Arts Society.
Hübner Falk: Research in and through artistic practice? - 'Shifting Identities' as a case study for frictions between theory, research questions and artistic practice
“This paper investigates the specificity of artistic creation and its problems in a practice-based research project in the field of devised experimental theatre. It addresses the relation between research questions and the creation process of a performance - How does practice behave in relation to theory and specific research questions in the actual process of creating a performance? How does one avoid only bringing the results of a research project on stage, and getting to the point of a colourful and inspiring artistic experience?
By referring to the research project Shifting Identities - The Musician as Theatrical Performer as a case study, several aspects of this friction between theory and artistic practice will be highlighted. The paper argues that theory and practice might not, as often suggested, constantly influence each other, but rather in turn, and that each artist-researcher has to develop one’s own approach to the design of the relationship of the writing, theory and research questions on the one hand, and one's own artistic creations on the other.
Falk Hübner (1979) is a composer, theatre maker and researcher, creating experimental stage works which fall between concert, installation and performance as conceptualist, composer and director. His practice-based PhD research focusses on the musician as theatrical performer and the impact of reductive conceptions (taking central elements of performance away from the musician, such as taking away the instrument) on the professional identity of the musician. He is member of various research groups as the FIRT/IFTR research groups for intermediality in theatre and performance and music theatre, and the IMS study group Music and Media (MaM).
Jude Gretchen: Electrovocal Performance as/in Research
“As both a vocalist and a computer musician, I find that, insofar as my music entails programming, my body is ignored while I am at the keyboard. In contrast, when vocalizing (which is rooted in the breath and the physical body) I literally rediscover my voice, which then grounds my artistic practice. Similarly, as a performance studies scholar, I find that my work as a performer moors my intellectual practice in the physical realm. Based on these experiential observations, this paper presentation will explore the problem of (dis)embodiment in human (vocal) interactions with digital technology by utilizing digital audio devices to problematize the increasingly sidelined position of the body in the expanding realms of technology, as well as providing a real-time experiment in performance-as-(artistic)-practice. The academic lecture will also be denaturalized and reframed as work of sonic art, highlighting the transformation of the voice between as it travels between microphone and amplifier–-a shift which is currently so normalized as to go unnoticed in both academic and artistic contexts. At the same time, this performance will in some sense be a collaboration between me and my technological medium of choice, namely the audio PA system and computer. These are tools shared by academics and artists (among others)–tools which also remain invisible yet essential to the ways that scholars now research, write and share work.
Gretchen Jude is a performer and composer who works with digital and analog electronics, exploring the tensions and liminal spaces between human and machine. Gretchen spent eight years as a university English teacher in Tokyo, where she studied traditional Japanese music. In 2011, she earned an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College (California); Gretchen is now enrolled in the doctoral program in Performance Studies at University of California, Davis. Current interests include presence and embodiment in electrovocal and computer music performance, site-responsive improvisation, graphic scores, and collaboration with dancers and visual artists.
Kuikkaniemi Kai: I know
"I know" is an exploration on how I can talk together with you about bit dark and big questions I have been thinking about for long time. As a society, we are surrounded with very serious and demanding topics. For most of the people it is just easier to leave big questions aside and focus on every day life, but for some of us these topics produce constant unavoidable excitement and scare. As artist I feel that I need to explore the means to question society by large; governance, progress, nations, human rights and overall the concept of humanity, in order to make us tiny bit more prepared to steer this bubble boat towards some other way than the one we are most probably directed at. "I know" is participatory performance that explores the means to dive deeper in such demanding topics. Whether it is an easy or a hard way to do that, remains to be seen.
Kai Kuikkaniemi wears three hats. One is a research hat, another a entrepreneur hat, and then there is this one often rather hidden emerging artist hat too. But in practice he is constantly cross-dressing and keeping all these hats on at the same time during his endeavors. Currently he focuses on exploring novel ways on how to use computing collectively in co-location. Prior to that he has been actively involved in exploring what can be done with mobiles and how body and computing can be brought closer with biosignals and what can we do with affective computing.
Lagerström Cecilia: Etudes on silence - researching the Performative and Performing Research
During 2010-12 I have been working with an artistic development project, exploring the theme silence, related to my own practice as a director with a laboratory theatre background. My exploration has included questions on: the director’s work process, position and communication with actors in collaborative situations, the presence of personal themes in the artistic work and the investigation of silence as a specific awareness and approach to the world. In 2011 a performance act, Silent Walk, was presented in urban public space, raising new questions and areas of exploration into the project. It put the relation between actor and spectator to a head and evoked questions on the ethical aspect of the human encounter. The project has produced different artifacts and documents: performances, texts, soundtracks, performance-lectures and a short film. A complex weave of questions, threads and documents has started to grow around the project.
