Documenting in Artistic Research

Das Dokumentarische bringt „Dinge“, oftmals auch Details, auf die Bühne und lässt andere verschwinden. Die spezifische Autorität des Dokumentarischen – die Kristallisation – wird durch die Untersuchung der zugehörigen Operationen, die aufzeichnen, transformieren und codieren, offensichtlich.[1] Bild-, Text- und Tonelemente werden angeordnet, um so die Lesbarkeit, den Aussagewert, die Distributionslogiken und die Machtwirkungen des Dokumentierten zu bestimmen und zu steuern. Mit dem Dokumentarischen sind somit experimentale Apparate verbunden, die als machtwirksame Techniken einer Formung Sachverhalte vor Augen stellen, hörbar und anfassbar machen und so „Präsenzformen“ schaffen[2], bestimmt durch unterschiedliche Institutionen, Diskurse und Praktiken.
Im Dokumentieren, hier auch als Kristallisierungsprozess bezeichnet, wirken Prozess und Resultat der Operationen zusammen. Und die Frage was sich wie eigentlich aufzeichnet wird akut.

Das Dokumentieren ist heute allerdings zu einer selbstverständlichen und geradezu inflationären Praktik geworden. Es wird ohne Auswahl und Bewertung alles dokumentiert, oftmals automatisch mit technischen Apparaten (u.a. Sensoren), die die die Arbeit des sofortigen Dokumentierens übernehmen (Selftracking). Dokumentieren ist dann nicht ein institutionell geregelter, absichtsvoller oder auch künstlerisch organisierter Akt, sondern Teil der „Präsenzformen“ selbst[3]. Dies verändert das Setting und seine Rolle in einer „Künstlerischen Forschung“ mit ihren verschiedenartigen Spezifizierungen, welche sich selbst immer an der Schwelle zur Institutionalisierung befindet. Ein Spannungsverhältnis zwischen einer zügellosen Präsenz des Dokumentarischen in den aktuellen digitalen Kulturen und der Selektivität, die sich an den blinden, verworfenen Flecken dokumentarischer Praktiken zeigt bestimmt heute das dokumentieren.

In der Ausstellung nearly all types of honey crystallize – die eine Serie von Artist in Residencies in der GAK dokumentiert – wird gezeigt, wiederholt und aufgeführt, wie sich unterschiedliche Akte der Beglaubigung und Bezeugung, des Registrierens und Protokollierens im Kontext der jeweiligen spezifischen Künstlerischen Forschungspraktik ausprägen. Die Operationen des Dokumentarischen irritieren oder unterlaufen hier eine erklärte Evidenz, in dem sie ihre Bedingungen offenlegen und Regeln und Praktiken für eine dokumentierbare Glaubwürdigkeit und Ästhetik untersuchen. So wird nicht vorrangig gefragt, was ein Dokument ist, sondern durch welche Praktiken, Verfahren und Apparate etwas zu einem Dokument wird.

Das Symposion Documenting in Artistic Research thematisiert die Praktiken, Diskurse und und Machtlogiken des Dokumentierens und stellt dies in Bezug zu einer sich immer wieder neu positionierenden Künstlerischen Forschung.

In Vorträgen und Performances, Lesungen und Roundtables von Künstler_innen und Wissenschaftler_innen werden machtwirksame Formungen des Dokumentierens diskutiert. Aufzeichnungssyteme, Feedbackloops, Scores und Transformations- und Übersetzungsvorgänge werden im Kontext Künstlerischer Forschung und künstlerischer Prozesse vorgestellt und zur Sprache gebracht.

Konzept: Andrea Sick

[1] Hito Steyerl, die Farbe der Wahrheit, Dokumentarismen im Kunstfeld, Wien Berlin, Turia Kant, 2009, 8 ff.
[2] Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaften (ZfM), Einleitung, Nr. 11, 2014 (Bielefeld: Transcript) , p. 10. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/1189.
[3] Graduiertenkolleg: Das Dokumentarische, Uni Bochum, https://das-dokumentarische.blogs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/en/

 

Programm des englischsprachigen Symposions

Friday 5.4.2024

11:30  Welcome and Introduction ANDREA SICK (HfK Bremen)
↓ at Dauerwelle

12:00 Rehearsing Repetition IRENA KUKRIC (PhD Arts Bremen/Leiden)

Through ongoing rehearsals, automated movements are observed as disembodied gestures, where repetition becomes what is observed and the manner of observation. Repetition as rehearsal, as a document in becoming. One that emerges as part of the research, not only as evidence of what has happened, but as a starting point for further iterations, as a way of observing and understanding, only to be rehearsed again.

