Doctoral thesis/Doktorsavhandlingar/Konstnärliga fakulteten

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A Field of Possibilities: Designing and Playing Digital Musical Instruments
(2011-11-04) Nilsson, Per Anders
This thesis focuses on a set of digital musical instruments I have designed and developed with ensemble improvisation in mind. The intention is not to create a universal improvisational instrument, but rather to create a set of instruments which each realize one musical idea. My research addresses the meaning and relations between activities in two stages, what I call “design time” and “play time”. In short, design time is conception, representation, and articulation of ideas and knowledge outside of chronological time, whereas play time takes place in real-time and concerns bodily activity, interaction, and embodied knowledge. In this work aesthetics play a crucial role, and here signify what is important for me. At design time my aesthetic preferences guide the design process, whereas in play time, a subjective aesthetic tenet is that musical improvisation has strong similarities to gaming and play. One hypothesis states that choices made during the design process at the development stages of a digital musical instrument significantly influence ensemble improvisation and musical results at play time. A digital instrument in this work constitutes a field of possibilities, which in play actualizes the aesthetic decisions of its designer, and in cases where the designer and player are one, during play there will be a double influence: directly through the player’s actions, and indirectly through the nature of the instrument.
A Never-Ending Thirst: Artistic Reforms to Neoliberal-Teflon Imperviousness
(2021-10-25) Alves, André
This text is the dissertation element of my artistic research project, A Never-Ending Thirst: Artistic Reforms to Neoliberal-Teflon Imperviousness, developed within the doctoral studies program at HDK-Valand—the Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg (2016-2021). Along with documentation of twelve artistic projects that support my practice-based inquiry, this text is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor in the Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts. A Never-Ending Thirst asks how my practice of picture-making and artistic ways of knowing can reform what I call “Neoliberal-Teflon Imperviousness.” The aim of this inquiry is to make suggestions and experiment with the role of artistic research in the recuperation of permeability, imagination, and affectability. The research focuses on the production and capture of subjectivity in postindustrial late capitalism and draws on the construct “Skin-Teflon,” which was introduced by Maria Franco Ferraz in “The Paradoxical Status of Skin and Contemporary Culture: From the Porosity of the Skin to the Teflon-Skin” (2014) to describe the intentional demotion of the quality and complexity of acts of interfacing in contemporary culture. My research observes how artistic research might align with questions to counter, and offer alternatives to, Neoliberal-Teflon impediments to affectability—to alterity, encounter, and knowledge—and its denial of the subject as a nexus of relationality. Turning to art and following the problematization of the engagement of art as politically committed offered by Marina Garcés in “Honesty with the Real” (2012) this research proposes a listening ethics—an encounter with distance that is not founded in separateness but inscription and embodiment—as a guideline for (my) artistic research, with its ways of knowing and ways of intervening in the landscape of Neoliberal-Teflon imperviousness. I ask how (my) artistic ways of doing and knowing can operate as listening reflections and instigate affection in the face of today’s increasingly bunkered and disaffected Neoliberal-Teflon sense of the world. At stake in this thesis is my belief that a truly libertarian society cultivates the lessons of affectability, affection, and imagination, without which there is no learning, transformation, or change.
Actor-Spectator in a Virtual Reality Arts Play
(2008-12-10T09:49:04Z) Ljungar-Chapelon, Magali
This doctoral project brings to the fore the specificity of the artistic experience when the Virtual Reality Cube, a medium based on immersive virtual reality technology, is used as artistic virtual space, where the stage and the auditorium blend into one and spectators and actors no longer have distinctive roles. It consists of three integrated parts: a written thesis, a VR artwork and a DVD, which illustrates the text, the production process of the VR work, and which also presents an interpretation of the research results in filmic and photographic form. Gadamer’s concepts of play and experience of art, Aristotle’s conception of drama and Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor are used as points of departure in order to coin the term virtual reality arts play or VR arts play that characterises this kind of immersive journey in between illusion and reality. Empirical and theoretical functions interweave in a chorus of voices representing the experience of all actors involved: the audience, the production team and experts from several art fields, computer-games and media. Audience surveys show that all the respondents but one, children as well as adults, thought that this type of VR artwork opens up new ways for an artist to give shape to an artistic vision and for an audience to communicate with and experience an artwork from within. What appears as the most worthwhile and unique aspect of the experience is the opportunity to experience fictive, imaginary worlds and characters that cannot be represented by other means than through an immersive virtual reality medium, i.e. within a physical space where the audience becomes physically immersed and participant “on stage”. The essence of such an experience is to be found in the notion of “play in between”, at the crossover of several art forms and computer games, for audiences which consider themselves as both actor/participants and spectators. Research results, exposed and illuminated through semiotics and hermeneutics, show that such experiences may develop in the form of intimate experiences for a little group of spectators or within new social contexts for broader audiences and with several possible applications within the fields of art and entertainment.
