22 Jun 2015

POROUS STUDIO: AMAGER at Psi #21 Fluid States North in Copenhagen

The Porous Studio Amager took place as part of PSI #21 Fluid States North in Copenhagen 18-21.June 2015. http://fluidstatesnorth.ku.dk

The Studio was more than usually porous this year, due to some last minute cancellations, and most of the conversations took place via Skype. The only person from the working group physically present in the studio was Annette Arlander, although Johanna Householder and Charlie Fox contributed via Skype and Anne Robinson was present at a parallell event in an adjacent room. As usual Nicholas Johnsson created a beautiful poster based on the actual room on site. The focus of the studio this year - unlike the original proposal, here below - was on the possible uses of the Research Catalogue as a platform for collaborating and sharing practice within the working group. Although the RC has been conceived of as a publication platform, and is used by Journal for Artistic Research, Journal for Sonic Studies and Ruukku - Studies in Artistic Research for that purpose, it is also a good (and free) space for archiving and sharing artistic research in all forms of digital files, images, sounds and videos. And the level of privacy can be chosen by the artist(s). Hopefully we can make use of this platform to share material before the next meeting of the working group. For those interested in participating, please familiarize yourself with and register on the RC, here http://www.researchcatalogue.net




This is the latest version of the proposal or plan (presented here for archival purposes):

POROUS STUDIO: AMAGER
A PROJECT OF THE ARTISTIC RESEARCH WORKING GROUP


The PSI Artistic Research Working Group proposes the fifth incarnation of the Porous Studio for PSI #21 Fluid states North Atlantic. A primary concern of the Artistic Research Working Group is to encourage and expand artist participation on the ground in PSI, to integrate a multiplicity of approaches to performance art into the discourse in PSI and to explore the relationship between artistic research and performance studies. This year, in accordance with the theme fluid sounds we want to focus on questions related to sound and site in artistic practice. To this end, we propose the Porous Studio: Amager.

The Porous Studio is designed to encourage discussions concerning artistic research related to performance art and/or artistic processes and to support experimental combinations of critical theory, philosophy, pedagogy, research and practice within the framework of the annual conference: a productive lab of experimentation at the porous borders of theory, practice and research. For more information about the concept, see http://psi-artistic-research-working-group.blogspot.fi

For this years meeting we will examine the role of site and sound in the creation of performance art by sharing our respective practices. We are excited about the possibility to investigate issues around intimacy and distance, participation through telematics as well as exploring the idea of audio papers, as indicated in the call. The final determination of participants depends upon the composition of the Working Group at the conference. We look forward to productive linkages with local artist and community groups as well. This is something we hope to work on with members of the Organizing Committee. If a praxis session is difficult to conceptualize within the structure, the porous studio could be compared with a workshop or an extended roundtable, which can result in one jointly produced audio paper or possibly several audio papers.

Contributors (to date):
Johanna Householder, will act as the convenor and present an overview of the development of the porous studio to date. She will also do something focusing on telematic presence, borrowing the title Presently Absent.

Ray Langenbach is currently working with infrasound technologies in different sites, with voice-based performance and other technologies. He would enjoy the opportunity to present his experiments in Copenhagen as part of the Artist Working Group.  

Charlie Fox will focus on sharing the experiences of 'making and developing' the artistic research practices that inform 'Detours2' with the title Detours 2 - Flatlands & Soundings. The work contains telematic and audio performance. http://detours2.com

Anna Allgulin will in her presentation Porous Theatre describe the role of the sound of words in the acting methodology she is developing based on the Stanislavsky-Vasiliev tradition.

Anne Robinson will' present Phonogenie': Sound Magic and invite a small group of participants to respond to the possibility of dis-orienteering through vocal performativity: lost at sea in the space between our island selves and contributing to a collectively transgressive, sonic archipelago. The workshop aims to experiment with rhythm, tempo and the time-bases of recording methods, developing call and response patterns and exploring polyphony.

Annette Arlander will present her project Trees Talk - a series of site-specific audio plays, and discuss the implications of such collaborations with vegetal life. If a holly or hazel can be found on Amager, she would be happy to create a small sound installation on site. 

SPACE, TIME & TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
A large open studio/performance/classroom with ample floor space of at least 80 square metres would be ideal. Some of us may also want to work outside. In previous conferences we have asked for 6 hours spread over two days – 2 x 3 hr. sessions. Each session will consist of participatory work, presentations of works in progress, exercises, screenings and discussion. In terms of equipment we need audio amplifier and speakers, video projector, one or two tables, about 20-30 moveable chairs and wifi access. Our audience/participants in the past have been up to around 20 people. In order to attract local participants we have usually made posters. Due to the exceptional character of the conference structure this year, we are happy to negotiate these requirements in accordance with the site and time schedule.
CONTACTS
Contact person: Annette Arlander annette.arlander@uniarts.fi
Convenor: Johanna Householder, Chair ARWG jact@sympatico.ca
Ray Langenbach raylangenbach@mac.com
Anna Allgulin annaallgulin@hotmail.com

