Methods in Artistic Research
A seminar for artistic researchers to discuss their methods
25-26 March 2024
Royal Conservatoire Antwerp
Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
The A-team vs. The Defiant Ones:
tips and the tricky collaborative
Peter Lemmens
Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
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ABSTRACT
Teamwork makes the dream work and there is no I in team. But a team is not always an A-team, sometimes a team is a Defiant Ones.
What is the difference? Both were a group of escaped prisoners with a focus on a collaborative practice. Yet, there might be a very specific distinction. The A-team is a well-oiled machine where every member has its well-defined and complementary contribution to the team. This kind of team thinking is prevalent whenever the collaborative is mentioned. It is clear, efficient and effective. Everybody knows their place in the organisation, everybody knows their job, everybody shares the same goal. This method is unspecific and therefor believed to be applicable to any situation. It is a military narrative and consciousness. It sees collaboration as an irrefutable quality and one should never change a winning team. On the other hand, there is the Defiant Ones. Another TV trope where two prisoners are chained together and try to make their escape. Their collaborative practice is extremely specific, forced, difficult, looking for an ending. The team roles are messy, overreaching, contradictory. This kind of collaboration is structured by conflict, development, temporality and necessity. It is a civilian approach. This is no dream team, but an improvised, self-organizing structure, lacking self-evident qualities.
Within this distinction, can we find a set of social models that carry complex implications for people who think they can create something using a related, yet semiautonomous methodology. Can we render the collaborative as bringing community and non-community together? Is the collaborative intrinsically always a good thing or is it part of a discourse wherein collaborative work is always “better” than non-collaborative work because of the intentions and process? Is it a methodology and narrative that deserves a more critical approach?
BIOGRAPHY
Peter Lemmens is an artist, who looks at operational levels for their social, political, economical and artistic capacities. On this intersection, he works on how to organize one self responsibly, contaminating the question of “what to produce?” with the question of “how to produce?”. While working on distribution, narrativity, DIY and marginal practices, his work are demarcations not only of what can be done differently, but of what can be done simultaneously. This carries a small but fundamental nuance. He thinks conflict and development is not about resolution, but a permanent, fragile mode of production. Sound, video and text are often used. He thinks amateurism is not incompetence. He likes to make boring works. He sees diversions as a productive method. His work formulates an exit strategy. Working with others is a constant in his practice and finishes this by quoting 'Mine is not an autonomous imagination’.
He finished his PhD research at University of Antwerp, Antwerp under the supervision of Liam Gillick (artist), Johan Pas (art history) and Pascal Gielen (art sociology) in 2021. This is followed up by a two year research project at Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp in September 2022.
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
Un-settling accounts
Roelof Petrus van Wyk
University of the Witwatersrand RSA, South Africa
ABSTRACT
‘Intuition, Chance, Synchronicity and Epiphany,’ encompasses a set of critical unexpected situations. A methodology of the ‘ephemeral’ makes a critical anticipatory space, a criticality, available wherein the unexpected, the unseen, the suppressed or the hidden can come to the conscious fore against hegemonic positions of conflict. This presentation renders this ephemeral criticality into being through queer counter-storytelling, visual dissection of popular media, reflection on the racist regime’s political apparatus of shame, illuminating the apartheid years, 1966-1989, in a Counter-Atlas of Dis: Shame, Desire, Disgust and Difference.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Roelof Petrus van Wyk is a queer (south) African artist of Dutch, French and German colonial ancestry, violently enriched with enslaved South-Indian Maternal DNA. He is an artist, architect, curator and artistic researcher. In no particular order.
Van Wyk explores the tensions and relations between Artistic Knowing and Research Knowledge, transforming art methods into art research methodologies, and an art practice into an arts research practice through artmaking, curated expositions and reflective- and poetic writing. Equalising the power of the aesthetics of traditional ‘artworks on the wall’ and the very same artwork’s creative origination as a research ‘method’, he established a set of artistic methodologies for advancing Arts Research Practice not only in the studio, but as an open-ended way of being in the world.
Van Wyk is currently preparing a series of place-specific expositions, reflecting on notions of quarantine, by queer re-telling of the secret history of sodomy in the Cape of Good Hope, 1717-1817.
INSTALLATION
Expanded Memories: Artistic Experiments into Hybrid Analogue-Digital Film Production
Guido Devaddr, Diaa Lagan,
Gert Wastyn & Steven Malliet
LUCA School of Arts (BE), Lusófona University (PT),
Institute for Art, Design and Technology (IADT- IE)
ABSTRACT
The ‘Expanded Memories’ project is a collaboration between LUCA School of Arts (BE), Lusófona University (PT) and the Institute for Art, Design and Technology (IADT-IE), exploring how the vocabulary of animation film can be extended by crossing over towards the performative arts, fine arts and interaction design. We iteratively create, and reflect upon a series of hybrid (analogue/digital) installations that remediate traditional animation techniques and devices. With the artefacts displayed here, we investigate how XR technology, can help create an exhibition context for animation. Following Dan Torre (2017), we argue that, due to its specific connection with the dimensions of time and space, animation is uniquely related to human cognition and memory, especially when embedded in a material or performative context.
BIOGRAPHIES
Guido Devadder (1975) is a visual artist and artistic researcher based in Leuven, Belgium, working mostly with graphic narrative and experimental animation/animated installation. His work was published, screened and exhibited internationally and focuses mainly on the dark side of human nature, often through a combination of abandoned or forgotten technology and new media. He lectures at the Audiovisual Arts department of LUCA School of Arts in Brussels and is currently working on a PhD in the Arts entitled “From Post-cinema to Pre-cinema and Back: Media Archaeology of Loop Animation”.