An Inexplicable Hunger – flutist)body(flute (dis)encounters
(2019-03-18) Cyrino, Marina Pereira
This doctoral research is structured by singular encounters, that happened between 2014 and 2018. Together with a series of collaborators, I have developed a critical and poetic methodology through what I call “mixture”, “contamination” and the practice of “un-goaling”, in which my “flutist-body-flute” relation encounters the practices of other artists. A search for flexible modes of being a flutist, as a way of working around a dominant characteristic of Western musical practices: what I call a fragmented specialisation, or a specialised fragmentation. A flute-body traverses a body-flutist, a pulsating: metamorphosis. A practice of metamorphosis traversed my body-musician. It sowed a fragility, awoke a taste for a creating-in-mixture that also traversed the transverse flute that keeps up with me. It stirred a mixture-experimentation flavour that was already inside, but constrained. It aroused an inexplicable hunger. It taught me how to sustain the time of an estrangement. From the practice of metamorphosis, I imagined a mixture, a “mix-arts” as a method of artistic investigation. I would mix art modalities. I would mix roles: interpretation, improvisation, composition. I would mix “mine” with “yours” through co-creations. I would mix my body with a body-flute until it becomes a “flutist-body-flute” relation. Mixture as method grew out of my growing concern at being an expert at being an excerpt of myself. Without being able to combine the practices that coexisted inside me, almost isolated, I searched for a way to tune out a certain being-flutist, an image-inside that has guided my practices so far. But the mixing did not happen in a random manner: it was guided by encounters. Encounters emerged as method and structure; as a method for finding ways of de-anaesthetise the forces of creating, for finding ways in which artistic creation is guided by a vulnerability to the other as a living presence. The practices of co-creation/composition and performance have been translated into sound/video and written essays, in a process of “deciphering” and “remembering”. Through this method, I claim that each encounter sets the practices that will guide the mixture. These practices are as many as possible encounters, and made sensible to the reader through the present dissertation.
An Operatic Game Changer: The Opera Maker as Game Designer and the Potentials of Ludo-Immersive Opera
(2022-01-28) Jalhed, Hedvig
How can live-performed chamber operas be conceptualized as immersive games with interactive features? This artistic study has resulted in a system model through which degrees of immersion may be generated and analyzed from physical, social, and psychical stimuli. A differentiation of immersive modes has been made possible by the framing of opera-making as game design. The findings indicate that so-called ludo-immersive opera could be developed into operatic chamber opera play for self-reliant participants, constituting an intimate and alternate practice in which dynamic game-masters may replace supervising directors. However, this practice is entangled with the question of future training for operatic practitioners outside the mainstream opera format, and beyond both Wagnerian and Brechtian spectatorship. The shift from the traditional audience/performer relationship to a novel form of immersive interaction requires a new mind-set and training for opera practitioners, to encourage autonomy and active participation by individual visitors. Theoretically, the study connects recent innovations in opera to the aesthetic principles of the Apollonian and the Dionysian and positions ludo-immersive opera in relation the these. The principles bridge immersion, opera, and game-playing, articulated by a reinterpretation of Roger Caillois’ taxonomy of play. The issue of immersion as an artistic aim in opera is highlighted. Moreover, artists’ and visitors’ reciprocal participation in ludo-immersive opera is discussed in regard to its historical context of operatic event-making and forms of presentation. The project explores the detailed consequences of perception and performance in chamber opera with ludic and immersive features, primarily inspired by live-action role playing. The main objective has been to investigate how operatic events can be presented as immersive adventures rather than spectacles, and consequences that the integration of playing visitors in professional opera implies for artistic practice. In four operas created during the period 2016–2020, interventions and encounters between artists and visitors in musically driven situations framed by fictional settings have been staged and studied. The artistic researcher has iteratively been engaged in action as opera singer, librettist, dramaturge, and director. Data from the research cycles include field recordings from the productions and reports from the participants in the form of interviews and surveys.