Irena Kukric is a scenographer, media artist and researcher. Her practice and research is concerned with the absence of the human body in time-based performance installation, reflecting on what is present once the human actor is not there. She is currently a PhD candidate at the PhDArts Leiden (and HfK Bremen). Irena is an occasional lecturer at HfK Bremen.

12:45 Sounding the Underground CYNTHIA JEAN BROWNE (Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Berlin)

Steve McQueen’s Western Deep (2002, Super 8 film, transferred to video) opens with a barrage of sound within a pitch-black “cinema-like space”. Critics and observers have described the experience as one in which viewers are subjected to “an oppressive deluge of industrial rumbling sounds in which the “walls and floors shake.” Such vibratory exposure to sound in the viewing space is verbalized as enabling a documentary ‘mimicry’ close to what miners’ themselves experience daily experience. Such projections, however, overlook seminal phenomenological differences between the sensorium of the miner’s ear (Morris 2008) and those visiting venues of the artworld. In this paper, I draw upon my research on “noise-induced hearing loss,” an occupational health category that become formalized and bureaucratized in the 20th century, to begin mapping out differences in the transductive pathways of sonic exposure that shape its aesthetic, legal, and epistemic meanings; such pathways shape whether exposure operates as an aesthetic experience, form of clinical evidence, or a conduit of bodily discipline. In doing so, my work aims to contribute understanding on how the affordances of differently sensitive surfaces and their concretization within historically-specific technical modalities (“O’Gorman and Hamilton 2016) enabled the emergence of competing logics and forms of subjectivity in relation to conceptualization of injury, risk, and loss.

Cynthia Browne conducts research in anthropology, media studies, science and technology studies, and documentary film, focusing on the aftermath of resource extraction in diverse bodies and landscapes. Cynthia Browne received her PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2019 with a minor in Critical Media Practice. She is currently a research fellow in Department II „Knowledge Systems and Collective Life“, where she is part of the working group „Environmental Knowledge in Times of Crisis“.

13:30 Lunch Break

14:30 „Freiheit nur als Gespenst“ – Reflections on Scores, Queerness and (Self-)Documentation with Antonia Baehr PHILLIP HOHMANN (Uni Bochum)

The term Score can mean a wide range of things. It denotes a simple mark or a scar, a point in sports, a hook up (derogatorily), a piece of sheet music or – especially in the context of artistic practice since the 1960s – any type of instruction provided in various medialities. In the latter sense, scores tend to oscillate between pre- and description, they can precede and at the same time document events – especially in the realm of theater and performance. This talk follows the documentary potential of scores thinking with the artistic practice of Antonia Baehr who has developed a capacious body of score-based work. With a focus on desire, friendship and other forms of relation Baehr’s queer socio-aesthetic practice mobilizes scores as ambivalent, (pseudo-)disciplinary media to create complex constellations of instructing and obeying that open up spaces of uncertainty, twisting norms through re-appropriation and explore spectral forms of freedom through constraint.

Philipp Hohmann is a research assistant (PhD) at the DFG Research Training Group „Das Dokumentarische. Excess and Withdrawal“, Ruhr-University Bochum. Previously Master’s degree in „Gender Studies and Theater Studies“ and „Scenic Research“ at the Ruhr University Bochum. Last publication: „The essay as installation? Reflections on Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE“, in: Text\Werk. Readings on Hito Steyerl, Lilian Haberer, Philipp Hohmann, Anna Polze, Julia Reich, Jolanda Wessel (eds.), Berlin: Hatje Canzt, 2022

15:15 Coffee Break

15:45 Roundtable: Documenting – in, as, and, with, through, about – Artistic Research with FRANZI BAUER (PhD Arts Bremen), PHILLIP HOHMANN (Uni Bochum), IRENA KUKRIC (PhD Arts Bremen/Leiden), CHRISTINE RAFFLENBEUL (PhD Arts Leiden) and moderated by HENRIK NIERATSCHKER (PhD Arts Bremen/Leiden)

16:45 Critical Research Ethics as Decolonial Praxis ROSA CORDILLERA A. CASTILLO (Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research, Uni Bremen)

Using the keynote lecture by a white male political scientist at a Southeast Asian studies conference in Europe about the 2022 Philippine elections as an illustrative example of pervasive coloniality in academia, I discuss the urgency of confronting the embeddedness of knowledge production in imperial, colonial and patriarchal ideologies, practices and histories – and its complicities with oppression. I posit that crucial in this project is a critical paradigm of research ethics that is oriented towards rehumanisation and redistribution. Such research ethics is an integral part of decolonial praxis, which is the dynamic process of thought-action-reflection-action aimed at rehumanising the world, redistributing resources and producing counter-knowledges and counter-praxes. This ethics challenges and holds accountable Eurocentric and patriarchal ways of being, doing, thinking and relating in order to imagine and build alternative worlds, presents and futures.

Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is a sociocultural anthropologist, curator and public scholar. She is currently a substitute professor for public anthropology at the University of Bremen and was previously an interim professor and postdoc at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin and curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Her dissertation „Being and Becoming: Imagination, Memory, and Violence in the Southern Philippines“ provides ethnographic insights into the lives of Moros, particularly Maguindanaon supporters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), who have experienced violence and the liminality of an uncertain peace in the Cotabato region.

17:30 Teatime
↓ at GAK

17:45 Geschichtung2: Black Flags HENRIK NIERATSCHKER (PhD Arts Bremen/Leiden)

This performative reading invites the audience to follow the artist persona R/i/n in their explorations of an imaginary politics of work, set in the postcapitalist, postindustrial landscape of the future Ruhr area.
Various elements of the installation Black Flags are activated to tell R/i/n’s story, exposing the references, documents, and research activities from which the auto-speculative-fiction narrative emerges. The installation, with its potentials for arrangement and re-arrangement, is demonstrated as a story telling device.

Henrik Nieratschker is an artist and researcher whose work takes the form of installations, videos, graphics, sound, writing and publications. Recent artistic projects and research are concerned with artistic perspectives on postcapitalist politics of work. Henrik is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University, KABK in The Hague and HfK Bremen.

18:30 Goodbyes

 

Saturday 6.4.2024

10:00 Guided Tour through the Exhibition nearly all types of honey crystallize ANDREA SICK (HfK Bremen)
→ at GAK

11:00 Variantology of a Distance LUIZ ZANOTELLO (PhD Arts Bremen/Leiden)
↓ at Dauerwelle

Departing from a 15-second recording of a performance at the GAK in 2023 (Through the Third Margin during Die Lange Nacht der Museen), the 15-minute lecture-performance will weave a pluriverse that unfolds through deeply listening to its translation into other spatio-temporal distances. This will be followed by an open discussion on the practices of transmediation, translation and variation in relation to artistic research.

Zanotello’s artistic research stems from a poetics of abyss and time. Born in Brazil, he is a Berlin-based media artist, PhD candidate at the HfK Bremen and Leiden University, and resident at the European Media Art Platform. He was Assistant Professor for New Media at the UdK Berlin and holds an MA in Digital Media from the HfK Bremen.

11:45 Word Reviewing as World Viewing DAWOON PARK (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen)

The Korean language is rich in vocal gestures known as onomatopoeia and mimetics. Their often-repetitive form evokes a sense of the liveliness of things in texts and conversations, sometimes functioning as inflectable or idiomatic words. This performative lecture can be seen as the result of a process that explores how their word-gesture hybridity works as a medium to store bodily movements and revive the fossilized dynamics of the world.

Dawoon Park, a Korean media artist based in Berlin, is interested in developing artistic forms that manifest the reproducibility of subtle states. Her focus on designing inarticulable aesthetics can be seen as an archiving of the novelty that emerges from the dissonance between multi-modal media partly endowed with personal qualities.

12:30 Collaborative Methods for Experiencing Text and Textile LI LORIAN and BARBRO SCHOLZ (PhD Arts Leiden)

How does light feel on the body?
What sort of togetherness is there in reading text?
Artist researchers Barbro Scholz and Li Lorian explore tangible and intangible experiences of voice and textile light.
In their practice, both artists are interested in ways of communicating aesthetic experience. Procedures of documentation and transmission bring up questions concerning audience, spectatorship and participation in the art field and artistic research. We aim to open up for participative thinking and valuing aesthetic and experiential knowledge of ourselves and others.

