Artmonitor avhandling - Böcker

I denna avhandling står slöjdlärarens kommunikation i centrum. Genom olika typer av dokumentation och intervjuer analyseras och beskrivs slöjdlärares kommunikation när en handlingsburen kunskap förmedlas. Åtta olika kommunikationsformer identifieras och beskrivs. Vidare analys av de olika kommunikationsformerna visar att det finns olika sätt att använda dem i förhållande till fiktivt kommunikation (en ”som om handling”) eller konkret kommunikation (i handling ). En slöjdlärares val av kommunikationsform har stor didaktisk betydelse. Läraren som väljer att använda sig av konkret visande som inledande instruktion skapar flera möjligheter för den lärande att ta till sig instruktionen. Det konkreta kräver inte samma förförståelse som det fiktiva där den lärande kan behöva någon form av förförståelse för att kunna ”läsa av” det som instrueras. Medvetenhet om kommunikationsform i relation till vad som ska förmedlas och vem som ska ta emot instruktionen är avgörande för utfallet.

The purpose of the research has been to explore the creative possibilities in applying strategies derived from the domain of digital media and glitch art to a range of processes in the domain of textiles—specifically weaving, knitting, bobbin lace—with particular attention to the role of notations and coding in both domains. The enquiry presented in this dissertation is based upon the proposition that there are creative possibilities that arise when approaches and strategies from new-media and glitch art are transferred to some textile processes, and that this is possible because objects of new media and textile objects share features not limited to the grid. The research focuses on strategies from digital media and glitch art in the domain of computing and applies these strategies directly to the code and structures in the domain of textiles. The textile objects share some features of new-media objects: formal representations (making them subject to algorithmic manipulation), a separation of content and interface, objects can be easily scaled, and they are open for hacking, which is a repurposing of the code. Strategies employed in this research include developing algorithms to generate structures and behaviour, deliberately inserting error into autonomous systems and exploring the aesthetic spaces generated by the error systems, exploring the manipulation of coded objects, understanding aesthetic spaces generated by algorithms as navigable spaces. In this research, these transfers have been tested and conducted through an applied process, creating artefacts of the artistic process, such as artworks, tools for creating artworks, and trial pieces to test techniques and strategies. These artefacts have been produced within the digital domain and the textile domain. The practical works realised in this way demonstrate the viability and the generative potentials for artistic and design practice that this transfer of strategies between domains yields. The work presented in this dissertation is thus an initial set of experiments laying the groundwork for future explorations employing this transfer of strategies, based on innovative cross-relations and exchange between the domain of computing and the domain of textile production.

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.

"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." Marina Pereira Cyrino

"Denna bok är den andra delen av min konstnärliga doktors-avhandling i filmisk gestaltning. Den första delen består av en essäfilm, Melankoliska fragment (73 minuter). Genom att göra den ville jag undersöka hur en konstnärlig filmpraktik fungerar som ett tänkande. Vad innebär det att jag med hjälp av och genom den filmiska processen försöker generera ett tänkande? Och hur påverkar det den filmiska gestaltningen och uttrycket? Filmen i sig är att betrakta som ett svar på dessa frågor. Filmen iscensätter ett tänkande i och genom en konstnärlig process. Texterna i denna bok behandlar tillkomsten och arbetet med filmen, liksom min undersökning i film som tänkande." Patrik Eriksson

"In my research, I consider craft as a discipline that is extremely elastic in terms of propositions and positions. Today craft exists in a highly dynamic space — what I will refer to as the World Wide Workshop — and is essential for noticing, caring, mending and negotiating the complex relationships that individuals and communities have with their sociopolitical, economic and natural environment. By moving away from the self-reliance implied by traditional studio-based craft practice, I use situated making and situated learning together with and in response to others, as methods that enable me to pay attention and respond to my surroundings, and to observe connections and entanglements offered by craft — what I will refer to as a craft of noticing. This thesis considers craft’s role and potential in a world that is interconnected, globalised, and disrupted by human-caused phenomena. The research focuses, firstly, on understanding how craft can be both a connector and a method for noticing, and for problematising complex global production and economic issues in today’s postindustrial society. I approach craft as both a physical but also a virtual entity and explore where and how craft-based disciplines are learned, passed on, practised, and shared. Secondly, I look for ways craft can play a strategic role in revealing hidden histories and behaviours. In the process, I have observed how the awareness of entanglement in a complex world system, where it is no longer possible to think in terms of opposites or dichotomies, challenges an anthropocentric worldview and decentralises the human in our relationships to nature and to material resources. Through my own methodological propositions and personal reflections on making within the realms of contemporary craft and jewellery, the thesis aims to build from the craft of noticing (Tsing 2015) to propose actions of response-ability (Haraway 2016) in the service of a praxis of care and resurgence in a time of environmental crisis. My practice questions our roles and response-abilities as makers in an entangled, damaged world and attempts to move away from a linear extract-produce-discard model to a more circular approach (Tsing 2005, 2015; Haraway 2016), thus testing the possibilities offered by a harvest-care-remediate model." Nicolas Cheng