Anteckningar om Spår. Fotografi – Bevis – Bild
(2011-04-29) Wallsten, Lars
Anteckningar om Spår (Notes on Traces) is a self-critical and self-reflective practice-based PhD project. It endeavours to make visible how artistic practice can create its content and context in relation to experience, reinterpretation and further progression. The project is an inquiry into photography’s capacity to prove evidence. It is structured around photographic representation and written text. The dissertation consists of four photographic works together with an introduction, a list of contents, and a main text presented as an essay with numbered passages. The research effort is guided by a broad, selective inquiry. Contextualisation and conceptualisation have been identified through a process of bricolage, whereby creative use has been made of different discourses such as photography, film, art, philosophy, psychology, education, law, criminalistics, literature and cognitive science. Artistic strategies and practices that use forensic aesthetics are also discussed. The method has the character of tracing a trail that leads the project forward. This creates a dialogue between the content and the form of the dissertation. Trace together with condensation and pattern are presented as productive concepts; these concepts, which in some respects have their roots in photography, not only provide others with the leads to understand a photograph as evidential proof but are also characterised by a suggestive quality, which is a recurring feature in the photographic projects. The study contributes to overcoming the differences in the ways theoretical and practical knowledge are produced.
Art and the Real-time Archive: Relocation, Remix, Response
(2009-09-11T15:33:15Z) Crawford, David
If Internet artists have recently relocated their work to galleries and museums, there has meanwhile been an increasing engagement on the part of gallery artists with the media. While these migrations are often discussed in aesthetic if not economic terms, this essay asks what such phenomena can tell us about the changing nature of subjectivity in relation to media and technology. Three main themes are introduced: the aura of information, inscription technologies, and the real-time archive. The themes extend across subsequent chapters addressing: the relocation of net art, the remix as an art method, and the capacity of the subject to respond to technology. !e idea that technologies alter subjects (produce subject-effects) plays a central role in the arguments advanced. Examples are drawn from both the author’s own art practice as well the practice of others, including Phil Collins and Steve McQueen. Theorists including Lewis Mumford and Bernard Stiegler are used to interpret the questions raised by this practice. It is concluded that relocation and remixing can respectively aid in the apprehension of subject-effects and support subjective autonomy.
Ateljésamtalets utmaning – ett bildningsperspektiv
(2011-05-20) Wideberg, Christian
The present study is in the field of Educational Science and is an investigation of the studio critiques i.e. the teacher/student studio interactions that take place as part of two higher education programmes in the Fine Arts in Sweden; these are the three-year Bachelor of Fine Arts programme and the two-year Master of Fine Arts programme. The aim of the dissertation is to find out what is essentially important in a studio critique, to understand its context and integrity, as well as to examine how a teacher captures the opportunities and challenges that occur within the force field of the student’s intention, of his or her idea and his or her formal knowledge. A phenomenological hermeneutical method is applied as the method of inquiry in the study, where several different collecting methods are used to gatherempirical data. An historical overview, transcribed interviews, a log book and studio critiques make up the narrative text data, which have both practical and scientific relevance. The core theme of the studio critique is to challenge the quality of the student’s artistic expression, thus contributing to involving him or her in a process of growth; this process embraces the potential of the studio critique to nurture and attain quality, which is the main result of the study. Studio critiques are complex and interwoven interactions of two kinds: 1) interactions where the teacher and the student seek common ground in a mutual process of understanding and accord, and 2) interactions where the integration of intention and quality is strived for. In his or her role as supervisor, the teacher aims at finding the point of interface between the student’s intention and the material qualities of his or her work. Ultimately the goal of this form of growth (German: Bildung) is to maximise student potential, thus enabling him or her to develop the full range of his or her talents. When the main topic for the studio critique is found, another interaction begins. This process addresses the challenge of integrating concept and material, the ultimate goal of which must be a seamless fusion of the two if the finished work is to possess sublime qualities. One can regard the studio critique as a process where the student reaches a deeper knowledge of self and his or her artistic goals, where subjective and creative impulses are essential for the developmental growth of this form of living knowledge.