Li Lorian is performance-artist and examines practices of reading texts as means of finding new ways of affinity. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem (2011) and the MA Choreography and Performance program at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Gießen (2020), supported by a fellowship of the DAAD. www.lilorian.com
Barbro Scholz is artist-designer and deals with experiential qualities of tangible (textiles) and intangible (light) materials, and how their interplay invites for novel forms of performativity. She researches speculation in design („Speculative Space“) and materiality in virtual spaces („Klima-ACT“). Her work was exhibited in international venues, co-founder of Stühmer|Scholz Design (2012). Instagram: stuhmer_scholz

13:15
Lunch Break

14:15 Roundtable: Translation, Transduction, Transmediation in Artistic Research with HARM COORDES (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen), ELBURUZ FIDAN (PhD Arts Bremen/Gothenborg), CHRISTIAN ROSALES FONSECA (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen), LUIZ ZANOTELLO (Phd Arts Bremen/Leiden) and moderated by FRANZI BAUER (PhD Arts Bremen)

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Scoring: How Scores Have Nothing to Do with Goals
VICTOR ARTIGA RODRIGUEZ (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen), CARLA ANACKER (Berlin), EDGAR LESSIG (Berlin), ICARO LOPEZ DE MESA MOYANO (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen)

Tremenda Corporea (Victor Artiga Rodriguez, Carla Anacker, Edgar Lessig, Icaro Lopez de Mesa)

Tremenda Corporea plays with an almost non-intentional process of documenting, reflecting, performing, moving, volcanoing, reading, eating, creating. We use scores as fluid narrative structures that bring our bodies together. In the context of documentation, scores accommodate variations of instability and stability we are interested in exploring. Since a score can be performed in infinite variations, we find ourselves in a process where our bodies are naturally enjoying the partly knowing. We almost never know with complete certainty the outcome of the score. We cherish this process of letting goals blur away.

Tremenda Corporea is a collective working in the convergence of performance, technology, design, and sonic explorations. Their process often includes experimental ways of coming together, between hybrid and in-presence sessions of creating scores, compositions, performances, and situations of sharing.

17:00 Code <> edoC
Programming the Choreography of Digital Objects ICARO LÓPEZ DE MESA MOYANO (PhD Arts Bremen/Groningen)

Code in programming as score, as poetry, as media art conservation. Archival material, as open source, as editable. Code as an act of storing and sharing, a tool for memory, code for sound, for images, for movement. As infrastructure, for performance, for dance of digital objects. Code as an electronic document.

Icaro López de Mesa Moyano, is sound-media artist and educator, interested in the making of instruments based on digital-electronic infrastructures and their use in performing arts. Currently he works as coordinator of the PhD program in HfK and as researcher in the project Critical Instruments.

17:45 Drinks and Goodbyes
→ at GAK

 

Contributors of Rountables:

Franzi Bauer is a (book) designer, queer_feminist, lecturer, event organizer and PhD fellow at the University of the Arts Bremen.  Her work focuses on intersections between theory, poetics and typography, the process and the performativity of writing. Bauer’s engagements are surrounded by questions towards disruptive tensions of chaotic community building and care. 

Harm Coordes is a fashion and costume designer, scenographer and artistic researcher at RUG Groningen and HfK Bremen, investigating on the interconnection of fashion, meaning and mindfulness. He is part of the theatre collective ‚Thermoboy FK’ as well as a lecturer in the field of sustainable fashion at HfK Bremen and HTW Berlin. 

Philipp Hohmann is a research assistant (PhD) at the DFG Research Training Group "Das Dokumentarische. Excess and Withdrawal", Ruhr-University Bochum. Previously Master's degree in "Gender Studies and Theater Studies" and "Scenic Research" at the Ruhr University Bochum. Last publication: "The essay as installation? Reflections on Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE", in: Text\Werk. Readings on Hito Steyerl, Lilian Haberer, Philipp Hohmann, Anna Polze, Julia Reich, Jolanda Wessel (eds.), Berlin: Hatje Canzt, 2022 

Elburuz Fidan, an installation artist and researcher, explores Queer materialities in diverse archives. Their work constructs a Queer Counter-Archive from "discarded" materials, reshaping narratives and advocating for marginalized voices. Through videos, auditory, and sculptural elements, Fidan employs a multidisciplinary approach to Queer "situated knowledge," drawing from their academic background as Prof. Migrant Queer. 

Irena Kukric is a scenographer, media artist and researcher. Her practice and research is concerned with the absence of the human body in time-based performance installation, reflecting on what is present once the human actor is not there. She is currently a PhD candidate at the PhDArts Leiden (and HfK Bremen). Irena is an occasional lecturer at HfK Bremen.  

Icaro Lopez de Mesa Moyano, is sound-media artist and educator, interested in the making of instruments based on digital-electronic infrastructures and their use in performing arts. Currently he works as coordinator of the PhD program in HfK and as researcher in the project Critical Instruments. 