CV:s
Johanna Householder has been making performances and other artwork in Canada since the late 70s. She was a member of the notorious satirical feminist performance ensemble The Clichettes, who performed across Canada and the US under variable circumstances throughout the 1980s. While The Clichettes practiced their own brand of pop culture detournment, Householder has maintained a unique performance practice, often collaborating with other artists. As one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, held biannually in Toronto, she has brought many international artists to the festival. She is keenly interested in the histories of performance, reperformance, and the effect that performance has had in contemporary art and new media. Her most recent works include Portrait of a Situation, which toured East Europe in June 2006 and Finland in 2007 and The Subject of Art: Badiou/Miller/Cobain performed in various forms and venues including the Interackje Festival in Poland and the Performance Studies International conference in Zagreb in 2009. Approximations 1-3, video works produced in collaboration with b.h. Yael, have screened in a number of international venues. Her work is also represented in Prêt à Emporter/Take Out: Performance Recipes for Public Space, edited by Christine Redfern for La Centrale, Montréal, 2004 and Radical Gestures, Feminism and Performance Art in North America by Jane Wark, 2006. http://apache.ocad.ca/faculty_biographies/bio.php?bid=1197&fac=art

Ray Langenbach (MFA, PhD) creates conceptual performances, convenes gatherings, documents aesthetic and social performance, and writes on cultural theory, visual art, performance and queer culture. His installations, video and performance art works have been presented in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific. He co-convened the Perform: State: Interrogate: Performance Studies international #10 Conference (Singapore 2004), serving on the Psi Board of Directors from 2003-2005 and from 2009-20013. He curated/co-curated the 6th & 7th Kuala Lumpur Triennials, Satu Kali International Performance Art Symposium (2006) and three Asian Art and Performance conferences in Helsinki (2012-14). Langenbach is Professor of Performance Art and Theory, University of the Arts Helsinki. His installations and performance art works have been presented in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) Nevada Museum of Art, National Centre for the Arts, Mumba, Artspace, Sydney, the Asia Pacific Triennale (Queensland Art Gallery), Werkleitz Biennial, the Gwangju Biennale, Malaysia National Art Gallery, Singapore Art Museum, Kiasma, Future of Imagination Festival (Singapore), Asiatopia (Bangkok), ArtContact (Helsinki), and the Hong Kong Art Centre, among others. 

Charlie Fox is artistic director of counterproductions. Counterproductions brings together artists, artistic practices, the public and non-professional producers in collaborative projects to generate new artistic culture, which is informed by and reforms contemporary artistic culture; creating work that offers the potential of an art for all by conjoining contemporary art practice, theory and method, to a street level understanding and appreciation of artistic expression. Recent projects, international exchange and collected activities include CGTV, Detours, Haemogoblin Society and DerCentreDerSpace (Marseille 2013/14). Currently counterproductions is developing Detours2 London, an artist-designed cross London walking trail (2014-2016).
http://counterproductions.me  http://charliefox.org  http://decentrederspace.org

Anna Allgulin is an actress and theatre director. Her doctoral research deals with 'the speaking actor' developing her personal experience, which she had mainly in the Stanislavsky tradition - namely the lineage of Knebel-Vasiliev - as she spent about a decade acting in Anatolij Vasiliev's Moscow theatre in the end of last century. She graduated in GITIS, Moscow 1994, and later also in TeaK, Helsinki 1999. She is trying to systematize a common 'method - technique and thinking' for acting, directing and teaching theatre, where the main focus and center lies in 'what to do with the words'. All the rest one can find on stage - physical movements, mise-en-scène, music, silence, acting, non-acting, concrete feelings and perceptions, abstract thoughts and phantasies, different kinds and grades of presence, different kinds and grades of contact, immanence, transcendence, etcetera, even lightening - is in her method emerging only from 'actors pronouncing words together' and from precise rules for that, defined and developed during her research. She ran during a couple of years in the early 2000'ths Blidö Biografteater in the Stockholm archipelago. Her research performances in Finland are: "Grönholms Metod", "Sonen", "Madde Min Vän" and "O!DiPUSS.A.S."

Anne Robinson’s practice is concerned with the perception and politics of time passing, working experimentally with duration, frame, exposure, paint, sound and movement. She recently curated the Over Time project, funded by Arts Council England, featuring pieces by eleven contemporary artists working on the Thames foreshore including soundscapes. Activities in in 2014 include: The Result of This Deception, song-film for Lumen Festival, London, solo show Vital Excess, Cass London, Thrashing in the Static, song-film in Ghost On the Wire, Deptford X 2014 and Folkestone Triennial Fringe. She presented the paper: Enlarger Than Life: Song-Films and Irrational Gestures psi20 in Shanghai. Other talks included GHost 13 at University of the Arts, CSM and Feminism and Subjectivities Research Group at Chelsea School of Art. Curatorial projects include: Time, Flesh and Nerve, One More Time and Supernormal festival. In 2013, she made Inside Out Blues for a Counterproductions residency during Capital of Culture year in Marseilles and presented at psi 19, Stamford. She works with film as an artist educator, currently senior lecturer at LondonMetropolitan University and completed a practice-led PhD on temporality entitled The Elusive Digital Frame and the Elasticity of Time in Painting in 2012. www.annerobinsonartwork.org


Annette Arlander (DA) is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue, one of the pioneers of Finnish performance art and a trailblazer of artistic research. She is educated as theatre director, Master of Arts (philosophy) and Doctor of Art (theatre and drama). Arlander was the first to be awarded a doctorate from the Theatre Academy, Helsinki (in 1999). In 2001 she was invited as professor of performance art and theory to instigate the MA degree program in performance art and theory (or Live Art and performance studies, as it is called today) a position she held until 2013. In 2007-2009 she was also head of the research department or Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke) at the Theatre Academy. Arlander’s research interests are related to artistic research, performance-as-research, performance studies, site-specificity and the environment. Her artwork is focused on performing landscape by means of video or recorded voice, and moves between the traditions of performance art, video art and environmental art. See http://annettearlander.com