ARCtalks is a series of panel discussions organised by the Artistic Research Community (ARC) and the knowledge center Art & Society moderated by Hannes Arvid Andersson, where members of the ARC together with invited guests from various contexts share their research, processes and thoughts on relevant topics.
What differs between a designed space and a lived space? What happens when a designed environment does not function as intended? How can we as artist mediate spaces in a way that leaves room for different perspectives? How can we imagine a space from seemingly alien angles other than our own?
In this panel artist-researchers Maddie Leach, Linde Ex & Pol Taverne address these topics in relation to their own work, in a discussion moderated by Hannes Andersson of the Artistic Research Community (ARC) in the North.
MADDIE LEACH
Maddie Leach is an artist from New Zealand, currently based in Sweden where she is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at HDK–Valand Academy of Art & Design at the University of Gothenburg. Her sculptural projects include building an ice rink in a public gallery (2002) and a 16 foot sailboat for the roof of New Zealand’s national museum (2006). She has shipped a Eucalyptus tree across the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand to Chile, and back again (2006–07); sent 325 litres of water from the Te Waihou ‘Blue Spring' to Jakarta, where it vanished (2015); and coaxed a community of writers, businessmen, council officials and a newspaper editor to imagine a ‘whale' made from 70 litres of used mineral oil and one-tonne of cement (2012–14). In 2017 she produced The Grief Prophesy album, working with two Swedish musicians and visual artist ’Necrolord’ to reinterpret an unremarkable black metal track into a powerful lament.
Her project “The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama” aims to reimagine the iconic artwork and architectural monument “LTH-Fontänen” in Lund, Sweden.
Her project “The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama” aims to reimagine the iconic artwork and architectural monument “LTH-Fontänen” in Lund, Sweden.
LTH-Fontänen was the collaborative vision of Swedish architect Klas Anshelm and sculptor Arne Jones. Inaugurated in 1970 at Lund Technical University, it was anticipated as a modern “artistic-technological cathedral of steel, glass and water without parallel in the world”. Yet LTH-Fontänen proved frustrating as a fountain: leaking, fracturing and never effectively carrying water. Today it remains inert on campus; neither artwork nor ruin.
At what point can a public artwork be revitalised and thought anew? What are the implications for authorship, cultural heritage and public consultation? Are there similarities to monuments, where societal change can produce an ethical dilemma around their visibility and duration? Our research initiates a recommitment to a substantially state-funded public artwork after a 25-year hiatus and introduces new questions–not about how to get this fountain to work as a fountain–about whether LTH-Fontänen offers an armature from which a new public artwork can emerge.
LINDE EX
Linde Ex is an artist, artistic researcher and teacher. She graduated in 2019 at the Frank Mohr Institute, Master of Fine Art and Design, Groningen. In 2021 she’ll start an artistic PhD trajectory for Hanze University of Applied Sciences and University of Groningen in the field of Art & Sustainability.
In the project ‘Lifelines of the barely noticeable’ Linde Ex studied the life and movements of flying insects. The project aims to understand the life of flying insects through connecting their dynamic, light, volatile movements to human perception. The insects were researched within the context of a practice based art practice resulting in a triptych of works. The project will now be part of an artistic PhD trajectory where the works, process and experiences of the project are reviewed and the project is connected to a broader ecological context.
POL TAVERNE
Pol Taverne is an artist, teacher, printmaker and photographer. Using Photographpy as her primary research instrument, she is currently tackling the question of “What is here?” through participatory research into attachment and perception of village inhabitants and farmers in villages in the north of the Netherlands.
Driven by my own fascination for Art making and Art history as an artist and a teacher I explore how Art history can be used as a tool to make art. What are the necessary ingredients to be able to teach this, so that students can experience what for me is so logical but still intuitive? My own daily practice as an artist, a teacher and researcher will be the source and field of research. The research question will be the starting point from which this research will develop and expand as a rhizome. This is a dynamic process of enhanced insight obtained through constant reflection between these three domains.
Artistic Research, Empathy & Embodiment
For this 1st session of the online ARCtalks, we are happy to welcome Kristoffer Gansing (Professor of the newly formed ‘International Center for Knowledge in the Arts’ (and former Artistic Director of the Transmediale festival) to share his thoughts on artistic research in a panel discussion together with ARCers Hermen Maat and Simona Kicurovska, who will present their research and share their views on empathy and embodiment.
KRISTOFFER GANSING
Professor of the International Center for Knowledge in the Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Former Artistic Director of Transmediale (2011 - 2020), where his achievements included: the launch of a residency programme for artistic research, research workshops and other activities that extended beyond the annual festival. His PhD from K3 School of Art & Communication in Malmö is titled Transversal Media Practices. It entails a practice-based perspective on knowledge in the fields of art and technology. In the 00s, Swedish-born Gansing lived in Copenhagen, where he was a key player in a number of collective and self-organised projects such as the artist-run TV channel tv-tv (2006-2010) and The Art of the Overhead festival (2005-2009). His recent publications include across & beyond – a transmediale reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions (Sternberg Press, 2017) and The Eternal Network (Institute of Network Cultures, 2020).
