Next week I will be in Helsinki for the 3rd 'Assembly' for bringing together researchers in preparation for the Research Pavilion taking place in Venice in the Summer. I am currently involved in a research 'cell' led by Alex Arteaga called Through Phenomena Themselves - this 'cell' will be inhabiting the Research Pavilion throughout May and June. More about the Research Pavilion here. A description of the research cell Through Phenomena Themselves can be read below.
Through Phenomena Themselves: Exploring new possibilities of mutual transformation between artistic and phenomenological research practices
This research cell proposes an inquiry
into research practices developed in two fields—artistic research and
phenomenology—that operate with and through phenomena as their object of
research or as the primary medium of exposure to and/or of their object of
research. Accordingly this cell is to be understood as a network of
practice-based research processes on phenomena based and/or phenomena-oriented
research practices. The main focus of this research cell is to explore new
possibilities of mutual enhancement, refinement and hybridization between
specific artistic and phenomenological research practices. Although the
research goals might be divergent, both evolving fields of practice share a
common base: an interest in the generative nature of our existence, alongside
the mobilization of embodied subjectivity in first-person perspective processes
of inquiry whose primary objects are emergent, co-constituted, intuitive,
evident presences—that is, phenomena.
Shared reflection based on processes of
artistic and phenomenological research and the artifacts they produce as well
as texts and dialogues in different formats and constellations, will aim to
bridge the gaps and mutual misapprehensions that hinder tapping the full
potential for the further development of both fields of research. Specifically,
interpretations and uses of phenomenological theories by artist researchers can
diverge, sometimes fundamentally, from the understanding of these theories in
the phenomenological context, focusing on a restricted concept of phenomenology
as a set of theories, whilst ignoring that phenomenology is, first of all, a
method of research. In parallel, the distance of phenomenologists to artistic
practices can result in their reluctance to acknowledge such practices as
research. The aim of this research cell is not to
defend phenomenology but to investigate unexplored possibilities by exposing
phenomenological concepts and practices and practices of artistic research to
one another. In this open-ended investigation, critical views elaborated in the
framework of process philosophy, poststructuralism, feminism, new materialism
and speculative realism will also be addressed.
Cell’s participants (provisory list.
State: November 2018): Emmanuel Alloa, Alex Arteaga, Emma Cocker, Alexander
Damianisch, Nikolaus Gansterer, Saara Hannula, Esa Kirkkopelto, Tuomas
Leitinen, Leena Rouhiainen, Jaakko Ruuska and Tülay Schakir.
This research cell is conceived and
coordinated by Alex Arteaga in cooperation with Emma Cocker, Leena Rouhiainen
and Alexander Damianisch and produced as a collaboration of the University of
Applied Arts Vienna and the University of the Arts Helsinki.