Cecilia Lagerström is a director, artistic researcher and senior lecturer at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). She has a background in laboratory theatre and has a PhD in Performance Studies. Since many years she has been directing performances in theaters and other venues, and artistic research- and development projects at the universities in Stockholm and Gothenburg. She teaches and supervises at masters and doctoral level in the performing arts.
Lai Chi-Hsia + Bovermann Till: Wander On Stage: an Exploration of Interactivity
With the advent of interactive media technology used in performance practice, contemporary music performance has become increasing diverse and evolving, and it has unfolded new possibilities to mediate meaning and feelings. However, because the interactive technology allows to map bodily movements as controls to sound producing arbitrarily, the decision on how to present an interactive live performance often becomes challenging. Therefore in seeking to understand the communication flow between performer and audience, the author attempts to bridge her own artistic practice and research by combining theory, performance design, live performances and qualitative research (interview with audience). The aims of this research are to investigate the relationship between interface, performer, and eventually find design guidelines that enhance this communication flow. This presentation begins with a live sound performance, followed by a talk about the author’s ongoing research on her artistic practice, which is a series of solo and collaborative performances featuring a custom-made interface for live sound performances with electronics and media technology. Also, the initial findings from the audience interview analysis are discussed, as well as how it guides for future performance development.
Chi-Hsia Lai comes from a percussion performance background (BMus in Percussion Performance). She has a strong interest in expanding her performance experience beyond the conventional instrument playing by integrating aspects of media technology into her performances. Her interactive performance works have been performed and presented in international conferences and festivals in Europe, Australia, USA, Japan and Taiwan. Currently, Chi-Hsia is a doctoral student at Media Lab, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, and her research investigates in the area of composing an engaging media performance space.
Till Bovermann is a researcher on tangible and auditory interfaces at Media Lab Helsinki. In his artistic work he often deals with the relationship between digital and physical realms. He also develops software, mostly in SuperCollider.
Lehikoinen Kai: Artistic Interventions as a Strand of Artistic Research
Art and culture for well-being is a growing trend in Finland and internationally. Variety of challenges such as the discontentment of children and young people, the aging of population, the growing needs of immigrant groups and the integration of various population groups require pro-active and preventative measures. Answers to these challenges are increasingly sought from arts-based approaches. Likewise, arts are called for help as the success of organisations in post-industrial countries is increasingly based on human resources. How do performing arts provide guidance, assuagement and remedy outside its own traditional boundaries? For example, applied theatre and community dance provide means for artistic interventions to address organisations’ needs for innovation, learning, communication, solidarity, well-being and so on. Artistic interventions can be defined as artist-led initiatives that help organisations through the arts to develop their activities or competencies. In my paper, I discuss, how, or under which conditions, could artistic interventions in performing arts be regarded as artistic research. How could artistic research be embedded in artistic interventions as a form of enquiry? In addition, I will briefly contemplate the potential of artistic interventions as performative and transformational practice by examining how artistic interventions could make impacts and instigate change in organisations. Finally, it is considered how artistic interventions as artistic research could be studied from inside the practice.
Kai Lehikoinen is a university lecturer in performing arts in the Performing Arts Research Centre at the University of the Arts Helsinki. He has degrees in dance pedagogy and dance studies and a Ph.D. (Surrey) on dance and masculinities. His research interests include artistic interventions in non-artistic environments. He has recently published a curriculum framework for trainer training in arts-based work with people with dementia and a research policy proposal on arts-based work. Currently, Lehikoinen is writing articles on artistic interventions for a book Training Artists for Innovation: Competencies for New Contexts, which he co-edits with Joost Heinsius.
Lifländer Elina, Elo Julius, Kosonen Sirkka, Lyytikäinen Pasi: Artistic research in a shared process of collaboration
Four artistic researchers from different fields are combining their research ideas and working manners. We have met each other in The Doctoral Programme in Artistic Research (TAhTO 2012-2015) and tested performative collaboration in our research seminar held in Gallery Augusta 2012. We were combining elements of the participatory event to the aspects of the sound, touch, improvisation and spatiality. Now we would like to develop further the idea how artistic researchers can do co-operation and still retain their own point of view as researchers. What benefits, methods and problems democratic collaboration is bringing up? Here below are our artistic research topics and questions aimed to this becoming demonstration, taking place in the CARPA3. Julius Elo (Teak/Tutke) Topic: The body of the spectator-participant in a performance Question: How to integrate elements of touch into a performance event? Sirkka Kosonen (Siba) Topic: Usage of the ethnic singing techniques in multi-idiomatic improvisation Question: How does the live movement and touching effect to my sound improvisation? Elina Lifländer (Aalto/ARTS) Topic: Space becoming a situation – spatial cognition formed by shared process Question: In which ways spatiality of the performance can respond to the shared and fluctuating situation? Pasi Lyytikäinen (Siba) Topic: Musical action in different borderlines. Question: What kind of musical situations come up in reflections (1) between concrete sounds and music, (2) between noises and tones, (3) between touching of the musician by the audience, and (4) between in musicians relationship.