Professor of the International Center for Knowledge in the Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Former Artistic Director of Transmediale (2011 - 2020), where his achievements included: the launch of a residency programme for artistic research, research workshops and other activities that extended beyond the annual festival. His PhD from K3 School of Art & Communication in Malmö is titled Transversal Media Practices. It entails a practice-based perspective on knowledge in the fields of art and technology. In the 00s, Swedish-born Gansing lived in Copenhagen, where he was a key player in a number of collective and self-organised projects such as the artist-run TV channel tv-tv (2006-2010) and The Art of the Overhead festival (2005-2009). His recent publications include across & beyond – a transmediale reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions (Sternberg Press, 2017) and The Eternal Network (Institute of Network Cultures, 2020).
HERMEN MAAT
Can I touch you online? Can we measure intimacy?
How does your kiss feel in EEG data?
Artists and researchers Hermen Maat and Karen Lancel are considered pioneers exploring the tension between embodied presence, intimacy and alienation, social cohesion and isolation, privacy and trust in posthuman bio(techno)logical entanglement with (non-)human others. They radically deconstruct and re-orchestrate automated biometric control
technologies neuro-feedback and sensory perception, to create poetic Trust-Systems. In internationally presented performances and installations in public space, they explore a
sensitive, ethical AI design approach, based on social and embodied co-dependency in shared reflection and dialogue. Through their artistic research Shared Senses, they aim to rethink and inspire a sustainable socio-technological eco-culture of merging realities. The audience meets on imaginative planes for exploring future empathetic connections, in ‘Shared Reflexive Data-Scapes’.
Can I touch you online? Can we measure intimacy?
How does your kiss feel in EEG data?
Artists and researchers Hermen Maat and Karen Lancel are considered pioneers exploring the tension between embodied presence, intimacy and alienation, social cohesion and isolation, privacy and trust in posthuman bio(techno)logical entanglement with (non-)human others. They radically deconstruct and re-orchestrate automated biometric control
technologies neuro-feedback and sensory perception, to create poetic Trust-Systems. In internationally presented performances and installations in public space, they explore a
sensitive, ethical AI design approach, based on social and embodied co-dependency in shared reflection and dialogue. Through their artistic research Shared Senses, they aim to rethink and inspire a sustainable socio-technological eco-culture of merging realities. The audience meets on imaginative planes for exploring future empathetic connections, in ‘Shared Reflexive Data-Scapes’.
SIMONA KICUROVSKA
Simona Kicurovska is maker, researcher, teacher and thinkerer, working in (graphic) design and education. She is currently developing a PhD proposal under the 'Consortium for Future Modes of Meaning Making' (HKU University of the Arts Utrecht & UvH University of Humanistics Utrecht) and is part of the Artistic Research Community (ARC) in the North.
Prototyping ways to capture knowledge as it flows from theory to practice (and back), Simona defines her activities as part of ‘a practice that thinks’ where thinking with the hands and body is a form of critical investigation and knowledge creation method. Within her current research she asks: Will a design practice in the near future be contained in algorithms? Is there possibility for complexity, nuance and criticality in a binary reality? As computing and media merge, what kinds of literacies are needed for a socially responsible design practice? Simona Kicurovska proposes to develop a toolkit to enable designers to reformulate critical positions, built through a collective process of meaning-making, where insights from media archeology coalesce with ideas from philosophy of technology.
Simona Kicurovska is maker, researcher, teacher and thinkerer, working in (graphic) design and education. She is currently developing a PhD proposal under the 'Consortium for Future Modes of Meaning Making' (HKU University of the Arts Utrecht & UvH University of Humanistics Utrecht) and is part of the Artistic Research Community (ARC) in the North.
Prototyping ways to capture knowledge as it flows from theory to practice (and back), Simona defines her activities as part of ‘a practice that thinks’ where thinking with the hands and body is a form of critical investigation and knowledge creation method. Within her current research she asks: Will a design practice in the near future be contained in algorithms? Is there possibility for complexity, nuance and criticality in a binary reality? As computing and media merge, what kinds of literacies are needed for a socially responsible design practice? Simona Kicurovska proposes to develop a toolkit to enable designers to reformulate critical positions, built through a collective process of meaning-making, where insights from media archeology coalesce with ideas from philosophy of technology.
Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local”.
In the ARC Talk she will elaborate on the artistic roles she brings in and the methodes she developed to create inclusiveness, openness and empowering ways of collaboration.
In the ARC Talk she will elaborate on the artistic roles she brings in and the methodes she developed to create inclusiveness, openness and empowering ways of collaboration.
