Studiekretsar  

Krets 7 2007-2009

Vintersymposium: Abstracts

Inlagd i december 2006

Practise Based Research in the Performing Arts - winter seminar 2007, Copenhagen.

Bruce Barton
Practice-Based Research in North America: Spokes for a Spinning Wheel
My presentation for the “Practice Based Research in the Performing Arts” NSU symposium in Copenhagen will provide a summary and analysis of the perspectives that emerged in this timely gathering in Chicago. Further, I will propose how this distilled information can provide our own project with valuable contextualization, inspiration, and cautionary instruction, given our very similar stated objectives. Conversations about this topic often seem to take the form of “reinventing the wheel,” as the unconventional nature of PBR often seems to necessitate a thorough re-imagining of its composite parts (“practice” and “research”). But, as we know, much valuable and pertinent groundwork has been done in this area, and forward movement requires that we identify, scrutinize, evaluate, and apply the lessons already learned elsewhere. My presentation will offer insights into, in a sense, the “state-of-the-art” of PBR across a wide spectrum of North American contexts, allowing us to adopt and adapt those “spokes” that are appropriate for our own, already turning wheel of PBR processes, policies, and procedures.

Pil Hansen
Exploring the concept of reflection - as method, practice, and creativity.
With the words "practice based research" expectations of systematic methods, a clear problem, and predefined objectives may clash with the notion that performance is research in and off itself. Rather than stalling at such perceived boundaries I suggest exploring the concept of reflection as method, practice and creativity. This paper will comment on ways of integrating advanced levels of reflection into multiple stages of a creative process for purposes of development, research, and the production of reflected and articulated experiences. One of the challenges has to do with the hermeneutic sense of reflection as interpretation. How does one manoeuvre between the desire for definition and "knowledge" and a process of creation with change, movement and spaces in between the known? What are the alternatives to interpretation? How may we explore the concept of reflection?

Lasse Ekstrand, Yvonne Savy, Monika Wallmon
Performance Art in the Context of Change. Towards a philosophy of politics, aesthetics and action
Formal research in performing arts has traditionally been concerned with the conceptual scaffolding of an interpretive approach conducted by a (from a distance watching) researcher. This traditional orientation should be abandoned in favour of a view based on the dynamic categories that constitute the humankind of change and instability, of becoming and as a process.
In that process, we want to stop this ideological ‘ritual’; interrupt the ‘journey-in-fiction’, arrest the somnambulistic movement, restore a public focus, a concentration on radical changes. What is implicit about aesthetics must be exposed as explicit: the myth must be visually concretized and unmasked. The absentminded, hypnotic relation with narratives must be challenged by a conscious social act.
In our research we define performing arts – using the German artist Joseph Beuys’s term – as ‘social sculptures’ (a form of art-events); and advocate that PBR can be understood as action research where the researcher him/herself is a part of a development process.

Henrik Vestergaard Pedersen
Zaratustras Onkel
I mit paper vil jeg fortælle om Zarathustras Onkels nuværende projekt som er en rekonstruktion af samtlige tolv værker i den danske Kulturkanon for Scenekunst. www.kulturkanon.kum.dk for mere information om den danske Kulturkanon.
Jeg er interesseret i copyright og patenter og undersøger hvordan disse gør sig gældende i forhold til scenekunst.
Flemming Enevold, formand for Kanonudvalget for Scenekunst, skriver i forordet til bogen ”Kulturkanon” at værkerne i kulturkanonen ligefrem ”skriger på at blive iscenesat af vor tids spændende unge teaterinstruktører”
Jeg er hverken ung eller en spændende teaterinstruktør, men finder spørgsmålet om hvorvidt man overhovedet kan rekonstruere scenekunst spændende. Forsvinder dét, Walter Benjamin kalder Aura, ikke ved reproduktionen, eller kan man erstatte den med en ny og mere tidssvarende aura? Hvem har retten til scenekunst, til dramatik, musik og bevægelser. Kunstneren eller samfundet? Gives der stadig ny scenekunst eller ser vi ikke blot gentagelser af fortidens værker?
I det seneste nummer af Visslingar & Rop – nummer 21 kaldet Manifest – er Zarathustras Onkels Julmantfest optrykt. Dette uddyber bevæggrundene og De resterende spørgsmål vil blive besvaret i min paper.
Hvis jeg betragter Zarathustras Onkels historie og værk hidtil med det kritiske, historisk funderede blik, som jeg underkaster andre kunstnere, er det manglen på originalitet, der stikker i øjnene. Jeg kunne og kan sagtens smøre mine værker ind i smarte salgstaler, men når alt kommer til alt ved jeg bedst af alle, at de er hule, for værkerne er tomme i deres mangel på originalitet.
Selv denne hævdede mangel på originalitet er dybt uoriginal fordi den er hugget fra Erik Polds projektbeskrivelse til hans kommende forestilling (2008) kaldet ”Mastercopy”!