Elina Lifländer has graduated from the MA Degree Program in Scenography at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki 2008. Currently she is preparing her thesis: ”Space becoming a situation – spatial cognition formed by shared process” in The Doctoral Programme in Artistic Research (TAhTO 2012-2015). She explores through the shared processes how scenography can respond to the constant changes and fluctuations of the contemporary performances. She is shearching new intangible materials for a scenographer by combining multiple elements of the spatial rhythms as architectural compositions, sounds and movements of the performers.
Julius Elo is a performance artist and director working in the field of Live Art. He´s a founder member of Reality Research Center (Todellisuuden tutkimuskeskus). He has graduated from the MA Degree Program in Performance and Theory at Theatre Academy of Helsinki, in 2006. Elo is working on his doctoral studies on “The body of the spectator-participant in a performance”. His main research questions are: What follows, when a performance is based on physical experience instead of watching? What if a performance, is not made for the sense of sight, but for the body of the spectator, bodily encounter, and physical contact? What happens, when we move into the field of interactive and participatory performance, and the body of the spectator-participant becomes the scene? How does this affect the performance, performers, spectators, and art itself?
Sirkka Kosonen is a folk-singer from Kerimäki. She uses several ethnic singing styles from Finland and outside. One of the styles she uses is the singing technique and tradition of African Pygmies. Since 1996 Kososnen has been working with jazz musicians. Combining Pygme singing with jazz improvisation is a route towards the African roots of jazz. In her artistic doctoral project she´s investigating different ethnic singing and vocals techniques in a free improvisation context.
Pasi Lyytikäinen is a doctoral student at Sibelius-Academy. He studied composition 199-–2005 with Erkki Jokinen and Paavo Heininen at Sibelius Academy and several international master classes. He has circa 40 composition from solo work to operas and orchestral works. His works has been performed worldwide, f.ex. in New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Shanghai and Tokyo. Lyytikäinen has earlier been working as a part-time teacher and an assistant of composition at Sibelius Academy. His artistic research has two main focuses. The musical target is to expand my musical idiom by operating between the axis of noises and tones, and to use them as a part of harmony and musical identity in his compositions. Both, the artistic work and the written thesis, will be focused in the sonorous events of the interfaces between the noises and the tones.
Meelberg Vincent: Musical Improvisation as the Performance of Embodied Knowledge
One of the possible aims of artistic research into musical improvisation is to make explicit how improvisation can teach us about coping with uncertainty, with the unknown, with acceptance and rejection, and how to collaborate with others in a nonverbal way. Even though all musical improvisation can be regarded as a performance that at the same time is a form of research, of exploration, the investigative aspect of this activity might not always be clear to the audience, or even to the performers themselves. This is where artistic research comes in: artistic research foregrounds the fact that musical improvisation can be research, experiment, exploration; research that is not only restricted to music, but one that extends to important aspects of human life. In this presentation I will demonstrate how artistic research might be able to do this, by focusing on the concept of embodied narrative. By taking a recorded performance of my free improvisation trio as a case study, I will argue that musical improvisation can teach us about the function of embodiment in storytelling. Referring to Daniel Punday's notion of corporeal narrativity I will show that engaging in a musical improvisation is not only a matter of listening to each other, but also of feeling the movements of all participants, participating in an activity that ultimately can lead to a narrative that is created by, and becomes expressive because of, embodiment.
Vincent Meelberg is senior lecturer and researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Department of Cultural Studies, and at the Academy for Creative and Performing Arts in Leiden and The Hague. He is founding editor of the online Journal of Sonic Studies and editor-in-chief of the Dutch Journal of Music Theory. His current research focuses on the relation between musical listening, playing, embodiment, and affect. Beside his academic activities he is active as a double bassist in several jazz groups, as well as a composer.