Diaa Lagan is an originally Syrian multidisciplinary artist based in Dublin, Ireland since 2019. He holds a BA in Fine Art and a Master in Art Research. His work, which encompasses sculptural installations and paintings, is inspired by personal memories, stream of unconscious and reflects upon visual culture and socio-political phenomena. His recent work is influenced by oriental architecture, Arabic calligraphy, and illustrated manuscripts, under the context of liberal perspective and personal reflection. He is currently exploring the integration of his fine art practice with XR, 3D modelling, and electronic control to create immersive media.
Gert Wastyn is an audio visual artist. He’s a teacher and a researcher at LUCA School of Arts, Belgium. His research focuses on the artistic output that can be achieved using Extended Reality within the field of animation. He is currently working on an artistic PhD, which explores the artistic and educational potential of using VR technologies in animation.
Steven Malliet is a lecturer and researcher at LUCA School of Arts, where he teaches meaningful play and art-based research. He is a member of the academic board of the Re:Anima Erasmus Mundus master program in animation. He is active in several research projects that involve the creation of game rules within artistic and applied contexts, in addition to investigating the relationship between music and visuals in audiovisual media production. His academic research addresses the socio-psychological determinants of digital game play and the methodology of game text analysis – topics on which he has extensively published internationally.
LECTURE
Sites of co-presence
Andrew Vallance
Arts University Bournemouth, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
This paper will examine a discursive mode of programming and exhibition making, its artistic and research discourse and application. Through evaluating case studies, all of which are Contact curated events - the independent arts organisation that I co-founded (contactscreenings.co.uk.) - exhibition strategies, the interplay between work and its encounter, will be examined to consider how sites of co-presence can be created, and what is their worth.
Contact’s activities are designed to be sites of ‘live’ research, creating conditions that facilitate interaction between artists, their work, the place of exhibition and the audience, which develops a reflective, reflexive and complimentary relationship; for instance, Contact: A Festival (2016) had a curatorial focus that combined a multiplicity of different forms through an innovative programme that featured more than 70 artists, and the publication Film Talks: Fifteen Conversations About Experimental Cinema (2021), which developed into Film Talks: Live (2021-22), a series of eight events that presented many of the book’s participants in creative interaction; these events occurred in independent film, music and improvised venues, which were selected to foster a more inclusive and expansive environment.
Contact would create a place for discourse, which asks, how can curatorial activities enhance subject awareness, develop niche and new audiences, and build agency and legacy? Through Contact’s different activities it has developed a working practice – an initially intuitive and now systematic methodology - that endeavours to bring curators, artists, audience, all participants, together in a mutually beneficial and inspiring dialogue. This paper proposes that sites of co-presence can enhance participation, subject awareness, supporting related communities, all of which has distinct political and cultural purpose and potential.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Andrew Vallance is MA Film Practice course leader and Associate Professor at Arts University Bournemouth. He studied his master’s and PhD at the Royal College of Art. His thesis considered film and memory. He is also an artist, curator and writer. He co-founded Contact with Simon Payne and together they have developed numerous projects initially Assembly: A Survey of Recent British Artists’ Film and Video, 2008-13 (Tate Britain), Contact: A Festival (Apiary Studios) and most recently the publication Film Talks: 15 Conversations on Experimental Cinema.
For more details please see:
https://www.contactscreenings.co.uk/
LECTURE
Afterlives and reflections on conflict video archives
Lauren Alexander
Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, Netherlands
ABSTRACT
The lecture highlights artistic research methodologies developed for “Real-time History” first initiated in 2018 by the art and design collective with which Lauren works, Foundland Collective (www.foundland.info) in collaboration with artist Hanna Rullmann.
The most recent iteration of “Real-time History” looks through the lens of individuals or organisations whom since 2018 make or work with citizen journalist video footage, such as journalists, academics, courtroom consultants, lawyers and the Dutch police. The project aims to grasp personal perspectives on how narratives are shaped in a confusing reality when the afterlife and potential of such video material is still largely unknown. Five extensive online video conversations take a look behind the scenes to explore perspectives of video makers, citizen journalists, distributors, analysers, archivists and legal interpreters who contribute and guard accurate and detailed interpretations of open-source visual material.
The project includes growing series of short audio extracts taken from the interviews conducted. The series of short audio extracts are fragments of information, anecdotes, case studies or personal reflections on the use and relevance of Syrian digital archives from various cultural perspectives and via the lens of various formal and informal expertise. By interfacing with various professions in the interviews, interdisciplinarity is embraced and subjective voices, motivations, doubts and valuable reflections on the vast amount of actors involved in the re-interpretation and pending future use of video material is embraced.
Viewers can weave together different voices and embrace the plurality of opinions and approaches, experimenting with a feminist approach to storytelling rejecting the idea of one dominant (news) narrative dictating the course history. The presentation will share working methods and valuable lessons learnt about this important yet unfolding topic.
BIOGRAPHY
Lauren Alexander (1983, ZAR) completed a Masters in Design at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam and thereafter an MFA at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in Arnhem. Lauren is co-founder (2019) of Foundland Collective together with Ghalia Elsrakbi, an art and design practice. The Collective explores under-represented political and historical narratives by working with archives via art, design, writing, educational formats, video making and storytelling. Lauren has been awarded numerous international research fellowships and was shortlisted for the Dutch Prix de Rome prize (2015) and Dutch Design Award (2016). Lauren is currently acting co-head of the Graphic Design bachelor, together with Chantal Hendriksen at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague (KABK), where she also tutors in Critical Storytelling at the MA Non Linear Narrative.
WORKSHOP
Sensorial mapping as an artistic research strategy and interdisciplinary methodology in urban design
Vedrana Ikalovic & Sigrun Prahl
Junia-HEI, France; Hochschule Niederrhein, Germany
ABSTRACT
In urban life studies, pioneers like Lynch (1960), Jacobs (1961), and Alexander (1977) examined the mental image of the city and made detailed observations, descriptions, and suggestions of everyday use of public space and specific spatial designs. To them, the researcher is “the primary instrument” for data collection and analysis, who applies and uses her/ his experiences in urban design practices.
