Research through practices from the artistic field
Artistic research is a broad and varied area of knowledge, with its foundation in the explorative and experience-based practices developed within the artistic field.
Artistic research provides knowledge about and develops complex creative processes; it tests and further develops methods, theoretical concepts and materialities; it examines and deepens the understanding of art's field-specific opportunities and challenges, as well as how art, often in collaboration with other disciplines, contributes to an increased knowledge of the major societal issues.
Examples of research that we fund
Dancers do not own and have no copyright to dance works that they participate in creating. Even when they are mentioned as co-creators, they have no right to sell, reproduce, or destroy the works they have been co-creators of. The choreographer or institution who owns the copyright to a performace can replace a dancer despite the dancer being a co-creator of the performance.
This means that ownership, copyright, and control are separable experiences in dancers’ working lives. But if these parts are separable, what is then the difference between them? What is important in the categorisation of them, and how does this affect the dancer’s experience of artistic processes on and off the stage?
In this research project, we ask dancers to reflect on how experiences of ownership, copyright, and control affect their artistic work. The result may change the view of ownership and copyright in dance. By broadening the understanding of these terms to apply to all who are engaged in a dance performance – technicians, producers, and other colleagues on and off the stage – the project can contribute to the development of a fairer practice in all co-creating art and media.
Project title: Authorship Ownership and Control: Dancers´ Roles and Materials
Project leader: Chrysa Parkinson, Professor at the Stockholm University of the Arts
Read about the project in the Swecris database
External link.
Algorithms are playing an ever greater role in our lives. The affect our thinking and behaviour in many different ways. Using tools that highlight how complex algorithms work, we can take control of our own creativity.
It is such tools that I want to create with this project.
The version of reality that the algorithms show on our screens is narrow and ordered. Our goal is to find and describe strategies for using the algorithms in an alternative way. To achieve this, I will be creating a virtual landscape of geometry and algorithms, a sort of fantasy world where it is possible to explore the algorithms’ importance in everyday life and investigate mathematical structures – everything from fundamental algorithmic concepts, such as randomness to generative reality and spaces created with artificial intelligence.
The user shall be able to dive into a unique interactive environment that challenges traditional stereotypes. A central idea of the project is to use algorithms to make visible what digital systems currently displace: the displaced, the queer, and that which cannot be placed into easy categories.
The transdisciplinary strategy of the project provides important perspectives on art and science. The project, which is a collaboration between several higher education institutions and individual artists, is expected to result in a VR game, several installations, a documenting book, and a play wiki.
Project title: Ada Research: a Meta-Quest into the World of Algorithms.
Project leader: Palle Torsson, Senior Lecturer in Arts at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
Design is and has long been closely linked to industrialisation. In this way, design has contributed to increased material standard for many people, but also to over-production of waste, which in turn has led to enviromental damage in the form of microplastics in seas and bodies, for example. As design affects the well-being of both humans and other species, it is important to explore alternatives, without damaging effects.
With our design, we want to impact on design education. In collaboration with other knowledge traditions, we will conduct design experiments that combine historical references with post-anthropocentric and post-capitalist theories and practices. One goal of the experiments is to gain knowledge of how those who work with design in a better way can shoulder the focus on advances of the industrial heritage by caring for damaged living environments. Another goal is to develop and articulate skills, competences, capacities, and concepts that may be necessary for designing in an inclusive and democratic way.
The research environment consists of three experimental design studios that continue building on each other. In Studio 1, we work with alternative design histories. In Studio 2, we carry out three location-specific design experiments to investigate and develop design practices that go beyond a single-track focus on advances. Studio 3 focuses on joining together lessons from 1 and 2, and sharing them with international designers and design researchers. To create a dialogue with design actors and the general public, we will be publishing the work throughout the process, through means such as exhibitions.
Project leader: Åsa Ståhl, Researcher at the Department of Design, Linnaeus University
Project title:Design after progress: reimagining design histories and futures
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
With this project, we want to create new perspectives on Gothenburg’s colonial history. The starting point is the trading in sugar and sugar’s movement through the city during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Swedish involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade has long been more or less invisible in the public telling of history. In recent years, Sweden’s direct involvement in the slave trading island of Saint Barthélemy has begun to be recognised, but a large part of Sweden’s colonial history is still unprocessed, and the lack of research into the area is great. A number of families became rich from the colonial sugar trade in cities such as Gothenburg. The conditions that applied created the basis for Gothenburgh’s patron culture and how this expresses itself in the city even today.
This project aims to make the colonial structures in the city visible. Today, it is the perspective of the patrons that dominate local history and the historical archives. Our idea is to use these histories and archives as the basis for providing entirely different perspectives. Together with a network of local and international artists and researchers, we will be reconfiguring archive materials and create new narratives in a number of areas, with the help of stage performance methods. With their voices and views from different geographical, cultural, and artistic backgrounds, the artists and researchers will provide a multitude of perspectives on history. In this way, new histories about Gothenburg’s colonial past and current day can emerge, and an embodied, relational, and pluralistic history telling emerge.
