Not Quite King, Not Quite Fish
2023, November 9-11th, on-site in Vilnius, at SODAS 2123 & Vilnius Academy of Arts; attendance is free.
Our symposium stages the disciplinary diversity of doctoral programs in artistic research as a flow of four different thematic fields. The Architecture, Art, Bureaucracy thread treats bureaucracy as a space of intervention. Central heating and the ‘grey energy’ of the structures of Vilnius Academy of Arts campus will feature. Flying Potatoes refuse commodification. Microscopic Gestures explore the critical potential of cinema when performed with the ongoing vitality of the process itself. Collaborative workshops and performance will be offered as modes of research. Empathy and Ecology examines ideas of co-worlding and tacitly shares artworks that collaboratively emerge with(in) ecological systems.
As artists-researchers, we are in tension with the real and fictive expectations of both artmaking and research. Not quite king, nor quite fish, we turn to the animal queendom for answers. We dive into water like the cosmopolitan kingfisher. Different bodies of water lead us to a different catch, we function well with the abundance of a range of habitats. We are masters of diving in, no matter what the circumstances might be. Easy to recognise but at times obscured by our environment, we are feathered like artists but are actually entangled artists-researchers: short tail, long beak, or both. We flutter around as observers and participants in complex systems. According to legend, if one spots us on the way to a battle, all must return home and seek peace.
The symposium Not quite king, nor quite fish is hosted and organised by doctoral candidates in Fine Art, Design and Architecture from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The focus is on durational and performative forms of presentation and/or public experimentation as research.
The doctoral candidates of the Vilnius Art Academy are pleased to present a diverse international program of lectures, performances and exhibitions.
Including
Keynote Speakers
Audronė Žukauskaitė is Chief Researcher at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. Her recent publications include the monographs Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Philosophy: The Logic of Multiplicity (in Lithuanian, 2011), and From Biopolitics to Biophilosophy (in Lithuanian, 2016). She also co-edited (with S. E. Wilmer) Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism (Oxford UP, 2010); Deleuze and Beckett (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political and Performative Strategies (Routledge, 2016; 2018), and Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (Edinburgh UP, 2023). Her latest monograph Organism-Oriented Ontology is published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023. Her research interests include contemporary philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, biopolitics, biophilosophy, posthumanism, and the Anthropocene.
Paulina Pukytė is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and critic. She holds a degree from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and a Master’s from the Royal College of Art in London. She currently teaches at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She writes experimental literature, poetry and plays, as well as critical and satirical essays on cultural issues. She has published five books. In her visual art practice, she makes moving image, conceptual projects, installations, and public space interventions, working with found locations and found artefacts. She also makes text-based performances.
Ben Spatz is a nonbinary scholar-practitioner and a leader in the development of new artistic and embodied research methods. They are Reader in Media and Performance at University of Huddersfield (UK) and author of three books: What a Body Can Do (Routledge 2015), Blue Sky Body (Routledge 2020), and Making a Laboratory (Punctum 2020). Ben is founding editor of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research and the Punctum imprint Advanced Methods. Their work has been presented at more than thirty institutions in eighteen countries. For more information, please visit: <www.urbanresearchtheater.com>
Yen Chun Lin currently lives and works among states of falling, falling asleep, falling awake, falling with(in) love, and falling (into) unknown. Through artistic practices, she tunes into subtlety, liminality and the ‘seemingly imperceptible’ as a way of cultivating sensibility to communicate with(in) silence, darkness, dust, wind, and sub(un)conscious states. Her works are materialised in the form of installations, hosting sculptural soundscapes, performances, collaborations, and speculative sciences. Recent project Here, a nut falls twice (commissioned by Institute of Contemporary Art London, 2022) is an installation hosting sound performances, exploring how empathy could be formed collectively by listening together and co-creating a shared ‘here’ through alternation in sensual perception.
Selected Presenters:
Joseph Gold Hendel (Burren College of Art, Ireland) xxxXtedXxx, participatory performance
Nina Liebenberg, Uniarts (Postdoc researcher), Performative lecture.
Dániel Máté, Doctoral Candidate - Hungarian University of Fine Art, Junior Researcher - EU4ART_differences, HU, People long for Warmth, performative lecture
Ulvi Haagensen, Estonian Academy of Arts, The unravelling line taken on a walk, performative lecture
Dr Maren Witte, Professor at Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg, DE. Between Vui and Weh. Vietgerman in Berlin, lecture
Hannah Foley, PhD Candidate at the School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania, AU. Wet Breath Exchange: on performing with fog, site specific performance
Dr Madaleine Trig, independent artist, Contact Improvisations with Companion Species and the Camera, mixed media lecture
Fadwa Bouziane, PhD Candidate at Burren College of Art, IE. Hair-itage, performance
Alessio Alonne and Sei Iturriaga Sauco, Independents, performance.