The main objective of this workshop is to identify intangible characteristics of urban conditions through sensorial experiences and create sound scapes, smell scapes, view scapes and tactile scapes using hand-on research as “the primary instrument” for data collection. Participants experience, observe, note, and map specific socio-spatial conditions within the selected context, focusing on one sense per person or group and following proposed methodologies of urban exploration. After the exploration in urban locations, collected data and created maps are overlapped, discussed, and used for the “(re)construction” of the neighbourhood’s sensorial characteristics. The proposed method is then (re)introduced as a teaching method that may serve as a pedagogic tool to trigger and integrate artistic/ creative mapping techniques as a first step in the design process for students in a design studio.
We invite you to sense Antwerp in an intense, sensorial way, to become a sensorial data collector, and to take the experience along and re-introduce it later, in a pedagogic setting and/or in practice. The workshop is open to teachers, practitioners, and students of urban space from any related perspective (art, architecture, urbanism, design, engineering, mobility, technologies, data processing, etc.).
BIOGRAPHIES
Vedrana Ikalovic is an urbanist and architect interested in multi-scalar and interdisciplinary studies of cities. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan (2019). She is an Associate Professor and Researcher at the Smart and Resilient Cities program at Lille Catholic University, Junia - HEI Graduate school of Engineering in France. She experiments with active, passive, and collaborative-learning techniques within (1) creativity and means of expression, (2) principle and future trends in urbanism, and finally in (3) urban studio project, which altogether empower students in understanding problematics of context, concept, and inspiration, found through various observation techniques and which guide them towards the project proposal.
Sigrun Prahl studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and at McGill University, Montreal. She worked as an architect in Berlin, Paris and New York City. She received research grants at Bauhaus University, Weimar; Seoul National University and at Tokyo University and has published and lectured around the world. Sigrun Prahl has taught in the United States, including Cornell University, Wentworth Institute of Technology Boston, University of Tennessee and Massachussettes College of Art and Design and at she worked at the University of the Arts, Berlin. She holds a professorship of urban design at the University of Applied Science in Krefeld.
LECTURE
Yellow peril, white labor: typographic design as historiography and cultural critique
Christopher Lee
Pratt Institute, United States of America
ABSTRACT
This paper reflects on a typographic design project digitizing historical and contemporary examples of so-called “chop suey” lettering. Tentatively titled “1882–1982–2019–,” this typeface draws from late-19th century graphical ephemera that trades on anti-Chinese tropes in California; to anti-Japanese ephemera from the 1980s in the so-called Rust Belt of the US Mid-West; to contemporary science fiction films and art, particularly the Blade-Runner-esque steampunk genre.
Designing typography is figured in the register of what the performance theorist Diana Taylor calls “performatic.” To wit, the glyphs included in the typeface index a piece of racist ephemera or art as means of narrating what Iyko Day calls the “racial formation” of the Asian subject in the West, and as its obverse the idealization of the white Euro-American worker. Typography is particularly apt as a practice around which a critical discussion about racial form might be undertaken. To the extent that it is an embodied practice, making typography resonates with what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay might characterize as a “rehearsal” of crafting letters for reproduction, albeit as a perversion of the highly specialized and esoteric craft of Western typography. As a mythos, European craft and craftsmanship symbolized precisely that which the Workingman’s Party of California, Detroit auto workers, and directors like Ridley Scott feared in the Asian — a deterioration of the progressive promise of modernist, Western capitalism — and its replacement by soulless, multitudinous, and interchangeable figure of the (Asian) replicant, or what Day calls “alien capital.”
The morphological features of this typeface’s letterforms serve as cues for telling stories that demonstrate the persistent violence of anti-Asian attitudes as one basis for the claims to superiority made by whiteness. Designing, crafting, and investing with narrative the crass forms of “chop suey,” this typeface is itself a durational, performative inversion/perversion of typographic craft.
BIOGRAPHY
Chris Lee is a graphic designer and educator based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). He is a graduate of OCADU and the Sandberg Instituut. His research/studio practice explores graphic design’s entanglement with capitalism and colonialism/ity through the banal genre of the document. He recently published his first book, Immutable: Designing History, with Onomatopee. He is also currently developing a typographical project that narrates the oscillating racialization of the “East-Asian” between the “model minority” and “yellow peril” and its role in consolidating Euro-American settler identity. Chris is an Assistant Professor in the Undergraduate Communications Design Department at the Pratt Institute.
LECTURE
Story and writing as methodology co-creative in human-nature center design approach
Desamparados Pardo
EASD Valencia, Spain
ABSTRACT
In a changing context in which the transition to the circular economy is postulated as a priority and promotes recycling, upcycling and closed-loop systems, cultivating a sustainable attitude, understanding and awareness in symbiosis with nature reinforces the idea of a future on which to lay the foundations of a new way of thinking and designing sustainable fashion and its relationship with the planet.
The research proposed mapping symbiotic human-plant relationships through a dialogue that reinforced the idea of collaboration between design and nature. The proposed conceptual framework established an ecological model of creative innovation that served to explore the ecological boundaries of Biodesign and Bioart.
Waste and its creative management are placed at the center of a bio-inspiring dialogue that negotiates the relationships of design with the natural world, positioning the designer in the new role of "Biohacker" who transgresses and disrupts a new modus operandi with a human-nature center design approach (HNCD).
The goal was to explore the interrelationships between humans and nature to provide design insights and enhance connections through understanding and direct engagement within a collaborative ecosystem.
We argue that life writing as an ecological research method favors effective understanding and symbiotic human-nature relationships, fostering a bio-inspiring dialogue that contributes to the future of fashion and the designer's new role as a "Biohacker".
The methodology was based on the collection of autobiographical narratives and experimentation with material residues through collaborative experience focused on the human-nature dialogue and the creation of artistic pieces. The results found that life writing as a research method reveals interconnections and fosters a supportive and understanding dialogue with the Earth.