Birgitte Bauer-Nilsen
”The Butterfly” – The Choreography
I connect artistic and academic work. The research is focus on a connection between an aesthetic learning process and performances skills from different culture. I am concerned about these subjects in the dance performance The Butterfly.
SYNOPSIS ”THE BUTTERFLY” – THE CHOREOGRAPHY:
In the Nordic mythology, there is a World Tree named ”Yggdrasil” which symbolizes the center of the earth. The roots of this Yggdrasil tree symbolize the people of the earth and each of its roots represents a different culture.
The different cultures join in the trunk of the tree and in the branches new cultures are created - and this is a metaphor for the artistic vision of the Yggdrasil Dance Ensemble.
Just as the ”Tango” is essentially Argentina’s traditional fertility or courtship dance, equivalent dances – about the meeting between man and woman – exist in other cultures, such as the 4 cultures from where the Yggdrasil dancers are from:
In Tanzania this traditional dance is called ”Sindimba,” in Denmark there is the ”Brudevalsen” or the ”Bryllupsmarchen” and India and Vietnam each have their own equivalent with just as much strength and character. The common tone is eroticism and sensuality - and the different dance traditions all reflect universal feelings.
The courtship dance in Tanzania, ” Sindimba,” is an expressive dance with shaking of the hips and shoulders and direct eye contact. It is performed as a group dance – in sharp contrast to the Danish ”Brudevalsen” (i.e. Wedding Waltz) which is only danced by a couple and where the man leads the women in harmonized steps sliding across the floor. In Vietnam it is all about small movements and steps, with very elegant hand gestures, no eye contact, and no touching of each other. In India it is the slapping of the feet, isolated torso and head movements, short glimpses to the partner and up to the Gods, magnificent finger movements and hardly any touching of each other either.
The dancers ’ artistic meeting point is Modern Dance – but they are all without exception highly skilled in Traditional Dance from their respective cultures.
The Butterfly dance performance paints a nuanced picture of love, in a cross-cultural fusion between Vietnam/Asia, Tanzania/Africa, India/Asia and Denmark/Europe.
The Butterfly represents a global meeting and an aesthetic dialogue between man and women in different cultures. The Butterfly will inspire a better understanding of different cultures and their aesthetic attitudes. Hopefully it will contribute towards making it easier for people to meet and live in a global society.
A butterfly is transformed from a caterpillar into a pupa and finally into a free-flying being. And this can serve as a metaphor for the spiritual transformation that goes on in humans, in the meaning between man and woman and in the meeting between different cultures of the world.

Fia Adler Sandblad
My wish, my work
I have a longing and a wish that I might, through my work as an actress, come closer to, understand and being able to talk and share human experiences of life in its many aspects. It is the intense experience of life in real time: NOW, and the possibility to share experience with other people in the context of the scenic situation that is in focus in my work. ... It is about going beyond the known, what you already know, but through what you know, to persistently repeat something seemingly meaningless for to pass the surface into the core, where other experiences and significations than the already known can start to talk to you. It is of lesser importance if this something you are doing is a movement, a word, a sound, because beyond the movement, word, sound is a common denominator which the artist in her/his work might come in contact with and expose, make visible, through her/his unique instrument.