"In the last thirty years, there has been an increased interest in supporting children’s participation in society, where the results of these practices may or may not have contributed to more democratic outcomes. In this thesis, I focus on the democratic character and potential of the 'processes' driving such practices, and their outcomes, which, to date, have mostly been overlooked. My inquiry is situated within the context of participatory design with children and explores how adult-initiated practices that work on children’s participation in society, can, in addition to producing a democratic outcome only, also be actualised as a democratic process. Here, a 'democratic process' is understood as a process based on child–adult interactions that respect fundamental democratic values such as freedom, equality, and justice. My design practice, in this case, the 'Public Play' project, formed the core of my fieldwork and empirical material. 'Public Play' was a series of five participatory design workshops where groups of children and I worked together on children’s participation in public space in Belgium and Sweden. A new research approach: 'research through design' interventions was developed and used for the exploring of “openness” (Eco, 1989[1962]) as well as the study of its effects by analysing some key workshop situations through a theoretical framework drawn from Gaver et al. (2003). The thesis foregrounds how ambiguity — the quality of being open to the simultaneous coexistence of several meanings — can be a resource for the actualising of a pluralistic democratic process. Exploring ambiguity revealed both the adult designer and the child participants being enabled to express their meanings when defining the content, roles, and agenda of the process, and that the actualising of a democratic process also requires certain ways of negotiating and fulfilling responsibilities. The thesis also highlights the 'particip-actor' role the children can play, as well as new roles for the facilitator when designing 'for' and 'with' ambiguity. Through my inquiry, an 'ambiguity approach' comes into being, which helps designers work with ambiguity in a more controlled way, as well as providing them with a strategic framework informed by learning-by-doing, learning-over-time, and learning-from-peers."

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.

The aim of this thesis is to critically scrutinize, identify and problematize discourses in music education within teacher education towards younger ages. The study explores how teaching practice and examinations in music are constructed, and what kind of strategies are used to handle the dilemmas that emerge in music teaching practice. Theoretically, the study is based on social constructionist theory, and the thesis deploys a discourse psychological methodology and approach. The data consist of observational films and field notes, and the material was produced within a period of three years. It included 91 students, 26 student groups and three teacher educators at three Swedish teacher education institutes. The results show two overarching discourses. First, a discourse focusing on care was articulated and legitimized based on an idea that student teachers are scared of express themselves within music education and that they lack confidence in teaching music. This discourse was expressed within a framework of a culture of silence that has a protective function for student teachers lacking self-confidence. Second, a discourse focusing on benevolence was articulated and legitimized based on an idea that a student teacher’s boldness could compensate for their lack of musical skills. This discourse was expressed within a framework of a tolerant and compensatory culture of assessment which has a protective and supportive function for student teachers with a lack of musical skills. To provide a basis for new pedagogical discussions concerning progress and development of quality, the conclusion discusses critical aspects in teaching practice in music within teacher education.

Sedan millennieskiftet har deltagande designers alltmer börjat engagera sig i samforskningsprocesser i den så kallade Globala Syd, med fokus på hållbar utveckling. Denna avhandling, vilken har ett metodfokus, syftar till att bidra till mer hållbara samarbeten där olika röster görs hörda. Samslöjd och samskrivning är två metoder som undersökts med syfte att skapa agens i form av kapabiliteter. Since the turn of the millennium, participatory designers have increasingly begun to engage in collaborative research processes in the so-called Global South. This dissertation aims to contribute to more sustainable collaborations where different voices are heard. Co-craft and co-writing are two design methods that have been investigated, aiming to create agency in terms of capabilities.

