The thesis engages in Choreography and Dance Technique by delineating the concepts and practices that the artistic research project MODUL has generated. A modular method of choreographing is articulated. The MODUL method of choreography starts by making a topographical movement analysis of the context that the work engages with. This analysis results in an identification of the different agencies at work within the context approached. They are considered as Choreographic Agents and as elements of the modular assemblage. The choreographic act then performed consists of a re-articulation of the relations between the different elements. The MODUL method links movement practice and art production as the topographical movement analysis is also applied to, and conceptualised through, the body. In terms of dance technique the MODUL method works with the same topographical movement analysis to explore bodily functionalities as Choreographic Agents. The technique is called Body-Self Attunement and aims at tuning the self, understood as the symbolic body, with the biological body. Body-Self Attunement does not try to unify the symbolic body and the biological body but affirms the gap as generative. The term Generative Choreography is coined in order to emphasise the performative aspect of choreography that is not defined by what it is, but what it does. / <p>QC 20140519</p>

Este trabalho se propõe a analisar um grupo de oito obras de minha trajetória artística que se constroem enquanto respostas autorais a leituras de obras de outros artistas e autores. As concepções de leitura e autoria tanto se chocam, produzindo o termo leitoria, quanto se afastam, explorando os diversos matizes entre as duas tarefas. A reunião das obras no solo conceitual proposto é posterior às suas realizações em situações e tempos distintos. Desvinculadas de seus contextos originais, fundam uma nova vizinhança que salienta os seus aspectos comuns, já que se agregam aqui por afinidade. Não se pretende, com isso, reduzir as obras à narrativa desenhada, mas multiplicar as possibilidades de leitura que compreendem, evidenciando assim a singularidade com que cada uma se relaciona com o discurso produzido. Para tratar os múltiplos deslocamentos traçados entre obras, autores, textos e contextos, a tese lança mão de diferentes concepções de tradução, entendida como uma ação complexa e que reivindica visibilidade. Finalmente, o texto busca demonstrar a relação problemática com o ambiente acadêmico onde se inscreve ao abordar a ideia de pesquisa artística e as contradições que o tema abriga no cenário da arte contemporânea. / This thesis analyses a group of eight works of my artistic career which were thought of as authorial responses to readings of works by other artists and authors. The conceptions of reading and authorship colapse, creating the expression leitoria (reawriting); as well as expand the space between them, exploring several hues of that distance. Gathering these works on this conceptual ground is posterior to the specific times and situations for which they were designed. Dettached from their original contexts, they structure a new propinquity which emphasises what they share in common, since they are here joined by affinity. The intention is not to reduce the works to the given narrative, but multiply the possibilities of readings they comprehend, bringing light to the singularities with which they relate to the discourse created. To approach the multiple relations drawn among works, authors, texts and contexts, the thesis uses different conceptions of translation, understood as a complex task which claims visibility. Finally, the text brings about the problematic relation between artistic research and the academic field where this work is inscribed, approaching the contradictions this issue hosts in the contemporary art scene.

Este trabalho se propõe a analisar um grupo de oito obras de minha trajetória artística que se constroem enquanto respostas autorais a leituras de obras de outros artistas e autores. As concepções de leitura e autoria tanto se chocam, produzindo o termo leitoria, quanto se afastam, explorando os diversos matizes entre as duas tarefas. A reunião das obras no solo conceitual proposto é posterior às suas realizações em situações e tempos distintos. Desvinculadas de seus contextos originais, fundam uma nova vizinhança que salienta os seus aspectos comuns, já que se agregam aqui por afinidade. Não se pretende, com isso, reduzir as obras à narrativa desenhada, mas multiplicar as possibilidades de leitura que compreendem, evidenciando assim a singularidade com que cada uma se relaciona com o discurso produzido. Para tratar os múltiplos deslocamentos traçados entre obras, autores, textos e contextos, a tese lança mão de diferentes concepções de tradução, entendida como uma ação complexa e que reivindica visibilidade. Finalmente, o texto busca demonstrar a relação problemática com o ambiente acadêmico onde se inscreve ao abordar a ideia de pesquisa artística e as contradições que o tema abriga no cenário da arte contemporânea. / This thesis analyses a group of eight works of my artistic career which were thought of as authorial responses to readings of works by other artists and authors. The conceptions of reading and authorship colapse, creating the expression leitoria (reawriting); as well as expand the space between them, exploring several hues of that distance. Gathering these works on this conceptual ground is posterior to the specific times and situations for which they were designed. Dettached from their original contexts, they structure a new propinquity which emphasises what they share in common, since they are here joined by affinity. The intention is not to reduce the works to the given narrative, but multiply the possibilities of readings they comprehend, bringing light to the singularities with which they relate to the discourse created. To approach the multiple relations drawn among works, authors, texts and contexts, the thesis uses different conceptions of translation, understood as a complex task which claims visibility. Finally, the text brings about the problematic relation between artistic research and the academic field where this work is inscribed, approaching the contradictions this issue hosts in the contemporary art scene.