Nauha Tero: Life in Bytom: The Actual forms of plasticity
I am investigating how to find ways in artistic practice for the virtual or potential to take a form in the actual? Can virtually new take place in a performance practice, and in the ‘real’? This project took place in a post-industrial mining town in Silesia, Poland including performance, video-performance and exhibition. It was curated by Stanisław Ruksza from CSW Kronika in Bytom. What are the conflicts and frictions, that my practice meet in encountering the ‘real’? What is the quality of artistic practice and how does it differ from the ‘real’? The project is based on the encounters, meetings, interviews, workshops, images, reflections, recordings, archives, questionnaires from Bytom. How do concepts of ‘plasticity’ or ‘affect’ locate themselves in the artistic practices concentrating on the socio-political issues? The concept plasticity, ability to give form and to receive form - which in my research is related to a “sponge subjectivity” - has been recently developed by Katherine Malabou. Plasticity carries on the idea of giving form and receiving form. Yet, Malabou wants to evoke another aspect of plasticity: the annihilation of form. How forms are exhausted and what kind of performance or practices entail or are built on that?
Tero Nauha is a performance and visual artist. He is a research student in the Artistic Research School in Helsinki, in the department of Performance Art and Theory. His research interests are subjectivity and performance in the context of cognitive capitalism. His research consists of schizoanalytic practice and three artistic works, of which two has been already presented: “Loop Variations” at the MUU gallery in Helsinki in 2008 and “Life in Bytom” at the CSW Kronika in Bytom, Poland in 2012. In 2010 he was a visiting research student at the department of Visual Cultures at the Goldsmiths College of London.
Orpana Mikko: The Dancer's Perception
In my presentation-performance I will explore the perception of a dancer. The perception will be observed by the container schema from George Lakoff's and Mark Johnson's study in their book "Philosophy in the Flesh - The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought", Lakoff&Johnson 1999. The container schema simply begins with the idea that a person seen his or her own body as a container in the space. I use his schema in order to help a dancer to see his or her situation in a spesific space and by that observation better to understand the philosophy of mind-body - dualism and the philosophy which abandons that dualism. The exploration is also an experiment in that how can a performance be research? How can I measure perception and have any academically relevant results? And what kind of an impact can it have for the audience? The exploration is to be done with a small group of dancers who will be orally guided through the whole performance. As a helping tool with the dancers I will use an exercise which I call 'Sleepwalking'. This exercise is a combination of meditation and Authentic movement and it is fitted to the task of observing one's own perception.
Mikko Orpana graduated as a Master of Arts 1999 and has since then worked as a freelance choreographer and dancer. From 2010 he is a doctoral student at Theatre Academy Helsinki/Performing Arts Research Centre.
Poutiainen Ari: Simple Play in Positions: Fundamental Applications of Position Playing Technique for Violin Improvisation Studies
Jazz violin pedagogy is developing fast. New curricula and teaching materials emerge frequently. Few of the recent jazz violin study books, however, address such important technical aspects as position playing. Regarding violin improvisation, this technique can be a key to success: Security in position playing technique significantly liberates violinists’ improvised melody construction. As a performing jazz violinist I have explored position playing for years. These explorations have manifested as a fingering strategy, and I have introduced various aspects of this strategy in academic publications. I have also developed the strategy further, applied it in violin pedagogy. The more recent applications I have piloted, for example, when teaching bowed string instrument improvisation classes at the Sibelius Academy. These classes have been targeted to students without previous experience in improvisation. In this presentation I demonstrate new applications of position playing technique, discuss the related pedagogy, and report on my piloting. The particular applications are addressed to intermediate violinists. My work is based on artistic research but it also reflects music education. Regarding established research approaches, it connects best to the action research. My fresh position playing applications help violinists to internalize the basics of schematic fingering approach, understand how to effectively employ the entire violin fingerboard in improvisation, maintain a good intonation while producing chromatic melodic material in higher violin positions, and substantially reduce the amount of different scale fingerings to be memorized. The application design takes a great concern in tactility and is thus practice-led. It is, however, also supported with an extensive investigation on classical violin repertoire and pedagogical literature. In addition to the above, I discuss my subject in respect to pedagogical research: Until the artistic and practice-led research approaches have secured their position within the conventional academia, many of their results could easily be established as research in the field of education.
Ari Poutiainen is a contemporary Finnish jazz composer, violinist, and researcher. He has performed across Europe and the USA, led various small groups and string ensembles, composed scores for films, contemporary dance and theatre performances, and appears on more than 30 CDs. As a pedagogue, Poutiainen has specialized in bowed string instrument improvisation, currently teaching the subject at the Sibelius Academy. He is the author of "Stringprovisation – A Fingering Strategy for Jazz Violin Improvisation (2009). He has also published several scholarly articles on jazz, improvisation, education, and creativity. His more recent compositions can be heard on Farther-Out trio’s "Tuo" (2009) and Pastor & Poutiainen duo’s "North South Dial" (2011).
