14.12.2022 Book launches - KuvA Research Days
IT'S NOT GOODBYE IT'S SEE YOU LATER – FEAST WITH BOOK LAUNCHES
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
At 17:30–20:00
Onsite venue: The White Studio (Valkoinen studio), Uniarts Helsinki’s Sörnäinen campus, in the Academy of Fine Arts building Mylly (Sörnäisten rantatie 19, Helsinki). [The event will not be streamed].
Welcome to hear about new books published by the Academy of Fine Art at Uniarts Helsinki. Writers and editors present the books and discuss their content.
Where Do Images Come From? Detours around Ted Serios´s “Thoughtographic” Photographs. The Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. 2022
In the mid-1960s, the Western world was confounded by a peculiar case. The person at the center of this attention was Ted Serios, a bellhop at a Chicago hotel, who was said to possess a unique talent: he could produce photographic images by using only his mind. Dr. Jule Eisenbud, a respected psychiatrist from Denver who was fascinated by the workings of the human mind, made a significant contribution to studying this phenomenon in 1964–1967. However, understandably, people saw the pictures - called thoughtographs - as a scam and their origin as some sort of magic trick. The essays in this collection do not focus on the truth and the untruth of these experiments. Instead, the story of Serios has tempted the authors to consider a variety of deviations from and detours around a subject that defies rational explanation. The thoughtographs do not make sense: their contours blur and blend with the ontology of the image in general. How do images appear to us in the first place? Where do images come from? Contributors of this essay collection are Tom Beck, Mika Elo, Marjaana Kella (ed.), Harri Laakso, Hanna Weselius and Leon Marvell.
The book is available online in TAJU
To buy a printed copy
Annette Arlander: Performing and thinking with trees. Art theoretical writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (15). 2022
How to collaborate with other beings we share this planet with is a central task for artists today. The starting point for these texts was the realization that we must find ways of relating to the environment that are meaningful from the perspectives of the ecological crisis and a new-materialist and post-humanist understanding of our place in the world. They suggest that artistic research can contribute by allowing for and generating hybrid forms of performing and thinking.
Performing and Thinking with Trees summarises the various strategies of lens-based work used in two artistic research projects by Annette Arlander, namely Performing with Plants (2017–2019) and Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees (2020–2021). The focus of these essays is on artistic practices, enhanced by some philosophical discussions related to vegetal life. They seek to contribute to critical plant studies as well as to demonstrate what the outputs of artistic research beyond doctoral work might look like.
The book is available online in Taju
Visual Artist’s Workbook. Essays and Exercises on Teaching Arts. Writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (8). Ed. Denise Ziegler and Pilvi Porkola. 2022
How do artist-teachers teach? What are the exercises and practices on which artist-teachers base their teaching? Is there something they would like to share with their colleagues? Visual Artist’s Workbook – Essays and Exercises on Teaching Arts collects the experiences and reflections of teachers and the practical exercises they use in teaching fine arts. The aim is to consider the practices that are relevant to teaching fine arts and to reveal their multiplicity. The book includes four essays written by artist-teachers, and the main part of the volume consists of short tasks written by forty artist-teachers.
The book’s objective is to inspire anyone interested in the methodology of visual arts and pedagogy-based thinking. It introduces an augmented understanding of artistic thinking in the field of visual arts.