Artistic Research Week 2024: Risk. Uncertainty.

Time: 10:00–11:00
Venue: Stage 4

Pro-Rector for Research Janne-Camilla Lyster welcomes everyone to the Artistic Research Week

Keynote lecture by Jan Verwoert with interventions by Jenny Lee Perlin, Manuel Pelmus, Anton Skanning Thomsen and Robel Temesgen

When art enters fields of research, it engages uncertainty. It does so in terms of outcomes (why look when you know what you’ll find?) but also in terms of the time and space the engagement opens up: You need times and spaces freed up for experiments to fathom what shape future knowledge may take on. Yet, to begin with, there would be little space for creating the future, envisioning the past, and thinking the present. Realtime improvisation is the art of realising how elastic the spatiotemporal continuum can be when people get together to stretch it.

Jan Verwoert is a professor of art and theory. He is a critic and writer on contemporary art and cultural theory. 

Jenny Perlin is a PhD fellow who makes 16mm films, videos, and animations. Her films work with and against the documentary tradition, incorporating innovative stylistic techniques to emphasize issues of truth, misunderstanding, and personal history. 

Robel Temesgen Bizuayehu is a PhD fellow with the project Surface Water, Public Spaces, and Speculative Monuments: Rituals and Communal Narratives.

Manuel Pelmus is a PhD fellow and could be seen as one of the protagonists of the “new performance turn,” artists who have been reimagining the role of performance in the context

Anton Skaaning Thomsen is a dance student at KHiO

Time: 10:00–18:00 (Tuesday–Thursday, Friday 10:00–16:30)
Venue: White Box (down the stairs in direction cantina)

Woodling is a film performance where temporalities overlap. Time seems to have stopped, objects are in a hibernation state while she moves in space backward. The encounter between them is the catalyzer of their presence. The body of the performer is at risk while moving backward. It requires a radical state of listening, to be attentive to the uncertainties as she sees not where she goes. As the place unfolds to her, the body is the listener, the skin the perceiver within the environment. A collaboration with Peter Azen. Part of PhD Artistic Research environment embodiment – towards poetics narratives by Fernanda Branco.

Fernanda Branco is a Brazilian performer, gardener and poet based in Norway, working in the performance field, crossing boundaries between theatre, dance, film, and installation while combining theory, facts, fiction, and poetry. Branco holds a Master of Fine Arts in Performance from Scenekunst AkademiHøgskolen i Østfold and is currently a PhD artistic research fellow at Kunsthøgskole i Oslo. The research project explores concepts of agency in the context of encounters between body and environment, drawing from uncanny, poetic, embodied perspectives and relations with ecological crises.

Time: 11:15–13:00
Venue: Black Box situated by Medialab

A panel discussion with the fellows of the art academy, Jenny Lee Perlin, Manuel Pelmus, Robel Temesgen and Antonio Vega Macotela.

Improvisation plays a key role in artistic research processes. Searching for what may be possible but presently not yet imaginable, sayable or doable, artists improvise: among performers, while experimenting with material, stumbling into situations, or looking for words that won’t come easy unless you try. For improvisation to get you to the yet unknown, your senses must be alert and your mind open, so preset parameters may block the path when finding a flow is vital. Yet, in the state of flow and becoming, people, interpersonal relations, as well as the plasticity of processes, materials and ideas may be at their most vulnerable! Everyone and everything is exposed to everyone and everything else. What practical ethics do improvisers know for being accountable for what happens when researching the unknown requires entering it together?

13:00–14:00: Lunch/Social

Time: 14:00–16:00
Venue: Teorirommet

Stefan Ellmer, Maziar Raein, Janne-Camilla Lyster

The Craftsmanship Project is a NARP funded project, with the Dance and Design departments of KHiO collaborating with NMH. The aim of the project has been to enquire in particular into the nature of dance notation systems and open form scores, in order to analyse and describe rather than define the role of the tacit within them. In this presentation at ARW we will share with you our insights into the meeting of the disciplines of graphic design and dance, and how through the through use of diagrammatic writing we can unpack language in order to analyse the contexts with which meaning is extracted and transformed into performative actions.

Time: 16:30–18:00
Venue: Stage 4

The PhD fellows in the Academy of Dance, Dragana Bulut and Solveig Styve Holte, are asked to identify and share a specific turning point or threshold in their research where risk and or uncertainty surfaced and became an important element for the process. The sharing will be followed by a conversation where also the new fellows at the Academy of Dance Helle Siljeholm and Benjamin Pohlig participate.

Solveig Styve Holte is a dancer and choreographer who explores authorship in dance and choreography, using pre-existing materials and historical archives, and often collaborates with others to create performances for various settings.