Carsten Friberg
Research, Knowledge and Science – and the Poetics of Scientific Language
I want to ask some questions about what research can be in the context of practice-based research. Practice-based research is a desire for knowledge, but what kind of knowledge then? What could knowledge about the performing arts be? What distinguishes knowledge from experience? And when do we talk about research and scientific knowledge?
One difficulty here is concerning strategies and the language of research and science. Doing research and using a scientific language is to deal with certain expectations, which can seem problematic for a concern for topics related to arts and personal experiences. But the scientific language may not be that different and may not always be what it pretents to be. The scientific language is metaphorical and can even be a poetic language. Doing scientific work is also to be sensible toward the poetic dimension of scientific language in order to express the desired knowledge in ways being of scientific value.

Jette Lund
Practical experiences with education for the modern, genre-crossing performance art/ installation art
Today's notion of "the stage arts" and "the stage artist" or "the performer" is a token for a comprehension, that the modern stage arts exceed the frames of the classical arts and genres, as drama, ballet, opera - and visual art.
But how does this comprehension apply to the educations? This issue concerns all art forms, but is here specifically discussed in relation to the education of actors. The artist-to-be is in no doubt, that there is a difference.
She consciously chooses her education either on the traditional actors schools (as Statens Teaterskoler) or for example School Of Stage Arts (SOSA) - or a school abroad.
She consciously seeks different forms of production methods and different means of expression, and rejects - sometimes with contempt the traditional "psychological theatre".
But what is put instead? What is the real difference of the different offers in education?
It is to my knowledge - not studied or described. A big comparative study on a Nordic level is - to my knowledge - not yet published.
Therefore my paper is solely grounded on my own practical experiences, and also on three reports, which I have produced.
The first is a description of a four-year experiment with a "Basic education for puppet makers" 1996-2000 in Hanstholm, a project, which for technical reasons couldn't be continued and which is now closed down. The description is made with the background, that this education had no equivalent anywhere in the world, and that a documentation of curriculums, didactics and experiences would present
valuable knowledge.
The second is a description of the education at the private "School of Stage Arts" (SOSA) 1997-99, made on behalf of the school for an application for official approval, an approval, which the school didn't get. This education is established and led by Nullo Facchini, is closely related to the theatre "Cantabile II", and relies on international artists as well as former students as teachers.
The third is a not yet fully closed report of an experimental "Laboratory" at "Odsherred Teaterskole's" "Institute of new Stage Art" 2005-2006, where 8 performers got the opportunity over 6 weekends to develop their own scenic project, under guidance of the director Catherine Poher and my self as dramaturge. From this experiment there is a DVD with sequences from the different works.
The three descriptions can be downloaded from www.pramnet.org
All three contexts relates to theatre forms, which often not only is far from the mainstream theatre, but which also requires quite other talents and skills from their performers than those, on which the traditional theatre schools are grounded and which they teach.
If we want to create modern educations in the artistic fields at all - and not leave the field to "master led apprentice teaching" and the sheer notion of "talent" - not to forget the talent of using your elbows - if we insist on discussing art from a point of "quality" too - then education for me is research, as research is education.
Any actual educational programme for an actual person is a research project, for the person as for the teacher. This might be seen as banal, but it is a necessary precondition for an acknowledgement of the educational situation. Both the practitioner and the teacher need to legitimize and question their praxis, for new inspiration, and for gathering and generalizing the knowledge about the process of education, which they have gained, and to compare it to the knowledge of others.
It demands continuous, concrete research, and it cannot be anything other than "practice-based".