This dissertation identifies a strategy of artistic inquiry within contemporary media art practice. It applies the concept of material that acts in an agential capacity, generating performative acts. It argues that the emergent potentials of materials and their interconnectedness with the compositional layers of a work can facilitate modes of effecting change in the artistic system. Through the theoretical investigation of the production processes of physical structures and environments, the thesis focuses on the compositional dynamics within which materials actively perform. It examines how Lars Spuybroek’s architectural design method of Material Machines (2004), and both the tactile potential as well as tactical uses of materials as generators to the formtaking process, might describe an open and active artistic strategy for employing the experimental capacities of such materialization processes. Building on philosophical and conceptual arguments that trace concepts of agency (Bruno Latour’s Actant-Network theory) and enactment (Karen Barad’s concept of intra-acting), the thesis introduces the two installation works ANI_MATE (described as a performative pneumatic stage machine) and ON TRACK (described as a mechanic-robotic installation). These apply the introduced artistic strategies. The analyses of these two artworks traces the particular capacities of the materials involved (respectively, their elasticity or viscosity) to negotiate forces of physical movement, which effect the system to transiently or irreversibly transform. ANI_MATE is a machine that is artist-operated and that explores the relationship between liveanimation procedures and the transformability and flexibility of its material environment. In contrast, ON TRACK’s performative machine ecology removes human agency. The machines act autonomously, giving rise to chance in the artistic system and allowing agency to emerge from the dynamic interconnectivity between materials, parts, and processes, eventually producing an entropic scenario of spilling resources. The thesis concludes that, in the context of a post digital paradigm in-development, such artistic practice offers a new strategy for an emergent aesthetics within contemporary physical-digital performance.

In the thesis LIFE ACCORDING TO THEM I deal with beauty blogs on YouTube. I use my own pieces of work, especially video recordings of performances for the camera or for the audience, which were created during the entire master’s degree study. Their further processing together with ideas and experiences leads to an audio-visual collage, that will accompany the final performative lecture. The aforementioned collage may also exist as a separate video-essay expressing my experiences with the topic of blogging.

The demand for ‘green’ resources is growing, and in response to this, industrial expansion in northern Sweden is accelerating, leaving little room for a thorough examination of long-term consequences from ecological and social perspectives. Resource extraction in Sweden is nothing new, and some areas still deal with the consequences of previously hastily induced industrialism. This research explores how embodied experiences can be utilized to convey the hidden narratives of a riverine landscape affected by extractive industries, more precisely the area around Áhkájávvre situated in the Luleå River, and how situating oneself within these embodied narratives can contribute to raising public awareness of their ecological and cultural impacts. To support this research question, theories of situated knowledge are introduced, which advocate for the subjective knowledges of the landscape’s ecology and the embodiment of the agents in it. By highlighting the perspectives of its ecology, this thesis aims to connect the urban and the hinterlands - the operational landscapes and change how we view them. The research is conducted through interviews and case studies, followed by a design-as- research methodology, a process-based project which explores various methods of artistic research representation as mediators to situate the observer in the subject and embody the knowledge of the site. It is explored through two perspectives: the area of disturbance (the operational landscape) and the disruptor (us), through the scope of social and ecological dimensions, represented by ‘the people’ and ‘the soil’. This research presents scenarios and explorations aimed at increasing connection to, and raising public awareness of, resource extraction, both historical and ongoing. These scenarios highlight the local effects of the affected area, and the interconnectedness of operational landscapes and urban environments. This research contributes to the understanding of the need for embodied experiences in developing an understanding of the hidden consequences of resource extraction on operational landscape, and to situate oneself in its context.