Dragana Bulut is choreographer and researcher. She regards the theater as a public forum: a place of social gathering for critical investigation of the various structures and intersections of aesthetics, economics, and emotions.

Time: 10:00–13:00
Venue: Formsalen

10:00 - 10:05 Introduction to PechaKucha by research leader Merete Røstad

10:05 – 10:20 «Digital Drawing Part 2: An Investigation of Moving versus Static Drawing»
Tiril Schrøder (English presentation)
 
The presentation will demonstrate my status in the ongoing KUF project "Digital Drawing Part 2: An investigation of moving versus static drawing". In the presentation, I will provide a brief insight and examples of how I have worked on examining moving versus static drawing, whether it's possible to have moving drawing perceived as drawing rather than animation and attempts to combine this in an art project. Furthermore, I will showcase examples of how I have utilized AI as a sketching tool in my work.

10:20 – 10:35 Q&A  

10:35 – 10:45 Aesthetics of access and politics of memory

Saša Asentić (English presentation)
My research proposal takes place in the context of MEMORYWORK research project. MEMORYWORK is a platform for sharing interdisciplinary artistic research on performative memory work. The key question that I will examine through my artistic research project is: How can aesthetics of access create new memories and change the affective states from which we perceive and remember the past and understand the world around us? During the artistic research, as a non-disabled artist and cultural activist with 25 years of anti-ableist practice in performing arts, I plan to continuously reflect upon the critical potential of aesthetics of access in the creation of new memories and new social facts, as well as to reflect further on the role and accountability that artist as a worker in public have in building anti-discriminatory and accessible structures in dance and performance.

10:45 – 10:50 Break

10:50 – 11:10 Material memory: An exploration into the materiality of printmaking as a contemporary analogy for memory
Oliver Hambsch (English presentation)
Print has long been used as a metaphorical device to help conceptualise memory by likening memories to imprints left by an event on the mind's cognitive surface. The analogical parallels are not only linguistic but are also rooted in material and process. While the vernacular metaphor of memory as an impression is engaging in its simplicity, it is also reductive and misleading. Critically, this metaphor ignores the malleability of memory. I propose that using a holistic approach to printmaking, that extends beyond the image and includes material and process as essential meaning-forming aspects, new visual analogies that consider current science-based understanding of memory can be generated. In this presentation, I will show some examples of how I plan to engage with the materiality and the process of printmaking in my research into the intersection of printmaking and memory.

11:10 – 11:25 Q&A
11:25 – 11:40 Coffee Break

11:40 – 12:00 Co-operasjoner i verksted for Litografi
Erik Solheim og Cathrine Alice Liberg (Norwegian presentation)
Dette prosjektet søker å kartlegge den over femti år lange historien ved verksted for Litografi ved KHiO/SHKS, og å belyse den særegne aktiviteten og samarbeidsformen som verkstedet representerer. En hovedkomponent blir å foreta en gjennomgang av skolens omfattende litografiarkiv, med mål om at det tilgjengeliggjøres både digitalt og fysisk. I tillegg skal det produseres en dokumentarfilm der det gjennomføres intervjuer av nøkkelpersoner og kunstnere som har vært tilknyttet verkstedet. Ved å belyse litografiverkstedets unike modell og struktur, og funksjonen det har hatt som en del av tilbudet ved skolen, ønsker vi også å legge frem ideelle modeller for fremtidig drift, der vi best kan ivareta dets tradisjon og aktualitet. 

12:00 – 12.15 Q&A

12:15 – 12:20 Break

12:20 – 12:40  TiO2: The Materiality of White”, Marte Johnslien and the MA/MoW group (English presentation)
The research project TiO2: The Materiality of White (MoW) studies the chemical compound titanium dioxide (TiO2), which was discovered and patented in Norway—originally as a white pigment named titanium white. MoW investigates the materiality of the color white through ceramic works and archival material; through analyzes of the Norwegian mining history of the pigment; and through critical investigations of the future of the white pigment. The aim of the project is to highlight TiO2's materiality and ubiquity, and to contribute to critical thinking on the color white and its mineral origin. The act of making TiO2 visible will be achieved by processing the material in ceramic sculpture, developing a technical compendium for TiO2 in ceramic glaze, by displaying the historical context in exhibitions, as well as developing a theoretical and critical reflection.
In this talk, Marte Johnslien will show examples of her research, as well as the work she has been conducting with the MA/MoW group which is involved in the research. Master students Linda Flø, Iliana Maria Papadimitriou, Sara Bauer Gjestland Zamecznik and Quin Scholten will present impressions from fieldwork at the mines and material explorations of TiO2 in the ceramic labs.