Att ge form åt musikaliska gestaltningar. En socialsemiotisk studie av körledares multimodala kommunikation i kör
(2009-08-27T15:17:40Z) Sandberg Jurström, Ragnhild
The purpose of this thesis is to identify and describe how musical interpretations and performances are semiotically designed and realised by choir conductors in their interaction with choir singers during rehearsals and concerts, and also to find methods for how these actions can be analysed and described. The data consists of video-recorded rehearsals and concerts with six Swedish professional choir conductors and their choirs. The video films are transcribed in detail, with focus on how semiotic modes, such as gestures, gazes, body movements, singing, printed score and piano-playing, are used when choir conductors in their interaction with choir singers work with a musical composition. The study uses a multimodal and social semiotic theory, which implies that communication and learning is seen as a social process of transformative sign-making. The concept design is central since it is a way for sign-makers to create different communicative conditions for meaning-making, based on their interests and choices of modes. The analyses focus on how choir conductors in their use of different modes perform and illustrate the music, how they interact with the choir singers, and how their actions are realised in different designs. The analyses also focus on what cultural conventions surround the actions that occur. The thesis brings light to the complexity and multiplicity of an audiovisual culture, where choir conductors in their use of different repertoires of action and designs constantly vary how they perform and illustrate the music. The results show how these actions afford various choices and conditions for the choir singers to learn and perform the music, how a collective and local musical language is constructed and how the dominant positionings of the conductors can be seen as productive leadership.
Att göra plats för traditioner. Antagonism och kunskapsproduktion inom folk- och världsmusik
(2020-03-03) Hedin Wahlberg, Ingrid
The aim of this thesis is to critically examine the educational area of folk and world music within higher education in Sweden, with a focus on questions of knowledge, power, and governance. The study is ethnographic and the data were produced in the 2016–2017 period through observations of lessons, concerts, and examinations in three educational environ- ments, and through interviews with teachers and students. The analysis identified two antagonistic discourses: music as cultural context and music as autonomous. Techniques of self-governance within a pastoral power mechanism served to disconnect the learning process from the teacher and put responsibility on the student. Two pedagogical positions, the master–apprentice position and the coaching position, were simultaneously present within the educational area, and educational and musical boundaries were drawn between folk and world music education and western art music education. The educational area is characterized through entwining constructions of tradition, place, and identity, and through teaching practices reproducing norms within western folk music. Conflicting interests within the educational area are discussed in relation to questions of power and governance within musical learning. In conclusion, the educational area of folk and world music within higher music education is understood as producing knowledge centred on musical constructions of place.
Att peka ut det osynliga i rörelse: En didaktisk studie av taktart i musik
(2010-09-30) Wallerstedt, Cecilia
The aim of this study is to examine what constitutes being able to discern time in music, as seen from the learner’s perspective. Listening is not only regarded as a higher mental process but also as a core skill in musical ability. Participants in the empirical study are 3 teachers and 27 children in a preschool class and in primary school. Three lessons aimed at facilitating children’s ability to discern time are analysed. The data also consists of interviews with the children. The theoretical framework for the study is variation theory. Four critical aspects of the object of learning have become apparent: to be able to discern stressed beats, the auditory meaning of keeping time and the continuous aspect of pulse; of critical importance is also to be able to separate the metrical aspect of the music from different forms of representing it, such as clapping or drumming. It is suggested that mediating tools, such as time, constitute important learning objects in music education. The teacher’s task is to point out what is invisible in the music and also what is invisible to the children. This can be done with the help of visual representations of auditory aspects, patterns of variation and verbal dialogue.
Att skapa ordning för det estetiska i skolan. Diskursiva positioneringar i samtal med lärare och skolledare
(2006) Lindgren, Monica
Recent rhetoric on aesthetic activities of the school has gained an increasingly large scope over the last few decades in Swedish texts on educational politics and educational science. In relation to the questioning of the Government-controlled school, the fi eld of school and aesthetics is studied from an interest in how ideals of knowledge are created and preserved through specifi c control strategies. The starting point of the study is that the fi eld of aesthetics and school is created in discursive practices through linguistic interaction by way of specifi c power techniques. The aim is to identify and describe current discourses relating to the aesthetic activities in compulsory school, and to problematise these with regard to power and control. Data-collection included individual and group interviews with 55 teachers and head teachers from seven compulsory schools during the years 2002–2004. The participants conducted the discussions concerning “the aesthetic activities of the school” by themselves. In the analysis, fi ve discourses concerning the construction of legitimacy surrounding the aesthetic activities of the school were identifi ed and subsequently fi ve discourses concerning the construction of legitimacy surrounding the aesthetic competence of the teachers. The result shows that the discourses might be construed as being based on more comprehensive discourses signifi cant to our time; education for freedom and exercising social control in the name of aesthetics. The idea of the inherent power of aesthetic activities to alter a person’s character and capability of leading a “good life” may be said to fi t in well with a time of striving for free and harmonious citizens in tune with an accepted social behaviour. In conclusion, from this message the teachers are portrayed not as more or less competent professionals but as free and exemplary persons.