Pulkkinen Outi: Merging Human Voice, Movement and Speech in Unplanned Improvisation
This session has two parts. At first I present some ideas of my artistic reseach on Doctor of Music studies at Sibelius-Academy Folk Music Department. In the second half we do practical exercises together. While doing artistic doctoral studies I developed a method of combining movement and speech with musical and voice improvisation. In these kind of free improvisation performances I try to merge my body and mind and then let it come out through voice, movement and words. When activating many parts of the brain at the same time I see a chance to create new performative thinking. However I started my doctoral studies with a deep dive in to Finnish old traditional music in 12 different two hour long concerts. In both type of performances I have got lots of important insights. In the other part of this session we do exercises that I have invented myself or borrowed from others when studying, practicing and teaching voice improvisation and moving together. While doing these exercises or after them we could ask ourselves for example these kind of questions: Do I intend to conduct or controll myself all the time? What kind of connection and interaction do I feel between voice, movement, emotion, music and speech? How do I feel the emotions when I move and do voice at the same time in comparison to when I do only voice or movement?
Outi Pulkkinen (b. 1969) is best known as an experimental vocal artist and expert of traditional Finnish vocal music. Besides solo performances she workes with several bands, for example with female a cappella group MeNaiset. Pulkkinen´s work with improvisational and experimental vocal music has lead her to work also with contemporary dance. Pulkkinen is finishing her artistic doctoral studies at Sibelius-Academy Folk Music Department. In her doctoral concert series she reseached both the 2000 years old runo-song- and jouhikko traditions but also with free improvisation with voice, movement and speech.
Puustinen Merja: No Traces of Sentimentality
The workshop takes a form of a performative and participatory riot, a happening which has no rules, no gain or aim beyond a simple desire to see what happens when a bunch of people are invited into a child-like intuitive physical play which quickly turns into a dynamic multisensory social experience. The workshop also serves as a concrete demonstration of the epistemological difference in the practices of art viewing. In a traditional sense, a perfected art object is laid out for the audience to gaze, learn, and decode the meaning. Even within the interactive forms of visual art the artist often provides the technical interface for mere fidgeting rather than platform for an open-ended situation for audience interaction. However, there are some historical traits which allow more participatory forms of artistic experience, for example in happening, performance, interactive media art, hacking communities, gaming culture, various community based art forms and contemporary theatre often nurtured and inspired by social media and some forms of socio-political activity.
Merja Puustinen was born in Hamina, Finland, 1963. She has collaborated together with Andy Best since 1993. Both have a background in sculpture, video and installation art. They were amongst the first online web artists, and during the mid to late 1990’s worked with virtual multiuser 3D worlds on the internet. With their company Meetfactory they developed a 3D multiuser community platform and virtual pet or tamagotchi for mobile phones. They now concentrate their artistic activites on large scale installations and interactive works. Merja and Andy won Finnish State Prize ever given to the media arts in 1999. Puustinen has work as a full time and part time visiting lecturer in the Digital Arts degree course at Turku University of Applied Sciences. Merja Puustinen is completing her PhD research on interactive media art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.
Roar Per: Viewing my perception – on staging an experiential performative experience
The presentation discusses the experiences from constructing and developing the performance situation "If this is my body." This project results from my doctoral research at TEAK and experiments I have conducted over the last years on “warming up” an “audience” kinaesthetically in order to enhance their proprioceptive sensing. One of the first versions of this project was presented at last CARPA in 2011, later versions have been presented, among other places, at the Medical Museion in Copenhagen and at Dramatikkens Hus in Oslo. The presentation reflects on the experiences gained from this artistic research process and questions the traditional divides existing between research, performance and somatic practices.
Per Roar is a choreographer and doctoral student at TEAK. His artistic work combines choreographic exploration with a social-political interest – an approach supported by his diverse educational background, which includes: choreography (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, KHIO), Performance Studies (New York University), and history and social sciences (University of Oslo, Corvinius University Budapest, and Oxford University). Per Roar is a recipient of the National Endowments of the Arts’ Fellowship for Artists (2000-2003) appointed as the first research fellow in choreography at KHIO (2003-2006), and in 2012 awarded the State’s Guarantee Income for Artists in Norway. In his doctoral project he explores a contextual approach to choreography by looking at the phenomena of grieving.