Henrik Nieratschker is an artist and researcher whose work takes the form of installations, videos, graphics, sound, writing and publications. Recent artistic projects and research are concerned with artistic perspectives on postcapitalist politics of work. Henrik is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University, KABK in The Hague and HfK Bremen.   

Christine Rafflenbeul is artistic researcher and PhDArts candidate at Leiden University and KABK The Hague. Through experimental bobbin lace making she investigates practice-based modes of thinking. In doing so, she explores spaces of possibility for reflective meshworks of situated knowledges. 

Victor Artiga Rodriguez, is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the convergence of poetry, the body and digital technologies. Through multimedia installations and performance, he explores new forms of narration that touch upon themes of decolonization, climate crisis and nostalgia. Often intertwining electronics with organic materials like clay/ceramics, his installation invites the bodies of performers and viewers to a communal critical reflection on our condition as a techno-consumer society.

Christian Rosales Fonseca is a composer, improviser and electric guitar player born in Bogotá, Colombia. He studied composition with Prof. Jörg Birkenkötter and electroacustic composition with Prof. Kilian Schwoon at the University of Arts Bremen. After finishing his Master’s degree he started his Meisterschüler studies with Prof. Markus Löffler and Prof. Andree Korpys. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arts Bremen and the University of Groningen. In his work, he integrates political and social issues from recent Colombian history and examines them from a postcolonial perspective. His music reflects transcultural musical influences from Europe and Latin America, yet he avoids taking an exoticising view. He is a member of the projektgruppe neue musik and the duo INCOMODO.

Luiz Zanotello's artistic research stems from a poetics of abyss and time. Born in Brazil, he is a Berlin-based media artist, PhD candidate at the HfK Bremen and Leiden University, and resident at the European Media Art Platform. He was Assistant Professor for New Media at the UdK Berlin and holds an MA in Digital Media from the HfK Bremen. 

Jemma Thrussell is a cellist, viola da gamba player, violone player and music researcher specialising in historical performance practice. She received her bachelor’s degree in Music (Performance) with First Class Honours from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2016. She studied with British cellist Dr Daniel Yeadon. In 2017, she studied a postgraduate course with the Dutch cellist Viola de Hoog at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen. In 2020, Jemma completed a Master of Music (Performance) majoring in historical cello from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney. 

 

Curation, Moderation, Organization:

Marcela Antipan Olate (organiszation), designer and artist, focuses her practice on critically reassessing technical objects and the cultural subjectivities entangled with them. Her work translates into physical and digital pieces, texts, installations, and workshops. (https://marcela.io/about/) Additionally, Marcela works in the organizational team of the Binational artistic PhD program at the University of the Arts Bremen and is research assistant in the artistic research project, The Dynamic Archive. (https://www.thedynamicarchive.net/)

Victor Artigas Rodriguez (moderation)is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the convergence of poetry, the body and digital technologies. Through multimedia installations and performance, he explores new forms of narration that touch upon themes of decolonization, climate crisis and nostalgia. Often intertwining electronics with organic materials like clay/ceramics, his installation invites the bodies of performers and viewers to a communal critical reflection on our condition as a techno-consumer society.

Mona Schieren (moderation) is Professor of Transcultural Art Histories at HfK Bremen. Topics of her current research include history and theory of body practices, history politics and trauma theory, hydrocommons, fiber art, and Asianisms in the US. Forthcomming publications together with: O. Svanelid “Structuring of the Self: Lygia Clark and the Therapeutical Trajectory of Brazilian Modernism.” In: Modernism, Art, Therapy, eds. S. Hudson/T. Sheehan. Yale UP; C. Bublatzky, B. Dogramaci, K. Pinther, M. Schieren eds. Entangled Histories of Art and Migration. intellect.

Andrea Sick (curator, organization, moderation) is Professor of Media- and Cultural-History and -Theory. Her main work and research interests are the relation between technological media and cultural (artistic) production, the transitions between art, biology, and information-technology discourses, the interfaces of scientific and cultural activities, and the history and theory of performance art, artistic research and queer studies.
Recent research projects include: ‚The Dynamic Archive.‘ 2018–ongoing. www.thedynamicarchive.net Last Publication: Verkehrtes Queer in politisch-karnevalsken Räumen – 2 Schnittfürhungen. (together with Claudia Reiche), in Oliver Klaassen, Andrea Seier (Ed.): Querulieren. Störmomente in Kunst, Medien, Wissenschaften, Berlin 2023

https://artisticphd-hfkbremen.net