12:40 – 12:55 Q&A

12:55 – 13:00 Summary PechaKucha

Oliver Hambsch er stipendiat ved fagområde grafikk ved avdeling Kunst og håndverk med prosjektet Material memory: An exploration into the materiality of printmaking as a contemporary analogy for memory.

Marte Johnslien ph.d. er førsteamanuensis i keramisk kunst ved avdeling Kunst og håndverk. Hun leder og er PI i forskningsprosjektet TiO2: The Materiality of White, og er Co-PI i samarbeidsprosjektet TiO2: How Norway Made the World Whiter (UiO/UiB).

Merete Røstad ph.d. er førsteamanuensis og forskningsleder for Kunst og Håndverk. Til daglig leder hun Masterprogrammet Kunst og offentlig rom og det tverrfaglige forskningsprosjektet MEMORYWORK.

Cathrine Alice Liberg tok sin BFA og MFA i Medium- og materialbasert kunst ved KHiO Grafikk, og gikk ut i 2019. Siden dette har hun jobbet aktivt som billedkunstner og grafiker, med spesialisering iblant annet litografi. 

Tiril Schrøder er professor ved fagområde grafikk ved avdeling Kunst og håndverk. Hun arbeider med sitt pågående KUF prosjekt «Digital drawing and the feeling of alienation» rundt digital tegning, som er finansiert av KUF-midler fra Khio.

Erik Solheim er førsteamanuensis i Grafikk med spesialkompetanse Litografi og hans kunstneriske praksis er tilknyttet fagfeltet hvor undervisning og håndverksbaserte samarbeidsprosjekter er vært sentralt. 

Saša Asentić er stipendiat ved Kunst og håndverk

Time: 13:00-16.30 (Thursday-Friday 10:00-16.30)
Venue: Reception Gallery

Exhibition opening at Reception Gallery with participating faculty: Oliver Hambsch , Marte Johnslien , Erik Solheim & Tiril Schrøder .

13:00–14:00: Lunch/Social

Time: 14:00-16:00
Venue: Formsalen

Connecting Wool (CW) is a bicultural research project exploring wool from the northern sheep breeds. The objective is to create a common platform for design research and education between KHIO (N) and Tama Art University (JP), to exchange and develop advanced knowhow in material practices. The research, taking place reciprocally in both countries, overarches fields of textile, spatial, product and clothing, has led to investigate the complexity of material practices and to the deeper understanding of the qualities and potential of use of this type of wool. The project has been by nature multicultural. CW is financed by HK-dir under UTFORSK. The four-year project will finish 2024. 

Kirsti Bræin has a position as professor of fashion design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts, Department of Design. She is project manager for the international research project "Connecting Wool", a 4-year collaboration between Tama Art University, Japan and Oslo National Academy of the Arts.An area of particular interest to her is how the designer's methodical approach contributes to the discovery of new perspectives on the materials' values and the materialization of expressions.

Toni Kauppila

Time: 14:00-16:00
Venue: Library

Book launch! In 2020 Knutsen letterpress printed one sentence on single sheets every day from Virginia Woolf's essay 'On Being Ill' for 157 days straight during the first wave of Korona, making 20 artist books. The project was shared on instagram, with reflections. In 2021 adapting this essay became the subject for teaching MA1 students, as to make use of the situation and reflect upon past & present pandemics. Now, this project with its many heads and tails comes together as one in a book designed by Bergljot & Co. The launch will take form as a conversation with Lotte Grønneberg and Solveig Marie Tønseth, special librarian at The National Museum and evolve around artist books with hybrid and sometimes many life cycles and forms.

Ane Thon Knutsen is associate professor in graphic design, she did a practice based PhD at KHiO and specialized in letterpress printing. Knutsen works multidisciplinary at the intersection between graphic design, art, research and dissemination. Knutsen exhibits internationally, and her works take form as installations and artist books.

Lotte Grønneberg is associate professor in graphic design and runs a small studio Eller med a based in Oslo and Copenhagen. Grønnebergs has a long experience with design projects in the field of art and culture and has a particular interest in the book as medium.

Solveig Marie Tønseth , special Librarian at The National Museum, Oslo.

Time: 16:30-18:30
Venue: Teorirommet

To paraphrase John Lennon, artistic research is also what happens to us while we are busy investigating our main topics. Sometimes ideas that are secondary to our main topics find their way into the core of the research. In my artistic practice working at the intersection of a playwright/director, I usually write or/and devise with actors, something that was also expected to be at the core of my artistic research. But after covid restrictions were imposed, my usual working methods became unattainable. Since I couldn’t reach the audience via actors, I had to explore different ways to create work that engaged them directly. This experiment’s outcomes will be the subject of the session.