Rouhiainen Leena + Nykyri Antti: Making and Knowing Art from the Heart
This presentation presents a collaborative performance lecture involving sound, speech, visual material and dance. By intermixing personal, physical, artistic exploration and theoretical insights the performance questions how the heart knows. The presenters share their diverse insights on the research-oriented artistic process. They address the significance of the affective and the emotional in artistic knowing. They likewise address how the motif of knowing through the heart informed the evolving artistic process and fostered renewed collaborative engagement.
Helsinki-based Antti Nykyri (MA) has worked with music and sound design in different contexts including electronic music, band projects, contemporary dance, installation art, interface research, theatrical plays and artistic research. Dr. Leena Rouhiainen is Professor in Artistic Research at the Theatre Academy Helsinki. Her artistic field is in performing contemporary dance.
Salminen Maaret: Attempts to access the Space and the Red World
My presentation will be based on my on-going artistic research. I will introduce a view to its main title "The Space and the Red World" by reading my paper and showing some visual material as examples in formats of images and short video clips. The focus of my artistic research is on light as a media for children to express, tell stories, perform and play. I'm also exploring, how a child (ages four to six) experiences an interaction between light, colour, material and space, and how s/he perceives these and the visual elements in a performance. My artistic and practical work is based mainly on workshops in day-care and pre-school environments. My interests concern also the possibilities and potential impacts of this kind of artistic approach in working together with children artistically and pedagogically - Exploring and seeking access the Space and the Red World.
Maaret Salminen is a lighting designer and Master of Arts in Theatre and Drama (1994 Theatre Academy Helsinki, Lighting and Sound Designing). Her theatrical career started in 1985. Since that, she has been working as a lighting designer for various productions and projects, but also as a teacher. In autumn 2009, Salminen started her doctoral studies as well as her artistic research at the Theatre Academy, Helsinki.
Saloranta Elina: Reflections in a window pane
I am a doctoral student at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, and my research concerns the relationship between image, sound and word. In CARPA 2 in 2011 I did an experiment in which I screened my video Two rooms and a kitchen (2010) and asked viewers to answer two questions in writing: ‘What did I see?’ and ‘What did I hear?’ In CARPA 3 I will show the results of the experiment – a new video piece titled Reflections in a window pane (2012). The image track of the video consists of only one element: a 14-minute shot of snowfall seen through a window. On the soundtrack we hear fragments of the viewers’ texts – as if they were reflected on the glass. The presentation addresses the question of collaboration or shared authorship, and it suggests that the results of artistic research can take the form of an artwork.
Elina Saloranta (born 1968) is a visual artist living in Helsinki. She works mainly with the moving image, which she has studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 2001). Currently she is a doctoral student at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Her research concerns the relationship between image, word and sound.
Salosaari Paula + Rouhianen Leena and Rinne Joanna: Movement quality as a starting point for artistic collaboraton involving musicians and dancers
A live work-in-progress music and dance performance is presented as a basis for discussion on artistic research. It is a co-operative performance process bringing together musicians and dancers. The work is initiated by open tasks involving perception and movement qualities. It enhances behavioral culture and roles in a performing situation and gives means for movement initiated improvisation in music. The research is continuation to Salosaari's doctoral research in ballet (2001), which has shown how perceptual strategies and varying movement qualities have supported the dancer's interpretational choices and co-authoring in dance making projects.
Doctor of Arts, Paula Salosaari, is a dance teacher at the Savonia University of Applied Scinces, Kuopio Finland. She is a visiting researcher at The Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Her present artistic research aims at supporting performing artists' agency in co-authored performance processes through enhancing body awareness and open use of movement qualities.
Tindemans Klaas: A laboratory of performativity. Lessons from performative research in the context of Brussels
At the RITS, the Brussels school for audiovisual and performing arts, artistic research is focused on shared practices between senior researchers and (Master and PhD) students. Our first concern is indeed to create a research environment, closely connected with basic pedagogy but without the restrictions a competence-based curriculum often implies. Students and teaching staff are now well aware that a ‘research attitude’ lies at the heart of the pedagogic project. No artistic education without artistic research: the school is transformed into a permanent (virtual)laboratory. This contribution tries to show how the development of the RITS art school as a ‘performative laboratory’ can rightfully claim to enhance research on performativity – as a paradigm – and on performative practices in the larger sense: restored behaviour in the public space, with all its political implications. This claim is due to a continuous reassessment of their own performance practices, by the (senior) researchers, but also to a clear theoretical and methodological framework, based upon: (1) a persisted effort to frame contemporary performance practices in a historical context, by comparing not only the dramaturgical but also the material and political conditions of performance production, both in workshops and in seminars; (2) the constant awareness of an ethnographic look upon representations and performative ‘facts’, i.e. representations are approached as documents on societal relations. The context of Brussels is especially valuable to keep up this effort: the capital of Belgium is a major example of the hybridities of the contemporary urban space. Brussels shows at the same the conspicuous symbols of globalized power – as the capital of the European Union – and the less gilded images of cultural and economical parataxis – rich, poor, gentrified. Since the development of urbanisation is closely linked to the colonial history, Brussels is also a representative topos for postcolonial discourse.