En avestetiserad skol- och lärandekultur. En studie om lärprocessers estetiska dimensioner
(2015-03-02) Hansson Stenhammar, Marie-Louise
In this dissertation teaching and learning is studied based on the concepts of arts-based learning processes and the methods of art. I discuss the ontology of arts-based learning processes in relation to arts methods and how that relationship can be related to the learning processes that are made visible in the classroom work of a 5th grade class in a Swedish Primary school. Learning and knowledge are also addressed from a sociocultural perspective and within a social constructionist theoretical framework, based on Lev Vygotskij’s theories on the interplay between thinking and language, and the relationship between reproduction and creativity as a prerequisite for development and learning. The main study was preceded by a pilot study in which a portfolio method was tested in three classes in Primary school, grades 2-6. The experience gained from the pilot study led to an ethnographically influenced methodology and method in the main study. The main study is a case study where data from 33 participants were produced over a period of 4 weeks through daily field studies in all subjects on the schedule (with the exception of physical education and health), observations and teacher and student interviews. In order to deepen and gain a perspective on the analysis of the field notes and interviews, they are discussed in relation to artistic, psychological and teaching and learning perspectives, as well as in relation to a poststructuralist view of language. The results show evidence of a de-aestheticised school and learning culture in the sense that the teaching, regardless of the subject, primarily focuses and produces a way of thinking on learning and knowledge formation which is based on a reproducing process of quantitative character. The results also indicate that there are meaning-making actions where pupils describe learning that requires ingenuity, ability to illustrate and imagine, as well as to combine past experiences with new impressions through reflection. These descriptions are identified as innovative, configurative and reflective actions.
Barns musikkomponerande i tradition och förändring
(2012-07-19) Lagergren, Anniqa
This thesis focuses on education at Swedish community music and arts schools and at primary schools. The aim of the study is to contribute to knowledge formation within the field of music education by examining how children make music in an institutional context and how the development of new approaches in teaching and learning affect how children practise music. This is studied by observing what happens when children aged 9 to 12, compose music when they have access to digital tools in a community music and arts school and in a primary school – with specific focus on how composing tasks take shape under varying contextual and interpersonal conditions. 13 children from a community music and arts school and 21 children from a primary school participated in the study. In order to gather material for this study a survey was undertaken to examine the children’s experiences of music, instruments and digital tools. In order to observe and examine composing activities and the music the children had composed, these sessions were recorded on video. The theoretical framework for the study is based on a sociocultural perspective. The results indicate contextual-related differences between the activities in the community music and arts school and the primary school. The differences are observed in the activities and the music the children compose. By addressing interpersonal-related differences the reason why some groups of children undertake the task of composing and some groups of children do not undertake this task can be examined further.
Before Sound: Transversal Processes in Site-Specific Sonic Practice
(2018-10-24) Stjerna, Åsa
This doctoral research explores the capacity of site-specific practices of sound installation to bring about transformation. It claims that in order to understand this capacity, we need to address the complexity of the transversal processes that make up artistic practices in this field, and understand that these transversal processes in fact precede sound. This includes understanding site-specificity as a complex, affective practice spanning across and connecting the material, social, discursive, artistic, and technical realms at the same time in a given situation in public space. Based on experiences from the author’s site-specific practice of sound installation, the thesis explores three approaches, and a series of related conceptual tools, in order to articulate the nuances of such transversal processes. These approaches, informed by a philosophy of immanence, are: mapping the affective lines, establishing new connections, and becoming non-autonomous. These three approaches look to re-negotiate some of the traditions, tendencies, and assumptions that dominate existing artistic sonic strategies. By exploring these three approaches, the dissertation suggests that it is possible to emphasize and practice transversality. This in its turn, has the potential to affect site-specific sonic practice artistically and in terms of research and education. Further, the dissertation shows how such an approach activates the ethical dimension of site-specific sonic practice. In particular, it involves dismantling the established separation between artist-subject, site, and work, in order to acknowledge the transversal affective relations between specific and diverse “bodies” with agencies—human as well as non-human. Beyond making visible the transversal nature of site-specific sonic practice, the explorations also open up future perspectives in thinking about the field. Not least, the research points towards the importance of overcoming hierarchical models of thought that dominate within a range of discourses and institutions central to art practice. Such a shift has the potential to radically transform the power structures that exist between commissioners of art, artists, a site’s own inherent agencies, and the visitor. Further, a change in our thinking of the type described in this work is also needed if we are to broaden existing dialogues on the artistic work, representation, material, and process.