BIOGRAPHY
Desamparados Pardo Cuenca is a PhD professor, researcher and fashion designer specialized in the field of collaborative and sustainable fashion design.
Her work as a professor since 2005 at EASD Valencia culminated in 2014 with the official master's degree in "Fashion Co-Design and Sustainability". Desamparados is the director of the master's degree and her work focuses internally on the coordination, creative management and artistic, scientific and academic research of projects, which integrate procedures and methods of the circular economy, whose approach focuses on promoting the culture of sustainability, its commitment and its extension from biodesign, bioart and biotechnology.
Desamparados Pardo has consolidated a research group on new practices and theories in the sustainable fashion of the future called: "Fashion Design, Commitment and Good Practices: Methods, Instruments and Contexts of Action".
INSTALLATION
Entanglements South-North
Satu Miettinen, Amna Qureshi,
Heidi Pietarinen & Melanie Sarantou
University of Lapland, Finland
ABSTRACT
The collection of eight textiles titled Entanglements South-North (2022) are entangled in a dialogue that seeks to explore how the arts can play a role in social change, especially when margins are continually moved to elicit new spaces for transformation. The textiles illustrate the outcomes of artistic and research collaborations of four artist-researchers who engage in digital bioart, co-creation and shared authorship. Working with one theme but offering different perspectives and approaches is explored to understand conflicts that may occur while creating and connecting with ‘other’ living forms and materials.
The ongoing collaboration stimulates artistic practices and use of raw natural materials that engage in 'seeing the unseen’. The fundamental goal is to discover unconventional natural potential resources, to co-create more innovative, sustainable, and comprehensive ways to generate dialogue that provides possibilities to express the dialectics between the different artists-researchers and intelligence of nature that can be uncovered through making.
The textiles, among other things, discuss identity and conflict in contexts, strategies, and creativity of a variety of artistic disciplines. We are shaped by our life cycles that take us through a variety of contexts, whether they be geographical or social. The more pluriversal we dare to be, the more we understand about our privilege and history; the more we become one with our natural environment, the more we merge with nature. Perhaps, history teaches us to withstand the uneasiness of the contemporary world and nature teaches us to care for all living things.
BIOGRAPHIES
The artist collective includes four artist researchers that collaborate in artistic research through the BioARTech laboratory at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, Finland. Satu Miettinen is a Dean (2018-) and a Professor of Service Design (2016-) at the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland in Finland. She has also worked as a Professor of Applied Art and Design during the years (2011-2016). Amna Qureshi is a PhD candidate at the University of Lapland, Finland. Her research interests are artistic and design education experiments in the European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 research project AMASS ‘Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture’. Heidi Pietarinen is a Professor in the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. Her research explores the use of methods of arts-based research, textile and bioart. Her current research includes projects such as the Future Bio Arctic Design II and High Altitude Bioprospecting. Melanie Sarantou (PhD) is Professor in Social Design at the Kyushu University in Japan and Adjunct Professor at the University of Lapland, Finland. She investigates how arts and narrative practices impact on marginalised women in communities in Europe and various other global locations.
LECTURE
Inter-relational creativity: the TOOLS project
Andrea Cammarosano
Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
ABSTRACT
Creativity, in fashion, is sustained by the relations between three different ecosystems: the artistic ecosystem, the productive ecosystem, and the social ecosystem. When these relations are personal, direct, and multiplicative, they enhance the creativity of the process, its output, and its stakeholders. To achieve these outcomes, creatives - and educators - should engage in the exploration of hybrid languages and methodologies merging artistic, technical, and informal elements. We call this approach Inter-Relational Creativity.
One project exploring this approach is TOOLS: a program for informal education, created in March 2022 by Studio CLU++ER (Andrea Cammarosano, Leonardo Persico) in collaboration with the Welfare and Health Department of the Municipality of Milan. The program is run in synergy between the local schools, the local industry, and the city’s social services.
In this presentation, we will focus on key aspects of the program’s artistic approach and of its didactic methodology, aimed at stimulating the three pillars of Inter-Relational Creativity: artistic expression (for instance through the use of specific mediums and languages), technical formation (through the involvement of companies and professionals, and through the collaboration with job training centers), and sociability (such as collaborative practices within the project, but also as the circulation of outputs and ideas within the wider community). We will discuss the results obtained so far, the opportunities for future development, the challenges facing the program; and we will welcome your insight and suggestions.
BIOGRAPHY
Andrea Cammarosano (1985) is an Italian-born designer and artist. A graduate of the Fashion Department / Antwerp Royal Academy, Cammarosano worked as menswear designer for Walter Van Beirendonck (2008-2010) for his own eponymous label (2010-2016), and for several international brands. Cammarosano collaborated with several artist, such as Narcisse Tordoir and Ronald Stoops (2008-present), Mickey Mahar (2014), Stef Van Looveren (2019), and was artist-in-residence at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (2010) and at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2012). Andrea’s works have been showcased at MoMA Ps1, New York (Stage costumes for FischerSpooner, 2011), Selfridges, London (Washed Up, curated by Judith Clark, 2010), Museo Della Triennale, Milano (Il Nuovo Vocabolario Della Moda Italiana, 2016), the Arnhem Fashion Biennale (in 2011, 2013 and 2015).
In 2018, Cammarosano founded CLU++ER, a project for the exploration of creative methods rooted in performance, improvisation and collaboration. Through CLU++ER, Cammarosano collaborated with different schools, such as Design Academy Eindhoven (2021) and HEAD Geneve (2022). In 2021, CLU++ER started a partnership with IIS Caterina Da Siena (Milan) and the Municipality of Milan / Department for Welfare and Social Services, to create a program for social formation aimed at teenage students in the field of fashion and textile design. Cammarosano has been a lecturer and a course coordinator at Polimoda, Florence; and is currently teaching at Nuova Academia di Belle Arti, Milan. He is currently a PhD researcher at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts/ University of Antwerp.