Eliot Moleba is a researcher, playwright, and theatre director. He is one of the founding members of PlayRiot. He was the resident dramaturg at The South African State Theatre. He is currently an Editorial Committee member of VIS – The Nordic Journal for Artistic Research.

Time: 10:00-11:00
Venue: Scene 4

Jeg har i hele min karriere arbeidet innenfor det dramatiske teater. Det dramatiske teater er hovedsakelig knyttet til de store institusjonene i Norge. Disse institusjoner er bundet av føringer som behov for egeninntekt, føringer fra rammebrev og andre størrelser og bevegelser fra den tid vi lever i. Dette gjør det dramatiske teater bundet til den mast det sosiopoliske paradigme til enhver tid har, i større grad enn mye annen kunst. Også annen scenekunst, vil jeg mene.

Min tese er at vår nyliberale tid motarbeider rom for kollektiver som kan stå i direkte og ubehagelige dilemmaer over tid, både i det kunstneriske felleskap og i sitt møte med publikum. Altså, teater som kollektiv og som møteplass for ikke bare å bekrefte følelser og holdninger, men som et sted der man reelt utfordrer, undersøker og utforsker ytterpunkter.

Jeg har ønsket å utfordre det jeg mener er vår tids markedstilpassede enighet, en redsel for å ikke mene det riktige eller det som vår stamme tror på. Et teater som blir et redskap for en ensretting vi ikke vil erkjenne, men som er der, alltid, hele tiden. Jeg har forsøkt å skape krevende rom både for utøvere og tilskuere i prøve og utforskninsprosess og i møte med publikum, som kan gå inn i tidens reelle dilemmaer.

I de siste 8 år har jeg kunnet prøve dette ut med et ensemble og et teater som Teaterdirektør ved Aalborg Teater. Jeg har regissert egne forestillinger, programmert, sammensatt et kunstnerisk ensemble og teams som alle har vært preget av det overordnede ønske om å utfordre den tyngdekraft som slike institusjoner har vært preget av i de siste år: Mindre ensembler, markedstilpassede forestillinger, høye billettpriser, og ambisjoner om å tjene de dominerende politiske holdninger i våre såkalte liberale demokratier.

Jeg har forsøkt å utforske hvilket bevegelsrom det dramatiske teater faktisk har med hensyn til holdninger og meninger, estetiske strategier, bruk av medier og eksponering i offentligheten. Både når det gjelder hele institusjonen, enkelte forestillinger og meninger og holdninger i det offentlige ordskifte. Jeg ville undersøke hvor mye institusjonen kunne tillate seg, jeg selv har kunnet tørre og gå ut med, eller hvor langt unna forventningene vi kunne være i en middels stor dansk provinsby.

 Hans Pitzschker Henriksen  er professor og fagansvarlig for regiutdanningen ved KHiO

Time: 11:15–13:00
Venue: Stage 4

Dance practices are transmitted from person to person. Such processes can make material evolve, be distorted and lost, or be rediscovered. The session will approach the phenomenon of personal transmission from different dance historical perspectives and concerns in a Western context. In the first half, Irina Zavilova will exemplify this by sharing excerpts from their respective R&D projects grounded in classical ballet. In the second, based in contemporary dance, Anne-Linn Akselsen and Zsuzsanna Rózsavölgyi will share their R&D projects grounded in contemporary dance.

Irina Zavialova is prof. of classical ballet, educated at the Vaganova Ballet Academy, St. Petersburg, and has been a principal dancer in several companies, incl. the Kirov Ballet (Mariinsky Theater). Dinna Bjørn is a prof. II at Dance/KHIO in classical ballet as one of the few distinguished specialists in the work methods and ballets of A. Bournonville (1805-79).Zsuzsa Rózsavölgyi and Anne-Linn Akselsen are both assoc. prof. in contemporary dance, educated at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), danced in ROSAS / De Keersmaeker, and choreographed their own work. Akselsens is the Head of the BA in Contemporary Dance. Rózsavölgyi engages in studies in physiology and kinesiology.

Zsuzsa Rózsavölgyi  and Anne-Linn Akselsen are both assoc. prof. in contemporary dance, educated at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), danced in ROSAS / De Keersmaeker, and choreographed their own work. Akselsens is the Head of the BA in Contemporary Dance. Rózsavölgyi engages also in studies in physiology and kinesiology.