Circumscribing Tonality: Upper Secondary Music Students Learning the Circle of Fifths
(2020-09-29) Rudbäck, Niklas
The fundamental motivation for this research project is that listening is central to all musical activities, and that semiotic means for visualizing, representing, and conceptualizing music are central to educational endeavors aimed at developing trained listening. There is, however, a lack of research on how such semiotic means are taught and learned, especially in the aural skills and music theory subjects and in secondary education. Therefore, this thesis investigates upper secondary music students’ processes of learning the circle of fifths and some associated music-theoretical concepts, and how those processes relate to the practice of aural skills and music theory education they are engaged in. I ask two research questions: 1. How do participants introduce, reproduce, and use the circle of fifths in the educational practice? 2. How do the specific ways in which the circle of fifths is introduced, reproduced, and used in the educational practice facilitate learning processes? Theoretically, the study draws on Vygotsky’s distinction between scientific and everyday concepts, and conceives of the circle of fifths as an inscription. The study takes a qualitative case study approach, combining interviews with students and observation of lessons, both documented by video. The analysis focuses on how participants interact, how they use inscriptions, and on how this constitutes co-constructive microgenetic processes. The analysis shows an educational practice where the circle of fifths is deployed as a tool for solving transposing problems, and where the ability to use mnemonic techniques to reproduce the diagram is highly valued. This focus on mnemonics and algorithms for problem-solving tends to foreground the logic of the representations, rather than the logic being represented, which makes it difficult for students to apply the algorithms on different kinds of problems. For example, circumscribing a group of chords in the diagram is used to represent a key. This makes it difficult to distinguish major and minor keys, and to conceive of key as a property of melodies. The circle of fifths is used to visualize central concepts, which are then used to explicate the circle of fifths, creating a circular conceptual system. While some circularity may be unavoidable given the previous knowledge of the students, it is proposed that the circularity is exacerbated by a lack of musical examples and formal definitions.
Claiming Space: Discourses on Gender, Popular Music, and Social Change
(2011-01-27) Björck, Cecilia
This compilation (portfolio) thesis explores how language is used in the context of gender-equity music initiatives to construct ideas about gender, popular music, and social change. More specifically, it examines the use of spatial metaphors and concepts revolving round the idea that girls and women need to “claim space” to participate in popular music practices. The empirical material consists of recorded round-table discussions with staff and participants from four different initiatives in Sweden, all with the explicit aim to increase the number of girls and women involved in popular music production and performance. They include a time-limited project by a youth organization, a grass-roots network for young musicians, an adult education course, and a pop/rock music camp for girls. A Foucault-inspired discourse analysis method in six stages was used to examine the data in terms of discursive constructions, discourses, action orientation, positionings, practice, and subjectivity. The results are organized in four themes – Sound, Body, Territory, and Room – and are discussed in relation to the concepts of performativity (Judith Butler), feminine body spatiality (Iris Marion Young), and gaze (Michel Foucault and others). The idea of “claiming space” is found to be involved in two dialectics. The first dialectic is formed by space-claiming understood as on the one hand extrovert self-promotion to be seen and heard, and on the other hand, as introvert focus on the musical craft. A second dialectic is formed by an ongoing struggle between empowerment and objectification, i.e., between being an acting subject and being the object of a disciplining gaze.
Concrete Fashion: Dress, Art, and Engagement in Public Space
(2009-12-11T11:41:02Z) Eriksson, Kajsa G.