Katrine Nilsen
”RespOnce – Design for Breakdown” - how to develop a devising tool for interactive stage design
How do artist research and why? Artist and academicians do not necessarily have the same motive and final goal for their research and I would therefore like to start a discussion, by presenting an example from my own work, “the RespOnce project”. What purpose should Practice Based Research within Performance Art serve and who could benefit from it? How can we distinguee between the different motives and what methods should be used?
The artistic process includes both a analytic faze, a experimental/inventing faze and finally a productive or a performing faze. These parts is closely connected and mutually depended. But the methods that most artists use, is often self-taught and highly personally, developed for at limited and specific artistic purpose. Furthermore the artist has to deal with the fact, that parts of the creative process is so fragile that there is always a risk, that to try and put it into words would actually stop the process and ruin the outcome. It is therefore very difficult to describe, analyse an to reconstruct the artistic method, both for the artist working with it and for the researcher who wants to analyse and document it.
With the RespOnce project I aimed to deal with this situation, by suggesting a tool that, partly without words, makes it possible to analyse, work on and document the material during the process, and perhaps also makes it easier to reconstruct the process after the production is finished.
This way it will be made possible to refer both process and result into the context of academic research and, if alternative notions of the research ”product” is accepted, it could perhaps even be difined and accepted as research in itself!?

Jørgen Callesen
Experiences from a practice based research project in between traditional conceptions of art and research
This presentation deals with the question “Why develop discourses on Practice-Based Research in the performing arts?” It aims to provide some insights from an actual case to initiate the discussion “For who do you develop it? ” ... It is my belief that art and research are two fundamental different ways of reasoning ... The artist wishes to gain insight into a new material and medium and then use it in the production of a work of art. This insight comes through the process and the experience of the actual work and can be defined as “sensous knowledge” or “experiental knowledge”.
For the academic researcher this knowledge is not the point of interest. It is the documentation and reflection leading to proof or dismissal of the initial thesis, but this academic reflection is not necessarily useful in the artist work.
In practice based research it must therefore be decided to whom this knowledge is made available and useful...

Dylan Robinson
Real-Time Research as Artistic Practice: Developing Environments for Interactive Research
Though my previous research has focused on practice-based methodologies for integrating these two modes of ‘musical knowing’, my current research extends this to the larger framework for creating collaborative and participatory forms of interdisciplinary research across the arts. ... However, rather than pinpointing the academic as expert and general audience member as novice, and thus maintaining the binary opposition between ‘scholarly’ and ‘experiential’, my practice conflates these and provides an interactive space for the performer (actor, reciter, musician), scholar (cultural theorist, literary critic, musicologist) and audience member (reader, spectator, listener) to collaboratively develop knowledge about the cultural artifact(s) in question. It allows each to draw upon their reservoir of knowledge and practice real-time interdisciplinary research.

Karen Vedel
What do we mean by practice-based research?
When talking about artistic practice and practice-based research there seems to be an assumption of a shared understanding of what we mean. I wish in the first part of my paper to question this assumption, to take one step back in order to look at the notion of practice, its roots in classical philosophy and some of the later usages of the term (in Marxism and some of practice theories that have evolved since the 1970s i.e. Bourdieu, de Certeau and others). How is practice (praxis) in the context of our discussion to be understood in relation to the terms (poiêsis) and theory (théoria)?
In the second part I shall relate the notion of practice-based research to my current project, which deals with the interrelationship of space, place and body in contemporary performance.

Karin Søndergaard & Kjell Yngve Petersen
’Still I Know Who I Am’
We would like to present our latest performance ’Still I Know Who I Am’ as an example of artistic research in performance composition. ...investigating the possible methodological frameworks as well as concrete research problems.
1…The processes of developing the unique form-language for this performance, which generated a coherent performance style.
2…The structure and organization of the prepared performance event as formalized and codified knowledge.
3…The performance event as an argument, through which insights where situated and articulated. Actualized and individually contextualised by the performance visitors.