Petrine Vinje, Bjørn Blikstad, Tale Næss, Theodor Barth

ARCHEAOLOGY: COLLAPSE—BODYWORK—RESSURRECTION

We are exploring an archaeological angle on memory in artistic practice, to highlight the difference between how remembrance works when anchored in body-learning, with bodywork at its foundation. Where it is the place of human beings to remember in clusters where the found, negotiated and unknown combine in what we know as contingency : what evolves alongside, yet is present to its touch (contingent = con-/alongside + tangere = touch). Our proposal is to hone the intra-action and contingency of methods, themes and currents in research projects responding to each other and yet to their respective fields.

Does artistic research offer an opportunity to conceive a generative process that feeds on ‘wicked problems’: an oblique strategy to create change without engaging in problem solving? Our hypothesis is that conferencing is a candidate ‘wicked problem’: a relatively standardised format of knowledge sharing that inviting people into a ‘problem solving’-situation—with broad interactions/discussions—while being specifically unable to serve problem-solving. A kind of techno-human accident designed to both tease and frustrate, or to fulfil expectations.

If the conferencing-standard contains such a blatant pragmatic contradiction—hence a ‘wicked problem’ that we find at many levels today—is it possible to use artistic methods to explore and exploit it? Can we imagine conference arrangements relying exclusively on artistic means, to explore and exploit the professional focus on research and thereby exceed the expected benefits of conferencing? Based on these questions, we seek to work performatively with the ‘missing link’ between transposition and exposition.

Click here to view the remains of this cancelled presentation on Research Catalogue

Theodor Barth, Professor of theory and writing, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, anthropologist [dr, philos. 2010] educated at the University of Oslo. Trained in fieldwork (Bosnia) and Semiotics of invention (Bologna).

Petrine Vinje, PhD fellow at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, visual artist educated at Institute of Colour, and recently trained in the micro-phenomenology research methods. She researches into interface as a metaphorical concept, bridging the gap between the sensory and imaginary.

Bjørn Jørund Blikstad, PhD fellow with a quasi-historical project using ornamentation and woodworking as a memetic theatre.

Tale Næss, PhD fellow in playwrighting at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, the theatre department. Her research looks at the hybrid performative text as a feedback loop.