Kateřina Olivová, artist, researcher and pedagogue at Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic, Performance.
Janina Hoth, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, workshop.
Darren O’Brien, Post Graduate Researcher, M4C AHRC Doctoral Partnership, Nottingham Trent University, UK. A Year with the Meadows, lecture and film premier
Jürgen Buchinger, Doctoral candidate at University of Arts Linz (AT) / Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (CH), sound installation, a talk.
Caitlin Magda Shepherd, an independent researcher, teaches at Falmouth University and UAL, performative lecture.
Katharina Swoboda, independent artist and artist-researcher, performative lecture.
Eglė Grėbliauskaitė, Researcher at Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, LT
Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond, University of Applied Arts Vienna, AT Radically Involved.
Reflecting on Togetherness from the Perspectives of Dizziness and Queerness. Performance lecture.
Coby-Rae Crosbie, Researcher at the Unité de Recherche Numérique (Digital Research Unit), Performative lecture.
Elise Adamsrød
George Finlay Ramsey, independent artist, The Empedocles Syndrome, performance
Maija Demitere, artist-researcher, Liepaja university, workshop.
Jasper Llewellyn and Daniel S. Evans, Northumbria University (UK), MEANDERS, somewhere between fleeting and infinite, durational performance
Polina Golovátina-Mora, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Careful movement, demonstration and lecture
Arnas Anskaitis, Vilnius Academy of Arts, LT, On the Grey Energy of Institutional Structures and Artistic Pedagogies. A Case of Vilnius Academy of Ars, Performative Talk/Lecture
Pedro Florencio, University of Lisbon, Modular cinema: notes on film as experimental aesthetics, lecture
Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, PhD Candidate at Vilnius Art Academy, LT, Lichen Grammar, tactile sharing
O P E N C A L L (NOT ACTUAL ANYMORE)
Call for Contributions to the Research Symposium at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, 2023
As artists-researchers, we are in tension with the real and fictive expectations of both artmaking and research. Not quite king, nor quite fish, we turn to the animal queendom for answers. We dive into water like the cosmopolitan kingfisher. Different bodies of water lead us to a different catch, we function well with the abundance of a range of habitats. We are masters of diving in, no matter what the circumstances might be. Easy to recognise but at times obscured by our environment, we are feathered like artists but are actually entangled artists-researchers: short tail, long beak, or both. We flutter around as observers and participants in complex systems. According to legend, if one spots us on the way to a battle, all must return home and seek peace.
The symposium Not quite king, nor quite fish is hosted and organised by doctoral candidates in Fine Art, Design and Architecture from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. The focus is on durational and performative forms of presentation and/or public experimentation as research.
We aim to provide opportunities to both experienced and upcoming researchers and artists to share their projects within the support structures established by temporary epistemic communities organised around four research clusters. Each cluster is conceived and moderated by doctoral candidates of the Vilnius Academy of Arts and is based on their artistic research interests.
Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts and various locations in the city
Partners: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LMTA), SODAS 2123
Dates and Deadlines
2023, November 9-11th, on site in Vilnius
Call for Contributions until June 11th, 2023
Notification of acceptance no later than 21st of June
Keynotes: everybody who is selected
Funding: participation as well as coffee breaks are for free, the selected participants will be issued a letter of acceptance which you could use for fundraising from Erasmus+, KUNO, or your own institutional and other funding sources.
Types and lengths of proposals:
We accept and wish applicants to experiment with performative lectures, living posters, artist talks, workshops (indoor/outdoor), performance, exhibition / installation, intervention, panel discussion, screening or screen-based performance, or other yet-unknown forms.
Duration 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 minutes. Alternative time slots are open for discussion if your rationale is convincing.
Opportunity to publish your proposal in a peer-reviewed journal (text, visual or hybrid forms): The presenters will have the opportunity to submit a proposal to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis.