Time: 11:15–13:00
Venue: Teorirommet

The local research leaders of the different KHiO departments – Jan Verwoert, Maziar Raein, Per Roar, Merete Røstad, Nils Harald Sødal and André Eiermann – get together to think out aloud with the audience together about how we want artistic research to unfold: What structural problems does the development of artistic research practices encounter? What do we desire research to be? What does it mean to feel a desire for research? What kind of collective environment and support does artistic research need to come to fruition?

13:00–14:00: Lunch/Social

Time: 14:00–16:00
Venue: Prøvesal 1

Isa Gericke er stipendiat på Operahøsgskolen hvor hun forsker på romansen som kunstform. På dette seminaret utforsker hun vår vilje og vår evne til å gi slipp på faste og trygge referanser og holdepunkt for å utvide vår forståelse av hva en romanse er og kan være.

Time: 16:30–18:30
Venue: Black box situated by Medalab

A panel discussion with faculty of the Academy of Fine Art on how research and education interlace.

Ever since experimentation in the 1960s fundamentally transformed the understanding of what art could be and do, process-orientation is key to how art gets made and taught. Uncertainty of outcome is what motivates embarking on a process. What’s more: at the heart of experimental processes lies a research into the very form (modes and parameters) the process may need to take on, to yield results, and coalesce into art work. Researching forms for understanding together what art could be and do now: in this spirit most courses get developed at the art academy, to be refined or changed over years of teaching. What have we learned, in the process of teaching, about the research into forms that make art and social engagement possible today?

Time: 10:00–11:00
Venue: Prøvesal 1

Dramaturgen, skuespilleren, filmprodusenten og teatersjefen Tom Remlov er en ruvende skikkelse innen norsk kulturliv. Han er i dag styreleder i Talent Norge og har tidligere vært direktør på Operaen og Norsk Film AS og teatersjef for Den Nationale Scene og Riksteateret, for å nevne noe.

Med bakgrunn i sin erfaring som kunstner og toppleder deler Remlov på dette seminaret noen tanker knyttet til skaperkraft og kreativitet på et kollektivt nivå:

• Våger vi å utsette oss for usikkerhet i kreative arbeidsprosesser?
• Hvordan tilrettelegge for samspill og samskapning?

Time: 11:15–13:00
Venue: Wall in Reception area

Time: 11:15-13:00
Venue: Library

Listen to the dunkedunk of a boat amidst the roaring arctic sea, bringing you to Sørøya: you are off the coast of Finnmark. You want to go and spend time in a cave. Here you will still hear the noising sea, but also place yourself in time: you are now, the cave is old, during WWII the cave has a place for listening and transmitting radio-signals. Here you are in the Herzian field… you realise that it still exists in the perimeter of digital equipment, bordering unto a very physical world. You are in the realm of an exposition: and for a time it will be your site. We will share this with your during ARW 24 in a panel featuring: Nataliia Korotkova, Nina Tsybolskaia and Theodor Barth.

Nataliia Korotkova and Nina Tsy, Theodor Barth—Prof. of Theory and Writing, at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO), Researcher in Resident at the National Library. Innovation area: learning-theatre

Time: 11:15-13:00
Venue: Teorirommet

Ambisjonen for prosjektet ligger i å undersøke hva som oppstår i dialogen mellom tegning og det tredimensjonale, der to utøvere med ulik bakgrunn og kompetanse (kunstner/AHO og designer/KHiO) møtes og samhandler gjennom ulike metodiske tilnærminger. Tryggheten om den andre partens kunstneriske og håndverksmessige kvaliteter og felles referansegrunnlag, danner fundamentet for hva vi kan uttrykke, respondere, samhandle og improvisere over. I utviklingen av artefakter i flate og rom, gjerne med en eller annen form for tematisk eller formal forbindelse, er vi opptatt av problemstillingen tilknyttet tredimensjonalitet basert på lesningen av det todimensjonale og omvendt.

Sigurd Strøm er professor Design Ansatt i 50% stilling ved KHiO, er utøvende designer og driver 3 firmaer. Har 30 års undervisningserfaring fra SHKS/KHiO.

Carsten Loly er kunstner og musiker med 30 års undervisningserfaring fra AHO.

13:00–14:00: Lunch/Social

Time:14:00-16:00
Venue: Scene 4

A research week might be no film festival. Still, a lot of images get invoked, experiences are shared, and questions are raised on what artistic research means, in theory, and for practice today. The closing session will attempt to recall moments from the presentations of the week, and weave them together in a collective discussion. We will seek to highlight significant ideas and sum up debates, but very much also ask: In what insights were shared, what are the urgent questions that now can be formulated, and need to be addressed in the future? Janne-Camilla Lyster