Project leader: Cecilia Lagerström, Professor in Stage Forms of Expression at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg
Project title: The Sugargames. New perspectives on Gothenburg´s colonial history seen through the handling of sugar
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
Automation in the area of artificial intelligence and ‘smart infrastructures’ has given rise to a need for a type of heavy labourers that continuously maintain the systems. This work includes things such as categorising data required for training algorithms and cleaning up unwanted content on social networks. This is manual, poorly paid work that is often done in developing countries, far from Silicon Valley and the offices of start-up companies.
The purpose of my project is to make this relatively little noticed global labour force visible. What would happen if these aspects of automation work were seen as central to design and development instead of as marginal? How would such a perspective affect the overarching design process in education, research, and industry?
I will be using artistic research as a method to actively intervene in smart services and design processes, and with the help of creative means recognise unequal relationships between users, developers, and those who carry out hidden work. The research will be based on field studies among other methods. The knowledge will also be translated into artistic works.
Project leader: Linda Hilfling Ritasdatter, Researcher, Malmö University
Project title: The Labour of Automation
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
The purpose of my research is to investigate whether choreography and other bodily forms of expression can create preconditions for children with functional variations to explore and discover new ways of functioning in the world. The project involves children from six months to four years and closely related adults.
The project is based on the approach that functional variations are an aspect of human diversity rather than a pathological deviation. How can artistic research change normative demands on and assessments of children with various functional variations? How can choreography, dance, and artistic installations meet a complex heterogenous public and contribute with experiences that feel inclusive and meaningful for persons both with and without norm-breaking functionality?
My ambition is to contribute knowledge that can work as a reference and inspiration for artists and lead to new ways of creating and performing for these audience groups, and thereby enable inclusion, empowerment, and community.
The aim is to develop new artistic knowledge and art forms that challenge the view that is based on a dominant, normative culture and its lack of awareness of norm-breaking experiences and embodied knowledge.
Project leader: Dalija Acin Thelander, Researcher, Stockholm University of the Arts
Project title: Towards sensuous ecologies, Rethinking ableism in choreographic and movement practices
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
A lot of work has been done to create models for disseminating research. The investment in openness and free access to scientific material does, however, tend to overlook dissemination as a relational action.
The purpose of my project is to investigate possible dissemination strategies that observe tensions and overlaps between feminist methodology, de-colonial knowledge practices, and open access principles. To what extent can artistic research develop dissemination models that are not based on the artist as the sole sender, but are based on a collective art and knowledge practice? If we understand art creation as an action that sets up a relationship – how can this contribute to changing the prevalent dissemination concept?
In the project, I will explore what consequences standards for openness and transparency can have in different contexts, and develop frameworks and so on that promote new ways of sharing and disseminating research. The artistic research process will include a number of activities, such as workshops, interviews, conferences, and exhibitions.
The project is a collaboration with Constant, Association for Art and Media in Brussels (BE) and the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University (UK).
Project leader: Eva Weinmayr, Researcher, University of Gothenburgh/Academy of Art and Design
Project title: Ecologies of Dissemination: decolonial knowledge practice, feminist methodology and Open Access
Read about the project in the Swecris database External link.
Artistic research projects financed by The Swedish Research Council
Speculation workshop about the forgotten Forest Sami heritage External link.
Susanne Ewerlöf
Reading a Artistic Practice: a Nordic Reading Laboratory External link.
Elisabeth Hjort
Looking for Jeanne: to bear witness with film External link.
Petra Bauer
Sugar Walks: through the Decolonised Future of Gothenburg External link.
Cecilia Lagerström
Minority fears in monstrous forms: De-Orientalism as a Monster film. External link.
Mamdooh Afdile
Learning through Dancing External link.
Eleanor Bauer
Generative aesthetic systems for fashion - within or beyond the given External link.
Linnea Bågander
Technoecology - Performing Computation and Aesthetic Sensibility External link.
Alessandra Di Pisa
Weaving as Worlding Practices with Earth Beings (WeB) External link.
Svenja Keune
The Power of Recognition: Typography and Reading Beyond Visual Entanglements External link.
Johanna Lewengard
Tell it to the Field that she wants to be a Meadow External link.
Malin Vrijman
Nuclear Culture Deep Geologic Repositor External link.y
Eleanor Carpenter
Film(ed) Evidence: Strategies to Reclaim Justice External link.
Jyoti Mistry
Work freee future External link.
Erik Gandini
Whatever planet, let’s go! Or, TrollVision for Future External link.
Katarina Bonnevier
Entangled Musicianship and Minimal Algorithms - An Investigation of Agency in (and through) Algorithmic Interaction External link.