Dr. Klaas Tindemans is a dramaturge and a legal philosopher. He collaborated with theatre director Ivo van Hove between 1987 and 1993. He was research assistant at the University of Leuven), where he wrote his PhD-thesis about law and ancient tragedy (1996). Today he teaches and does research at the RITS School of Arts and at the VUB (Free University of Brussels/Dutch). At RITS, he also coordinates the research program. As a dramaturge he worked with the players’ collective de Roovers, with the Brussels youth theatre BRONKS and with director Lies Pauwels. He wrote and directed the award-winning plays Bulger (2006) and Sleutelveld (2009) with BRONKS. Both plays deal with children and violence. Dr. Klaas Tindemans publishes about legal theory, political representation, political violence, performance & theatricality and their mutual intertwinements.
Unander-Scharin Åsa and Unander-Scharin Carl: Sensory Digital Intonation. The impact of artistic intuition and experience when fine-tuning digital artefacts
Sensory Digital Intonation. The impact of artistic intuition and experience when fine-tuning digital artefacts. Throughout the artistic practice of the authors and their collaborative works (eg Artificial Body Voices, Robocygne, The Lamentations of Orpheus, The Crystal Cabinet, Olimpia, The Pearlfishers and Ombra Mai Fu) the development phase that we now denominate Sensory Digital Intonation has evolved. In the proposed presentation at Carpa 3, we will elaborate on this and show examples on how this practice has been and is carried out.
Åsa Unander-Scharin (PhD) choreographer and artistic researcher collaborating with dancers, musicians, programmers and robotic researchers. She holds a position as assistant professor at Luleå university of technology and member of The Committee for Artistic Research at The Swedish Research Council. Her choreographic works have been presented at festivals, art galleries and conferences in Europe, Japan, Vietnam, Canada and USA. In 2008 her doctoral thesis: Human mechanics and soulful machines was published. Recently works are Artificial Body Voices for the Swedish television, Opera Mecatronica at Swedish Royal Opera House and Rotterdam Opera Days and Robocygne at the opera house of Düsseldorf.
Carl Unander-Scharin is a Swedish composer and tenor. He specializes in high lyric tenor parts, and was between 2000-2010 engaged as tenor soloist at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm. In parallel with its extensive activities as a singer, is Carl a prolific composer and has written nine operas, as well as music for TV, film, dance, choral works, oratorios, and interactive works. Carl is since 2011 a Visiting Professor at the University College of Opera, as well a PhD candidate at KTH where the research project Extending Opera is undertaken.
Tångeberg Ursula Maya: Stage or Chewing Gum
An account about the research input for the establishment of physical theatre in Finland 1982−2012
Maya Tångeberg is a Swiss mime actress, director and pedagoge. She has studied kathakali, bharat natyam, kutiyattam and jingju. She is especially interested in physical Asean theatre techniques.
Valkeemäki Anita + dancers: The learning-teaching experience on stage
This performative presentation emerges from my ongoing PhD study, which is both artistic and educational. It aims to develop new ways to teach dance. With this performance I question how do the attitudes of teaching and learning change, while practising together with or in front of an audience (witnesses). What kinds of experiences arise? What happens when the teacher and student roles are amplified with the roles of the dancer and spectator-witness? To perform I invite 8 to 10 students from my dance lessons. The aim is to experiment the learning-teaching situation in theatrical act. In this performance, learning is considered to take place in and to be structured by lived bodily experience. In relation to it, I like to use the concept of ”self-transformative dance", which means dance instruction without pre-set requirements on how movement should occur. The movement themes are based on experiential anatomy to facilitate the exploration of the patterns of human movement and embodied interaction, through playful improvisation. Here the stage is considered as an environment of questioning observation. “Stage is a space which asks spectators to have a certain role, where teachers are not allowed to step in with their pedagogical approach, which demands dancers to be ready and well rehearsed. What do I want to manifest? What is the public's opinion?” I argue that the importance of the discussed pedagogical approach is in the change of attitude, perception and the habits of doing on the part of the students. I wish to open a discussion on how a teacher-student group can provide space and opportunity for the entry of open-ended learning experiences that support the individual's embodying processes both in our dance education and in our life-long learning process to understand and interpret the surrounding community as an individual.