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
Methodology for curated proximities
in the space of an artwork: curating Sami art
Marija Griniuk
Sami Center for Contemporary Art, Norway
ABSTRACT
This research is conducted at the intersection of curating and arts as research. It aims to produce a methodological approach to the practice of curating art by indigenous Sami artists from the perspective of a non-Sami curator. The new curatorial methodology enhances the experience of adaptation to space and inhabiting the space of an artwork by the audiences.
The research question is as follows: How can a curator work with art by Sami artists themed around postcolonial memory and decolonization to give international audiences a more coherent understanding of such artwork? This study is based on the cases, the exhibitions and events, at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Karasjok, Norway in 2022. The overall method used in this research is arts-based action research (ABAR) from the perspective of a curator working with exhibitions, pop-up projects and live art events affiliated with the Sami Center for Contemporary Art. The results of this research are the key points, which serve as an outline of the new methodology for curating indigenous Sami art. The results of my research will primarily be useful for the education of curators. Furthermore, the methodology I will develop could be used by art institutions, such as art centres and galleries, that present artwork by the indigenous Sami artists, which often deals with the themes of decolonization and postcolonial memory. Lastly, the methodology could increase engagement and connectedness by the audiences to the artwork they experience.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Marija Griniuk holds a DA from The University of Lapland in Finland. She is the director at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Karasjok, Norway. She has a background in visual arts, performance art, and performance pedagogy. She is a Lithuanian artist, during the last decade actively working as an artist-researcher in the Arctic, Nordic and Baltic region.
WORKSHOP
Performing journalism
Danielle Arets, Houdt van den Thijs, Falk Hübner
Fontys School for Journalism,
Fontys University of the Arts, Tilburg, Netherlands
ABSTRACT
The growing attention to Live Journalism has not yet resulted in a sound definition. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, this genre in which journalists present news stories in front of a live audience (Ruotsalainen & Villi, 2021) has the potential to develop itself in multiple directions, amongst others within education.
Based on six-month research and educational trajectory of Live Journalism around the forthcoming ‘waterboard elections’ in the Netherlands, which brought together students from the Department of Journalism and the MA program Performing Public Space in Fontys University of Applied Sciences, we have reasons to believe that Live Journalism is a meaningful educational and emancipatory strategy that encourages students, and live audiences that take part in their experiments, to explore complex topics in detail and -more important- in an embodied and affective way, resulting in a deeper understanding of the different narrative angles to a story, as well as of the complex sociopolitical connotations involved in it. Consequently, the interdisciplinary approach of performance and journalism as an educational strategy, in the frame of Live Journalism, contributes to reflecting both on the professions of journalism and performance art and the role of the up-and-coming professionals in them, as well as to empowering citizens and reactivating democratic participatory processes.
BIOGRAPHY
Danielle Arets is heading the Journalism and Innovation research group at Fontys University of Applied Sciences/School of Journalism in Tilburg. She is also a design researcher at Design Academy Eindhoven. She combines those two fields and focuses on journalistic transformation from design research with a focus on digital developments, new forms of public engagement, and designing Live Journalism storytelling and work forms. In addition, Danielle loves clay animation, running and spontaneous meetings.
Falk Hübner is professor of Artistic Connective Practices at Fontys University of the Arts in Tilburg, The Netherlands. With a background as composer, theatre maker, researcher and educator, he is active in a huge diversity of collaborations within and outside of the arts. His research focuses on the social-societal potential of artistic research, research methodologies, and the relation of the arts and art education in relation to society. In 2019-2021 Falk has conducted a post doctoral research at HKU University of the Arts on artistic research methodology and ethics. He is member of the board of Forum+, journal for research and arts, based in Antwerp. Next to his professional life Falk is a marathon runner. He lives in Rotterdam with his partner and their 5 children. www.hubnerfalk.com
Thijs van den Houdt is a teacher and researcher at Fontys School for Journalism in Tilburg. After having studied Journalism himself, he did a master’s in Philosophy of Contemporary Challenges, specializing in Media Ethics and Habermas. His lectures revolve around the form and function of journalism in a time of post-truth and populism. As a researcher in the lectorate for Journalism and Responsible Innovation, Thijs explores live journalism as a means for public interaction and engagement. When at home in Utrecht, his exploratory endeavours continue in the form of cooking.
LECTURE
Designing for resilience: a critical view
Yael Eylat Van Essen
HIT- Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
ABSTRACT
The beginning of the 21st century is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty resulting from the unpredictable and destructive forces of both natural disasters and human activities. To a large extent, it is an outcome of a new reality based on networked mediated systems that transform the paradigm of pre-structures organisations with complex systems comprised of artificial edifices and living organisms whose performance cannot always be predicted. As a result, the concept of resilience has been increasingly used to address a renewed sense of agency in states of crisis, conflicts and uncertainty. As referring to ‘the ability of a system to cope with shock or trauma without collapsing, while efficiently adapting itself to new situations through complex processes of learning,’ resilience is considered an ideal to aspire to and as a manifestation of personal and communal strength.
New technologies and scientific developments have transformed resilience into an operational strategy in the last decades. Contemporary tools used for this purpose are based on intelligent systems that can monitor and process information from various sources, identify action patterns through deep learning, and link between different ontological fields. The resilience indices developed in the framework of these systems connect body and mind, ecology and urban infrastructures, public and private, security and military apparatus, and civic organizations. Yet, these means are grounded on parametric systems that maintain the principles of efficiency and optimization, and in many contexts, reflect the values of neoliberal economics and governance.