Organising Committee: Miki (Miklós) Ambrózy, Greta Grinevičiūtė, Miglė Križinauskaitė, Jan Glöckner, Gabrielė Gervickaitė, Povilas Marozas, Sophie Durand, Gailė Griciūtė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
Scientific-Artistic committee: Dr. Marquard Smith, Dr. Rūta Spelskytė-Liberienė, Dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius, Jan Glöckner, Gabrielė Gervickaitė, Greta Grinevičiūtė, Miki Ambrózy, Miglė Križinauskaitė, Povilas Marozas, Sophie Durand, Gailė Griciūtė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
Each thematic cluster is curated and moderated by doctoral candidates at Vilnius Academy of Arts and/or at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy.
Clusters/sessions
1. Flying Potatoes
Moderated by Jan Glöckner, Gabrielė Gervickaitė, Ignas Pavliukevičius
We welcome all humans and other-than-humans who are interested in challenging, discussing, or deconstructing the current state of our planet. We recognise the Eurocentrism and Anthropocentrism that has contributed to misunderstandings, and we refuse to be part of it. Let's dance!
We are not referring to a future in which something will happen or things will change. We already live in a world that has undergone tremendous changes. We are already cyborgs and have been for a long time. The world is neither ours nor ours to take. These are facts. There has always been interest in other-than-human bodies. There are also dreams of artificial sentience, but the toxic mindset inherited from settlers, colonisers, exploiters, and standardisation must be addressed first.
We care about mushrooms, trees, oceans, dogs and cats, carrots and potatoes, humans and machines. We believe in accessible and open-source data, friends and loved ones, joy and techno. We demand freedom for nature and all beings.
It is unfortunate that we still need to discuss social inequality, judgement, power, abuse, victimisation, war, and loss. However, we are researchers of hidden life, beyond what is seen and felt. We invite you to contribute by being true to yourself and sharing who you are or who you aspire to be.
2. Microscopic Gesture: Being and Moving With…
Moderated by Greta Grinevičiūtė, Miki Ambrózy, and Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė
What if one does not take a stand at the outset of creative acts, including the often repeated expectation for situating one’s practice within existing families of knowledge? Can we avoid the “death-knell of creative acts” by not situating our research in domains of the known? With these questions in mind, we invite early career doctoral researchers to join the symposium in Vilnius.
What kind of artistic research practices allow us to capture, express or be present with the ongoingness of experimentation? How and where do image and sound, in the context of artistic research, enable the microscopic gesture to manifest and sustain its existence? We are looking for examples and models of artistic research that are performed in combination with sound, moving image, and alternative cultures of making cinema.
We are interested in expanded approaches to the relationships between idea, technique, medium and method. What lies beyond (or beside) some of the binaries that dominate the discourse, such as optic and haptic visuality, embodied knowing and artificial intelligence, disciplinary versus institutional conventions, auto-ethnographic strategies and a post-human ontology? Where do the most generative acts of writing and making happen within this process?
3. Architecture, Art, Bureaucracy
Moderated by Povilas Marozas
Tedious but compulsory, bureaucracy is usually perceived as the antithesis to any artistic practice. Always at work in the background, bureaucracy regulates processes, defines the outcomes and prescribes rules for conflict resolution.
This part of the symposium offers a space to present, discuss, share and learn about critical artistic and research practices in the fields of architecture, fine art and design. We want to acknowledge and actively engage with bureaucracy as a significant part of creative processes, treat it as a space of intervention and/or challenge it through different critical artistic means. We welcome applications from PhD candidates as well as scholars and practitioners and invite them to submit proposals for different forms of knowledge sharing.
4. Empathy and Ecology: (co)relation
Moderated by Sophie Durand, Gailė Griciūtė
How might an artistic researcher construct experiences that are empathetic to the ecologies that support them?
Concerning methodologies of art practice; participants are invited to examine how they work with, present within and acknowledge the various ecologies their work is connected to. Examining the idea of co-worlding; this cluster seeks to acknowledge how artworks might collaboratively emerge with(in) ecological systems. Dismantling hierarchies of authorship, participation and experience ; we ask you how a form (of art) might emerge with empathy to the ecologies that support them?
We also ask: How can we break down the structures of community and work within the frameworks of the local?
The aim of this is to focus discourse on community engagement; asking submissions for artists, artist researchers and community members who look to strategies of engagement and making that amplifies the voices of the many and listens to the needs of those in the community from the perspective of the community working from the framework of artistic research.
This cluster is open to artist talks, workshops that invite participants into the logic of a practice, performances and experimental formats for sharing processes of making. (If empathy is possible and even if it isn’t this cluster sees empathy as a process and therefore performative, time-based and experiential forms are encouraged.)