Anita Valkeemäki is a dance and movement educator, MA in Dance, pedagogy, Theatre Academy Helsinki(1995). Doctoral Student in Theatre Academy (2008-).
van Campenhout Elke: The tender institute
This performative presentation emerges from my ongoing PhD study, which is both artistic and educational. It aims to develop new ways to the tender institute: the tender institute looks for a way to reclaim the institute (and especially the artistic research institute) as a porous, vulnerable and flexible architecture of collaboration, solely dependent on the desire of its participants. the research involves 3D modeling of possible tender institutes, long-term collaborative working projects, publications, and performative conference settings.
Elke van Campenhout is the research coordinator of a.pass. formerly she worked as a free lance dramaturg and researcher on artistic research projects in nadine brussels, paf (performing arts forum) reims, TQW (tanzquartierwien),kunstenfestivaldesarts brussels, gasthuis amsterdam and many others. she was a critic for the newspaper de standaard, and the classical radio station klara, and head editor of the performance magazine etcetera. as research coordinator elke van campenhout is in charge of the artistic and pedagogical profile and functioning of a.pass on the PhD-level, and she is in charge of the a.pass research center.
Vehviläinen Anu: Is it okay to applaud yet? - The approachability of the Art Music World from the audience’s perspective
Is it okay to applaud yet? The approachability of the Art Music World from the audience’s perspective My paper is about my research on the audience in Western art music world. The research question focuses on the approachability of the art music world from the audience’s perspective: How easy or difficult is it for a potential listener to approach our genre? Today’s art music genre follows the practices of the Romantic era: the musician is often seen as a distant, mystified person while the audience sits far away in darkness. Everything is controlled by a strict concert etiquette. The etiquette protects the artist and allows the listener to enjoy his or her private experience. But does the etiquette affect only in a positive way, considering both the artist and the audience? Is the image of a mystical artist too much for the musician? Is the audience intimidated in front of the art music world as a whole? How do listeners dare to approach music and us, the musicians? The data comes from a course called Birth of A Concert where a group of listeners met artistic doctoral students preparing a concert. The listeners wrote essays (the research data) discussing the various topics presented in the course. I approach my data with rhetoric discourse analysis. It aims to describe verbal processes, which in people’s speech build and produce reality. My aim is to define interpretative repertoires of shyness and courageousness which tell us about the approachability of the art music world.
Anu Vehviläinen (D.Mus) is a Finnish pianist who works as an assistant professor in DocMus, Sibelius-Academy. She is specialized in Karol Szymanowski recording all of his solo piano works for Alba Records. Vehviläinen is also dedicated to promoting artist-audience interaction. Projects have included a book about musicianship, various articles, dialogical solo piano recitals, an interaction workshop involving a number of artists and a selected audience, a programme note on the essence of the artist to accompany the Olli Kortekangas & Michael Baran opera One Night Stand. She has also created new kinds of courses in the field of artist-audience interaction.
Whalley `Bob´ Joanne & Miller Lee: Into the good night (go)
'Perhaps we should no longer speak of presence and absence, since there is neither one nor the other, but the tireless movement between: the continuous flux of bodies with other bodies. No more talk then of a unitary or self-coincident body. No integrities, but instead intensities of exchange and flow' Heathfield, in Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield (eds.) (2012) Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency. 'Into the good night (go)' is a performance installation that brings together our recent concerns about the training involved in bearing witness to live performance practice, the role of the body as an archival source and our interest in non-western body-based practices. Foregrounding an exploration of shared authorship alongside consideration of participatory strategies between the work and its spectator, this installation will encourage a conversation around the role of the witness in the generation of knowledge. Starting from our bodies, bodies that have been yoked together in daily existence for the past twenty years, and exploring the potential offered by their inevitable decline, this installation will consider witnessing, impermanence and loss, and hold these ideas against the pull towards ‘legacy’ that the archive asserts. Our intention is not to resist, not to look for some uncomfortable binary, but rather to see how a sharing from one body to another might allow performance actions to be re-communicated across varying times and contexts.
Joanne (or ‘Bob’ as most people know her) and Lee completed the first joint practice-as-research PhD to be undertaken within a UK arts discipline in 2004. As part of that project they began to reflect upon the process of creative collaboration and knowledge production by drawing on the ‘two-fold thinking’ of Deleuze and Guattari. These processes remain central to their ongoing work together. Alongside their creative practice, they both work in the UK university sector. Their current research includes an exploration of Buddhist, Vedantic and Taoist philosophies, with particular attention being paid to the concept of witnessing.