Design plays a significant role in this context. On the one hand, it can take part in normalizing states of uncertainty and instability by applying solutions based on flexibility and adaptability while maintaining neoliberal existing power structures. On the other hand, design can function as a liberating force while offering new operative solutions. The proposed paper critically analyses the implications and potentialities of using different design methodologies to confront the current reality.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Yael Eylat Van Essen is a curator and a researcher specializing in the interface between art, design, science and technology. She received her PhD from Tel-Aviv University, followed by a post-doc at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She curated many exhibitions in Israel and abroad, among them LifeObject: Merging Biology and Architecture for the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. Her book Rethinking the Museum, which explores the impact of digital technologies on the concept of the museum, was published in 2016. Her research interests include, among others: digital culture theory, new-media art, complexity and smart systems, digital heritage and museoloy, post-photography, resilience studies and speculative design, and she has participated in many academic conferences on these topics. Yael was the head of the Digital Media department at Camera Obscura School of Art and the academic director of the International Curatorial Program in collaboration with the Center of Contemporary Art in Tel-Aviv. Currently, she is a senior lecturer at the Design Faculty at HIT (Holon Institute of Technology), and she also teaches in the interdisciplinary master’s program at the art faculty at Tel-Aviv University.
LECTURE
D.E.A.T.H. to do good
(Devil’s ethics and antagonism towards humanity to do good)
Djie Han Thung
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
ABSTRACT
D.E.A.T.H. to do good (Devil’s Ethics and Antagonism Towards Humanity to do good) proposal for a new design method by Djie Han Thung.
Or: How can the appeal of undesired human urges be used in design methods to uncover and mitigate unforeseen harmful effects of a design.
The method should challenge designers to think and design with the intention to create the greatest possible negative impact on man, society and the whole world. By doing so, the so called Unknown Unknowns (Yamin, I, ca.1300, Luft, J., Ingham, H.,1955) might be uncovered and eventually mitigated. Unwanted and unexpected effects of a design might thus be foreseen before they can have an impact.
As history shows us, designs are not always used as intended for, and even if they are used as intended, the use of the design can have an unforeseen wide ranging impact. The proposed method wants to use the fascination with unwanted human desires (as is seen in the popularity of true crime, thrillers, horror and violence in books, films, series and games) as a strong creative power that remains unused in traditional design methods. Using the power of myth and ritual (Habermas, J., 1981) and enclothed cognition (Adam, H., Galinsky, A.D., 2012) the method would give designers the opportunity to give these urges free rein and thus use an unused creative energy, in a way that is deemed unwanted, but will deliver results that can contribute to mitigate unforeseen negative effects of a design.
BIOGRAPHY
Djie Han Thung is a (interaction) designer and self-taught filmmaker working as a lecturer and researcher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences at the department of Communication and Multimedia Design. His work consists of graphic and interaction design, music videos, commercials, title sequences, animations, short films and a feature film. At the moment he is researching his method for the Master Design at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem De Kooning Academy Rotterdam.
LECTURE
ReSoXy: an electronic replica instrument as the tool of revival and restitution for the customary xylophone music culture of the Azande people in northern DR Congo
Adilia On-ying Yip
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium,
Royal Conservatoire Antwerp
ABSTRACT
In this presentation, I will discuss the applications of the electronic replica instrument developed for the manza, a type of court xylophone that is belonged to the customary chiefs and notables of the Azande people in the northern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A number of these manza xylophones are preserved in the collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium) since 1913.
Supported by ethnomusicology and archive analysis, the project proposes to use an electronic replica instrument as the methodological tool for reaching the goals of rediscovery, revival and restitution of the declining Central African music tradition. These instruments and music practices, such as performance and compositional techniques, have been disrupted and erased by colonization (Belgian Congo 1908-1960), and became the objects of oblivion among the current source communities. Alongside the reappearance of the musical sound and techniques, the project will invite the source and diaspora communities to co-create and co-experiment with the replica instruments, and we will install the replicas in exhibitions and workshops to provide hands-on experience to the audience in Europe. Therefore, the replica instrument becomes the complimentary tool for the research tasks of cultural heritage preservation, participatory creative actions, pedagogical exchange and knowledge dissemination, and on top of that, the agency for restitution and decolonization.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Adilia On-ying Yip (PhD in arts, percussion and marimba performance) is the main investigator of research project “ReSoXy—Resounding the Musical Heritage of the Xylophone Collection from the Africa Museum, Tervuren (Belgium)”, funded by BELSPO BRAIN-be 2.0 (2023-26) and Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (2023-25). She is alumnus of docARTES - Orpheus institute Ghent (2012-15) and Masters in African Studies - Ghent University (2020-21). Born in Hong Kong, Yip is currently living and working in Belgium. Her interdisciplinary projects are crossing the fields of classical, contemporary, and world music, and expanding her artistic language through co-creation and social participation. She is the co-founder of “Klinken Percussie Festival” and "The Bracket Percussion vzw".
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
Opus Whales, do you copy? Acoustic-footprints affecting language, culture and survival
Andrea Mendoza & Angelo Maria Farro
Opus Whales
ABSTRACT
As a project, Opus Whales, do you copy? focuses on giving visibility to the issue of underwater anthropogenic noise to stimulate a culture of sound-awareness which could benefit and orient our (human and/or otherwise) journey on the planet. Within the presentation, Opus Whales will unfold the dissension between sonic harm (underwater anthropogenic noise) and whales, to then describe the way in which from a film/art/design standpoint the project is facing the dark, highly pressurized and deep waters where the topic navigates in the pursuit of finding an appropriate language to give visibility to this invisible topic. The contribution will share an audio-visual piece conveying the ways in which we both, humans and whales co-exist with sound. To conclude, various ways in which the concept of acoustic-footprint can be extrapolated, shaped and applied in the urban realm will be enounced.
BIOGRAPHIES
Andrea Mendoza is a Nature`s devote working with moving images. She holds a PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication focusing on Social Innovation and Sustainability. She has obtained studies in marine biology, photography, psychoanalysis and semiotics. She has taught at masters and bachelor levels and has been visiting Professor in China and Japan. As a freelance researcher, she has developed empirical projects and documentaries in various latitudes ranging from Iceland to India, being also correspondent for Design/ Architecture magazines. As a former advertiser, she has worked as copywriter and editor for Radio and TV.