This talk will address the role of vulnerability in relation to the practice of artistic research and the challenge of developing new artistic knowledge. Vulnerability runs across the gamut of the private, personal and public realms – especially in relation to the artistic institutions which we engage with through our practices.
By its nature vulnerability invites ethical reflections, and here we will explore the ethics of change and reciprocity as focal points. Moreover, we will also touch on to the concepts of ownership and disinheritance as social stratagems which are often tacit, and effect the territories and discourses we are asked to explore and occupy.
TALE NÆSS
Tale Næss is a playwright, author and dramaturge based in Oslo and Tromsø.
She has a PhD in artistic research in playwriting from the Theatre Department at KHiO.
She has studied at the NTNU (MA in film science) at the University of Oslo and the University of Bergen. She has written and published collections of poetry, novels and two collections of dramatic text for stage and radio. She has also written opera librettos, film manuscripts and worked collaboratory across the field with musicians, composers, performers and visual artists. Tale Næss has made several dramatic installation works for the voice, the web, and the stage.
Many of her projects are experimental in nature and challenges the border between the performative, the visual and the literary.
Tale Næss has a special interest in the human voice and its expressive quality. In how it addresses us, and how it ties the one that addresses to "the other". This interest is frequently at the core of her work.
In her PhD she developed several texts for the stage, a series of immersive installation pieces, and two audio plays. Her focus as a researcher has been on the connection between the collective and the individual in texts written for the stage.
Tale Næss is a playwright, author and dramaturge based in Oslo and Tromsø.
She has a PhD in artistic research in playwriting from the Theatre Department at KHiO.
She has studied at the NTNU (MA in film science) at the University of Oslo and the University of Bergen. She has written and published collections of poetry, novels and two collections of dramatic text for stage and radio. She has also written opera librettos, film manuscripts and worked collaboratory across the field with musicians, composers, performers and visual artists. Tale Næss has made several dramatic installation works for the voice, the web, and the stage.
Many of her projects are experimental in nature and challenges the border between the performative, the visual and the literary.
Tale Næss has a special interest in the human voice and its expressive quality. In how it addresses us, and how it ties the one that addresses to "the other". This interest is frequently at the core of her work.
In her PhD she developed several texts for the stage, a series of immersive installation pieces, and two audio plays. Her focus as a researcher has been on the connection between the collective and the individual in texts written for the stage.
MAZIAR RAEIN
Maziar Raein is an Associate Professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO).
He holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and an MA in Independent Film from St.Martin’s School of Art (later known as CSM). His film work include; Underwater Productions which specialized in arts documentaries and short dramas with commissions from Channel 4 and F.4 Films which made ‘I Used To Be In Pictures’.
He later founded Codex Design were he was responsible for the branding and identity of many businesses, amongst them Lastminute.com. His company specialised in developing identities and distilling them into brands. Before moving to Oslo, he taught on the BA Graphics course at CSM, were he was Head of the Context programme. He has published and worked on projects that focus on the positive aspects of visual and spatial ability, reflective practice and methodology. Moreover, he was a regular contributor to Graphics magazine, as well as having works published in; Typographics, Eye magazine etc.
On moving to Oslo he established the MA Design course at KHiO, setting up a number of research forums that focused on the development of teaching and learning in design.
He holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and an MA in Independent Film from St.Martin’s School of Art (later known as CSM). His film work include; Underwater Productions which specialized in arts documentaries and short dramas with commissions from Channel 4 and F.4 Films which made ‘I Used To Be In Pictures’.
He later founded Codex Design were he was responsible for the branding and identity of many businesses, amongst them Lastminute.com. His company specialised in developing identities and distilling them into brands. Before moving to Oslo, he taught on the BA Graphics course at CSM, were he was Head of the Context programme. He has published and worked on projects that focus on the positive aspects of visual and spatial ability, reflective practice and methodology. Moreover, he was a regular contributor to Graphics magazine, as well as having works published in; Typographics, Eye magazine etc.
On moving to Oslo he established the MA Design course at KHiO, setting up a number of research forums that focused on the development of teaching and learning in design.
The Artistic Research Community (ARC) in the North, is a dialectic umbrella organization for explorative research-creation, composed by a network of artists, researchers and knowledge institutions in the north of the Netherlands.
The project was initiated in 2018 by Dr. Anke Coumans, with the support of the professorships of the knowledge center Art & Society and the RE:Search:Gallery, and has since then grown to be an active community that brings a wide range of practices, ranging from more traditional forms of artistic investigation into medium and materiality, to working with emerging technologies such as 3D scanning and artificial intelligence.
It is a group of people interested in research through and in the Arts, in all its forms and articulations, and how such practices might offer novel ways of seeing and being in the world, and catalyze new forms of knowing where the concept of knowledge remains fluid and sometimes even elusive.
Together we discuss contemporary issues and the role of artistic research in the broader context of society; share information, thoughts, tools, and experience, and embark on collective journeys into a partly or totally unknown territories through various dialogical activities.