Palle Dahlstedt
The fourth part: Style, The I, ethics in a Swedish biographical history of a minority External link. Hanna Hallgren
Unworlding the Anatomical Theater in Uppsala External link.
Malin Heyman
The Black Beach: Moving Images between Swedish and Caribbean Shores External link.
Salad Hilowle
Choreotherapy External link.
Anne Juren
Autographic Double Exposure – the Narrative Characteristics of the Inked Black Line in Comics External link.
Gunnar Krantz
Decolonial Curatorial Methodology External link.
Natasha Marie Llorens
Authorship Ownership and Control: Dancers´ Roles and Materials External link.
Chrysa Parkinson
Beyond the Mental Fringes of Mourning in the Celestial Sphere of the Mind: Studies of Mental Empowerment External link.
Katarina Sikku Pirak
Ada Research: a Meta-Quest into the World of Algorithms External link.
Palle Torsson
The Social Infant – an artistic observation of infant sociality,
External link, opens in new window.Emanuel Almborg
Material cultures for interspecies cohabitation, External link, opens in new window.Martín Ávila
The Discontent of Voice and Image – The Task of The Audiovisual Translator, External link.Andjeas Ejiksson
The Curative Act, External link, opens in new window.Marie Fahlin
Death Data, External link, opens in new window.Gabriel Itkes-Sznap
The Sugargames. New perspectives on Gothenburg´s colonial history seen through the handling of sugar, External link, opens in new window.Cecilia Lagerström
Between Work and Text: A Musical Poetics of Ambiguity, External link, opens in new window.Ole Lützow-Holm
Colouring-in Sweden: revealing hybridity in Swedish past, External link, opens in new window.Nina Mangalanayagam
Design after progress: reimagining design histories and futures, External link, opens in new window.Åsa Ståhl
Towards sensuous ecologies, Rethinking ableism in choreographic and movement practices, External link.Dalia Acin Thelander
Ghost Platform: Generating the “Complex Image” of Data, Labour, and Logistics, External link.Benjamin Gerdes
Conviviality and Contamination, External link.Oscar Hemer
´Feminin repertoire´ and domestic music-making in Sweden 1780-1860: a counter-narrative for today´s musicians, External link.Anna Paradiso Laurin
Writing Visual Relations, External link.Imri Sandström
The Hidden Pantheon: Decoding Riddles in Baroque Keyboard Music, External link.Joel Speerstra
Sonic Fashion, External link.Vidimina Stasiulyte
FutureBrownSpace, External link.John-Paul Zaccarini
The Labour of Automation, External link.Linda Hilfling Ritasdottir
Landscape of Imagination, External link.Behzad Noori Khosravi
Troll perceptions in the Heartlands – artistic research to widen our imagination capacity External link.
Katarina Bonnevier
THE FUTURE THROUGH THE PRESENT External link.
Erik Gandini
Autistic Writing: A Mother Tongue External link.
Elisabeth Hjort
Lethe External link.
Anna Lindal
Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare External link.
Tintin Wulia
Mission: Artistic manager External link.
Carolina Frände
CRYING PINE TREE: The Writing of an Autoimmune Novel External link.
Simon Goldin
Reframing the encounter: From repressed colonial pile to a collaborative decolonial counter-archive External link.
Cecilia Järdemar
Touché: Animated images as knowledge External link.
Jeuno Jee Eun Kim
Extended Rephotography: immersive visualization of climate change External link.
Tyrone Martinsson
water is (non-)life: de-extractivist poetics in the semiperiphery External link.
Mirko Nikolić
Rhetorical and Romantic affective strategies in musical performance External link.
Maria Bania
Looking for Jeanne External link.
Petra Bauer
Interiors Matter – A Live Interior External link.
Ulrika Karlsson
What does the grid do? External link.
Matts Leiderstam
CLIMATE-JUST WORLDINGS External link.
Lina Persson
Folk Song Lab - deconstruction, improvisation and flow External link.
Susanne Rosenberg
The stork from Paramaribo flew away never to returne - transformation as "the Other" External link.
Filippa Arrias
The Expanded Book (stratigraphy, materiality, locality – towards material-specific methodologies) External link.
Cecilia Grönberg
Non-knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image External link.
Annika Larsson
Image as Site External link.
Ellen Johanne Røed
Un/making Matters - maintenance, repair and composting External link.
Åsa Ståhl
Systemic Improvisation - computer-mediated interaction models for decentralized music-making External link.
Palle Dahlstedt
Refuse to Kill - narratives about The Unarmed Men External link.
Björn Larsson
Loving Others, Othering Love: A Toolbox for Postcolonial and Feminist Artistic Practices External link.
Maria Lee Gerdén
Work a work External link.
Karin Hansson
TELE SCOPE External link.
Emma Nilsson
Performing with Plants External link.
Annette Arlander
Give me my perspective - Traces of the race biologists into the Sámi people´s home External link.
Katarina Pirak Sikku
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