Angelo Maria Farro is a sound artist ranging from audio/video installations to music for films and television. He is currently collaborator, sound engineer and Max/Msp programmer of Alvin Curran, curator and professor of Electronic Music at the film scoring laboratory courses of the Centro Sprimentale di Cinematografia in Rome headquarters. He creates sound installations using both programming and concrete materials such as wood, brass and steel. He has performed in many venues in Italy, Germany and France alone and with his side project Kinoglaz focused on live soundtracks with analogue synthesizers.
LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
Thinking bodies in dance. A somatic REACh.
(research in expanding awareness through algorithmic choreography)
Klaas Devos
Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, University of Antwerp
ABSTRACT
The main objective is to understand how artistic practice-based research coupled with the use of computation can unveil the hermetic and introspective nature of embodied reflection in dance. I depart from the supportive role of technology in dance practice, expanding onto the current notion of embodied reflection and creativity. The main output of my PhD. research are two innovative technological tools: SOMAI (a somatic dance AI) and Motion Data & Biometric (EMG) Choreography. The use of both tools together allows the generation of experiential choreography as uninterrupted feedback signals for the dancer.
In this somatic-technological practice, or somatech practice, embodied cognition of dancers is up for debate. The conditions of technology-extended dance confront traditional values of human body-centred artistic practices. Rearrangement of the practice is based upon the non-human interconnections that limits the somatic dancer, while they accelerate and expand the range of cognition of this creative agent. Anticipating a fundamental change in experiential dance research and composition, I develop a protocol to adapt to interdisciplinary constraints implicit in somatech dance practices.
Credits:
Artistic research by Klaas Devos/ REACh. & Collabs. as part of the research groups CORPoREAL, CREATIE, and ARIA from the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and University of Antwerp. Developed in collaboration with technology engineering labs LWT3 Milan, and supported by IDOCDE (international documentation of contemporary and somatic dance education) and LACE (Impulstanz symposium for dance and other contemporary practices).
BIOGRAPHY
Klaas Devos (he/him) is a Belgian choreographer and artistic researcher focusing on perception, attention, and sensitivity in dance. He completed studies at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, PARTS (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) and a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels. He further graduated with great distinction in theatre and dance studies at the University of Antwerp with a thesis on practice-based dance epistemology.
Since 2020, Devos is PhD. fellow at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and the University of Antwerp. In his artistic and practice-based PhD in dance (2020-2024), 'Thinking Bodies in dance. A somatic REACh., he is researching expanding awareness in somatic dance through algorithmic choreography. Devos is active as artistic supervisor for the educative MA projects at the Conservatoire Antwerp, he is lecturer in ‘dance and choreographic studies’ in the Brussels Dance Academy and teaches ‘dance practices’ at the Academy of Bruges.
Based in Brussels, Devos coordinates Reach & Collabs. and REACh. Studio, a network and residency place dedicated to embodied and computational creativity in live and mediated performing arts.
LECTURE
MethaPhase: a contrapuntal dialogue between a pianist and her avatar in the metaverse
Giusy Caruso, Paolo Belluco &
Samuele Polistina
Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, LWT3 Srl. Milano
ABSTRACT
The development of sustainable systems and strategies destined to users is the core of researches on human-machine interaction to empower status of resilience and wellness. During this global crisis, mixed reality (AR-VR), particularly, represents a way to overcome conflicts and escape critical conditions. Digital technology allows exploring the creation of virtual places where to preserve interconnectedness and participatory practices between people able to continue acting through their virtual agents - commonly avatars - as duplications of the Selves. However, the co-existence of the physical and digital experience (i.e. phygital) in this new meta-ecosystem entails itself an internal status of conflict due to the combination of both the biosphere and technosphere, and the challenging intersection of different ability, control, authority and responsibility (Flemisch et al. 2020).
Multimedia art creation is also oriented towards new formats often conceived in cross-modal immersive condition, i.e. in virtual/real hybrid spaces. The phygital experience is changing and affecting the levels of both performers’ expressions and art fruition, and opens different questions regarding its application.
This presentation discusses methods, challenges and outlooks of the extended reality project MethaPhase: A contrapuntal dialogue between a pianist and her avatar in the metaverse from both the artistic and technological/scientific sides. The method comprises two steps to let a pianist and her virtual agent play in counterpoint in the metaverse the minimalistic work PianoPhase for two pianos by the American composer Steve Reich (1936-). Spectators were involved in an intriguing augmented fruition provoked by the three-dimensional perspective of the performance space. Further developments of new participatory practices and co-creative strategies for the audience will be also outlined.
BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Giusy Caruso is an artist researcher and a concert pianist. Her research explores the effect of human-to-human entrainment (specifically in projects that combines music, dance and theatre, Western and Eastern cultures) and human-machine interaction for gestural and sound analysis and creation of multimedia performances. Her PhD research (Ghent 2018) contributed to renovating performance analysis with a method grounded on the use of technology-enhanced mirror. Post-doc artist researcher and chairwoman of CREATIE Research Group at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, she is also guest researcher at IPEM-Ugent and at the Laboratoire de Musicologie (Bruxelle) and visiting professor at London Performing Academy of Music. Caruso is a member of the editorial board of ITAMAR - Valencia University, and a peer reviewer. Rewarded by important institutions, she is pursuing an international concert activity taking part into Radio and TV show, and released CDs, which have been receiving worldwide acclamation. Recently, she published the first book in Italian on the field of Artistic Research in Music.
Ing. Paolo Belluco, PhD CEO – Head R&D CEO and responsible for the scientific platform. He received, both at Politecnico di Milano, the M.Sc. in Computer Science Engineering, focusing on A.I. and Robotics applications, and the doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in the field of design and development of human-machine interfaces based on biosignals and biometric sensors in different fields. He has published papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences. His work has focused on the development of hardware and software tools for the acquisition and processing of data relating to biological signals. He was teaching assistant at Politecnico di Milano for the courses of “Robotics” and “Fundamentals of Computer Science”. He was awarded the 2014 Alumni Polimi Awards from Politecnico di Milano for his entrepreneurship. He also was technology advisor to Deputy Mayor for Digital Transformation and Citizens Services at Municipality of Milano, focusing on 5G experimentation in Milan and data management issues. He is a member of IEEE.