This dissertation is an example of artistic research that explores the border between fashion design and contemporary art, in order to place situated bodily practices within the larger field of exploration and ideology, and to discover new formats. The activities engaged in explore the dressed body as a contemporary art medium, and the performances are carried out in public space and within everyday life. The research utilizes ‘the itinerary’, put forward by Certeau, as a metaphor for its prevailing methods. Three extensive art projects are presented within the dissertation: THREE, the Mirror Brooch, and Transformers. The first project concerns exhibition of the intermediate art form of the dressed body in the institutions of art, in this example, the gallery space; the second involves the presentation and use of the Mirror Brooch and examines art as an everyday life experience; and the third entails performances, staged in various locations and featuring the Transformer Jackets, and which are viewed as explorations into public space. The relationship between experience, on one hand, and representation and documentation, on the other, is treated as a translation; a translation meant to be ‘haunting’, and one which feeds energy back into the ongoing artistic process. The conclusion is that, both, performances and translations can be used to strengthen identity and engagement in public space.
Crying Rya: A Practitioner’s Narrative Through Hand Weaving
(2022-09-02) Röndahl, Emelie
This research project examines a repeated focus on time and slowness that I have experienced over years in connection with my hand-weaving practice using the Scandinavian technique of rya. Research through my own studio practice has led me to question a public image of weaving as time-consuming or slow and why temporality is attributed to the finished object, while I claim that it is only experienced in the making process. The claim of weaving as slow does not consider the body that weaves. I have wanted to highlight the myth of slowness in crafts and handweaving that does not always match my experience of the bodily knowledge of weaving. The aim is to use myself and my own practice as a hand-weaving artist to explore what is beyond these recurring concepts. My knowledge includes conditions such as frustration, boredom, irritation, as well as joy, curiosity and fascination. This research is thus motivated by what I see as incomplete knowledge, where my contribution consists of understanding my own practice, with transparency through my own knowledge development that I hope is useful more generally to future craft research. I have combined my writing with several rya projects made in recent years (2016–2022) structured from a personal perspective around my interest in reflection on artistic practices, my body in making and the figurative rya weaves I create. My research offers an example of how the connection between claims about weaving as slow and time-consuming collide with the experience of the development in the studio, as well as with my own body, in a hand-making practice.
Cuts and Continuities: Caste-subaltern imaginations of the Bengal famine of 1943
(2023-10-10) Ranjan, Ram Krishna
The Bengal famine of 1943, in which nearly three million people died, was man-made. A multitude of factors led to the famine, including British colonial policies, war, hoarding and profiteering by local elites and businesses, and existing faultlines of caste, class and gender. In recent years, scholars have focused on scrutinising the famine from an anti-colonial perspective. Still, a gap exists in exploring the intersectionality of caste-related subalternities and the famine. However, the immediate concern with filling this gap is ethical-methodological: even from the lens of caste-subaltern consciousness, how does one arrive at and share stories of the famine, and can they ever be ‘recovered’ and ‘represented’? This dilemma and tension animate this PhD in Artistic Practice. The main starting research question is – how can film practice, both as methodology and outcome of the inquiry, be mobilised to explore negotiated imaginations of the Bengal famine from a caste-subaltern perspective? Taking the Gramscian notion of subalterns as people/groups on the margins of history, subaltern studies, especially in India, have consistently focused on the need to write history from below. On the one hand, scholars and historians have looked at archival materials for erasures of subaltern history and foregrounded them. On the other hand, they have mobilised methods such as oral history to recuperate the subaltern histories. In a limited sense, this research adheres to this tradition. It looks at existing films on the Bengal famine and makes critical interventions in them to foreground the caste question, and it also aims to create ‘new’ material through collaborative fieldwork-filming and workshops. However, this PhD also departs from the tradition as it is not a recuperative historical project. It focuses on the creative, collaborative, and negotiated processes of imagining and engaging with that history. Through an iterative, collaborative and reflective film practice, this research suggests that filmmaking can foreground subaltern epistemologies and ontologies when it is not merely seen as product-oriented but also as a knowledge activity. Moreover, it can foreground an ethos of active and continuous negotiation and enable the emergence of multiple, contested and layered narratives. Lastly, this research proposes a shift away from ‘recovery’ and ‘representation’ of the ‘authentic’ caste-subaltern experiences of the famine and toward negotiated imagination.

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