The purpose of this study is to show transitions between verbal and visual meaning in ordinary language, based on philosophical concepts and conceptual artworks. It offers models for artistic research and collaboration in arts and science. Shared experiences in ordinary language are fundamental to this thesis and make it an accessible and trans-disciplinary study. Language as such, is approached from different practices and disciplines and becomes the central object of investigation. The research introduces a general set of mechanisms in language, stemming from the Wittgensteinian notion of the language-game. The study examines the possibility of a meeting between the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the writer Gertrude Stein in a linguistic, biographical and poetic sense. The main claim is that Wittgenstein and Stein share the understanding of language as a game, which is a fruitful principle for artistic and poetic production. Gertrude Stein developed a dimension in her writing which partly succeeds in showing this notion of creating meaning-as-practice and making sense on the ‘edge’ of conventional meaning. In this way she augments Wittgenstein’s idea of the language-game and puts it into practice, tests its limits on her own language and on the reader’s habits. The artistic works represented in this thesis are equally experimental tests of Wittgenstein’s meaning-as-use hypothesis. They put his ideas into practice. They extend the research with strategies from the arts, poetry and fiction. The methodology of the research is based on Wittgenstein’s notion of meaning as context-dependent use. This concept defines the meaning of a word by the way it is used in a specific context. This perspective is then challenged with visual artistic work. This hypothesis is tested throughout the research by applying tools and concepts from several practices, like computer linguistic tools, collaboration with writers and artists from other fields and autonomous visual and poetic work to augment the study of facts. Conceptual artworks, often produced in collaboration, function as language experiments, or language-games. The Wittgensteinian differentiation between what can be shown and what can be said is examined. The context of the research lies in the practices developed as a conceptual artist in which theoretical research informs artistic practice. This thesis, on the border between verbal and visual language, is founded upon antecedent studies in philosophy of language and the practice of Fine Arts. Against this background the research focuses on the relationship between word, context and meaning: issues of communication, ordinary language, words and their composition, context-based meaning, naming visual phenomena, examination of word-and-world-relationships and vocabularies. Main sources are the major works and biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gertrude Stein, the critical work of Marjorie Perloff, language philosophers concerned with ordinary language and the contrastive corpus linguistic approach. The results of this research are generated by several interdisciplinary productive methods. Artworks, poetic and scientific work, all of which employ modes of language, and whose their domains overlap. Additionally, the notion of meeting acts as model metaphor for the development of a solid trans-disciplinary methodology for research between science and the arts. One major result of comparing their ideas on language is reflected in the meeting of the language used by Wittgenstein and Stein. Their meeting is materialized in the computer generated Shared Vocabulary, which is a list of words which both Wittgenstein and Stein used in their writing. It applies linguistic tools from contrastive corpus linguistics to compare their vocabularies (corpora), which offers new methods for investigating the works of the philosopher Wittgenstein and writer Stein. Generally, this thesis may act as an introduction to language as ideal fundament for interdisciplinary study. The application of the principle of the language-game (Wittgenstein) is a significant of displaying possible strategies for artists and researchers who work transdisciplinarily. The research results directly inform practice and practitioners from other fields, which means that collaboration is central to the research. It implies that language permeates every sort of research, art and its discourse. It also suggests that the meaning of words and images depend on their use, which extends the Wittgensteinian meaning-as-use hypothesis to visual language. The findings of the research on vocabularies are quite specific, but they overlap with offering simple general mechanisms of the language-game. The consequent alliance of the discussion with the language of the everyday makes the research a general contribution to everyone who is genuinely interested in language and the arts.

This artistic, practice-based thesis has been developed based on the idea that design creates social and ideological change. From this perspective, Body Acts Queer — Clothing as a performative challenge to heteronormativity introduces an artistic way of working with and exploring the performative and ideological functions of clothing with regard to gender, feminism, and queer. The thesis presents this program for experimental fashion design—exemplified through a series of artistic projects—while also discussing the foundations of such an approach and the different perspectives that have affected the program and its artistic examples. Working with clothing and fashion design through artistic projects using text and bodies, this thesis transforms queer and feminist theory into a creative process and, by looking into bodily experiences of clothing, Body Acts Queer investigates its performative and ideological functions, with a focus on cultural, social, and heteronormative structures. Body Acts Queer suggests a change in the ways in which bodies act, are perceived, and are produced within the fashion field, giving examples of—and alternatives to—how queer design practice can be performed. In this thesis, queer design is explored as an inclusive term, containing ideas about clothing and language, the meeting point between fiction and reality, and the ability to perform interpretation and bodily transformations—where pleasure, bodily experiences, and interaction create a change.

No. 1-2-3-4! (Motoric Key) consist of a weave series and a printed edition. Each piece with the outline 21x21 cm, a size similar to a hand, or a handkerchief, generic in the relation to a blueprint of a weave sample or a leaflet; a utilitarian object to use and be used. An economical outline that enables a mobility and simplicity of direction. A one made as one, one, one, through two years. A handkerchief tool. Potential efficiency, tunes and characters, stating the importance of listening as a way of working.

The thesis engages in Choreography and Dance Technique by delineating the concepts and practices that the artistic research project MODUL has generated. A modular method of choreographing is articulated. The MODUL method of choreography starts by making a topographical movement analysis of the context that the work engages with. This analysis results in an identification of the different agencies at work within the context approached. They are considered as Choreographic Agents and as elements of the modular assemblage. The choreographic act then performed consists of a re-articulation of the relations between the different elements. The MODUL method links movement practice and art production as the topographical movement analysis is also applied to, and conceptualised through, the body. In terms of dance technique the MODUL method works with the same topographical movement analysis to explore bodily functionalities as Choreographic Agents. The technique is called Body-Self Attunement and aims at tuning the self, understood as the symbolic body, with the biological body. Body-Self Attunement does not try to unify the symbolic body and the biological body but affirms the gap as generative. The term Generative Choreography is coined in order to emphasise the performative aspect of choreography that is not defined by what it is, but what it does.