Samuele Polistina is the account of the design and development of the UX/UI for the data visualization at LWT3. He received the M.Sc. degree in Industrial Design at Politecnico di Milano. He has more than 18 years of experience in the field of human-computer interaction, focusing on user experience and user interface design and interaction design. Since his early professional years, he has been involved in the study and design of human-computer interfaces in the field of web portal design and interactive multimedia installations. Over the years he has gained experience in the field of HCI, focusing his activities in 3D modeling, Interaction Design, User Experience, User Interface, Mixed Reality and Data Visualization. He has been involved in the national research project MIUR-FIRB-2007 PROGIMM, carrying out research activities in the fields of Virtual Prototyping and Interaction Design. As fellow researcher at Politecnico di Milano (2007-2012), he has international peerreviewed publications on HCI field.
POSTER
Open Doors Hungary -
Visual Communication Bridging Intercultural Barriers
Ágnes Jekli
Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Hungary
ABSTRACT
This research explores the possibilities of graphic languages in an intercultural context while analyzing the use of creative methods in the work with refugee youth. The practice of this research is Open Doors Hungary, a community-based design project that creates a programme for unaccompanied refugee youth. The aim of the programme is to help refugee youth integrate into Hungarian society, and develop their means of self-expression and quality relations with the host society.
Refugee youth arriving in Hungary face serious problems: the loss of home and community, the traumas suffered during the journey, the cultural differences, and the lack of a common language all make their social integration extremely challenging and are further exacerbated by xenophobia and stereotypes against foreigners. Social inclusion requires frequent contact with the local society, and they need new tools (cultural knowledge, language skills, intercultural skills) to overcome their disadvantages.
Since 2013 the author together with her architect colleague Erzsébet Hosszu has been working with refugee youth through weekly creative sessions, intensive workshops, and camps based on the integrating role of creativity and art. Through these activities, refugee youth becomes part of the design process, and their choices are the basis for the final result. As a global language, visual communication can be a tool for intercultural communication, storytelling, and self-expression, while working in an intercultural team develops new competencies, and creates shared ownership and community.
The results of the past 10 years include 8 intensive (media) camps and regular creative sessions, where young refugees and their Hungarian and European peers got to know different visual communication tools and created common messages in the form of videos, animations, photos, posters, booklets, murals. Design thinking and the creative process provided an opportunity for interactive cultural exchange, sharing of values, safe and open discussions, and community building.
BIOGRAPHY
Ágnes Jekli is a Hungarian graphic designer and PhD candidate at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest. She has finished her BA and MA in Graphic Design at MOME, where she continued conducting her practice-based research in the Doctorate School. Her research focuses on the role of visual communication in intercultural environments, and aims to explore how visual communication can overcome intercultural barriers, and specifically, in social work with refugee youth.
She is teaching different courses as a lecturer on the BA and MA level as well while leading the preparatory Graphic Design course for students applying to MOME for 7 years.
She is the co-founder of Open Doors Hungary, a working group with a mission to improve social inclusion through the tools of creativity and design in the frames of a Hungarian NGO, Útilapu Hálózat together with her architect partner, Bözse Hosszu. She has 10 years of experience in working with unaccompanied minor refugees and asylum seekers and conducting creative workshops and training for diverse intercultural communities.
POSTER
Cultural appropriation and aesthetic methods in art and design education
Hanny Wijaya
Bina Nusantara University Indonesia, Kunstuniversität Linz Austria
ABSTRACT
Artists from many cultures are constantly engaging in cultural appropriation. People have also talked about the ethnic or cultural background of the artist. Focusing on the importance of cultural appropriation, this research aims to develop a further understanding of artistic appropriation in the education field. Through this research, I intended to find the connection between my experience working on practice-based projects with the main concept of cultural appropriation that I, as an artist and educator, have done instinctively for so many years. Appropriation art is alternatively defined as the integration of a physical entity, or even an existing piece of art, into a brand-new work of art. During my analysis, I found out that some of my projects have been appropriated artistically, specifically with content appropriation and its subcategories: style appropriation and motif appropriation. As an educator, I liked to encourage students to do further research about culture (either as insiders or outsiders) and implement the knowledge in their works. Implementing style appropriation, students took something, such as stylistic elements from the culture to be implemented into their artworks. Whilst, implementing motif appropriation, students were influenced by the art of a culture without creating works in the same style. They managed to produce interesting outcomes or artworks that were appropriated artistically and culturally. These outcomes show the importance of cultural understanding and research before artists or designers implement cultural appropriation in their works, whether they are insiders or outsiders of the specific culture. By understanding the connection between the creative process and artistic appropriation, both students (as future artists and designers) and educators may implement cultural knowledge and appropriate it respectfully during artistic practice. Thus, this research can become a study case to encourage students, educators, and artists to represent their own cultural experience in their work and improve their self-efficacy and confidence in mastering both theoretical and practical knowledge.
BIOGRAPHY
Hanny Wijaya is the Head of Internationalization and Partnership and an Associate Professor at the School of Design, BINUS University, Indonesia. She is currently focusing on her PhD in Artistic Research and Cultural Studies at Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria. Her background studies include a BA in Graphic Design from BINUS University, Indonesia, and an MA in Museums, Galleries, and Contemporary Culture from the University of Westminster, UK. Hanny is involved in many art and design projects as an academic and professional globally. She works actively on many collaborative projects intertwined with contemporary art, design, and culture. She has also published books and articles in international journals and proceedings while balancing her literature works with practice-based outcomes and exhibitions.