Notbildens symboler kan för musiker många gånger upplevas som problematiska i samband med konstnärliga ställningstaganden inför framföranden. Detta gäller i synnerhet för dem som upplever den klassiska uppförandetraditionen som hämmande i gestaltningsarbetet. Syftet med denna avhandling är att – inom området noterad västerländsk konstmusik – undersöka det potentiella gestaltningsutrymmet och dess möjligheter att utvidgas. Två omgångar med gestaltningsexperiment utifrån två verk av den svenske tonsättaren Ludvig Norman (1831–1885) föregicks av kontextuell källforskning kring tonsättaren och hans tid samt parametriska analyser av partiturens notation. Resultaten av dessa – tillsammans med ett nytt förhållningssätt till både verksyn och noterade symboler – utgjorde utgångspunkten för det gestaltande arbetet. Detta inkluderade medvetet förändrade eller omskapade versioner av musiken, liksom parametriska improvisationer utgående från konstnärligt utforskande bortom den ursprungliga notationen. Musikaliskt material som inte emanerade ur notbilden kunde ibland också tillföras. Sammanflätningen av gedigen forskning och analys samt ett experimentellt förhållningssätt ändrade förutsättningarna för gestaltningslösningarna. Inom det nya vidgade och fluktuerande gestaltningsutrymmet kunde de musikaliska parametrarna – genom avsiktliga och förutsättningslösa omgestaltningar – tillåtas att förvärva nya egenskaper och nya relationer i förhållande till varandra. Härigenom utvecklades såväl nya klangliga verkligheter och nya konstnärliga insikter som okonventionella och gränsöverskridande gestaltningar. Denna föränderlighet i innebörder och uttryck genom reflekterande och förutsättningslöst utforskande är ett kreativt sätt att få noterade musikaliska verk att leva vidare och utvecklas i nya kontexter – oavsett när i tiden de tillkom, och oavsett tonsättarens ursprungliga musikaliska intentioner. Tomas Löndahl (f. 1952) var under åren 1980–2005 anställd vid Sveriges Radio P2, bland annat som inspelningsproducent för Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester, redaktionschef och chef för livemusiken. Under åren 2005–2010 var han verkställande direktör och konstnärligt ansvarig för Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester och Helsingborgs Konserthus. Han invaldes som ledamot i Kungl. Musikaliska akademien 2003 och utsågs 2011 till dess Ständige sekreterare. Denna post innehade han till sin pension 2017. Under åren 2016–2020 var han dessutom adjungerad professor i musikalisk gestaltning vid Musikhögskolan i Malmö.

How can we understand the design of interior spaces in prisons, forensic psychiatric hospital and special residential youth homes? These spaces are unfamiliar to most people, though we have “visited” prison cells and patient rooms through documentaries and films. For some reason we tend to take the design of them for granted, but how come they are designed the way they are? Living these spaces means living an everyday lifeworld in the tension between heavy security measures and rehabilitation —between incarceration and care. Yet, what meanings do these environments create for the individuals who inhabit them day and night? This dissertation explores the relationship between individuals and the physical environment within Institutions of Care and Incarceration (ICI). Given the limited existing research on the meaning of interior design and objects in ICIs, one of the primary objectives of this dissertation is to contribute to the design research field and the broader discourse on ICIs. The analytical process is guided by a phenomenological approach, focusing on the lived experiences of individuals incarcerated in instructional care settings. It is worth noting, however, that both the methodological and theoretical approaches may hold relevance for fields beyond design. The interest in designing for compulsory care environments originates from the author's practical experience in creating interior objects for these institutions. This experience has subsequently driven academic research parallel with his practice, and a vast amount of hours has been spent in the field. The primary emphasis has been on developing ethnographic design research methods, specifically the Sketch and Talk, customized for high-security care environments. An essential tool of this methodology involves on-site sketching with pen and paper, capturing the lived experiences of participants within cells, patient rooms, and social areas. Several of these sketches, illustrating these environments, are presented in the dissertation. Undoubtedly, there are significant opportunities to implement the potential for designing for well-being, and this dissertation proposes new approaches through the Sketch and Talk method. It posits that by ‘restraining’ ourselves and adopting a perspective that allows us to see 'what is actually going on,' we can build knowledge by 'borrowing' lived experiences and understanding the connections between people, interior design, and 'stuff,' both ontologically and epistemologically. The author's intention is that this dissertation can provide support to governmental agencies, architects, designers, clients, patients, youths, and other stakeholders involved in designing or contributing knowledge to the process of creating new institutions. The aim is to encourage an approach to design in which interior design and objects are not solely considered in relation to economy and traditional methods of designing for care but are also regarded as ethical and existential considerations. This perspective presents an opportunity to foster new horizons of change and hope. Bio: Franz James holds the position of associate professor in furniture design at Campus Steneby, University of Gothenburg. In addition to his academic role, he is a practicing designer and partner at Healsafe Interior. He specializes in designing therapeutic environments and self-harm resistant products for care settings such as prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and youth homes.

This doctoral thesis proposes the philosophical concept of ontopoetics in relation to an artistic practice of sound and listening. The concept of ontopoetics is used as the backdrop of the developed notion of techniques of ecstasy essentially as an intermediary between listening and language. Ontopoetics becomes the bridge between the archaic and contemporary man. The research is practice-based but nevertheless finds a form of dissemination where the word, the sound and the image work together like a body. Through placing the shaman and the mystic (the ones who originally wield the techniques of ecstasy) as the figure of our present-day artist the thesis offers a more immersive understanding of the artist, and the possibility of imagining how sound, listening and a form-of-life (understood as a way-of-being-in-sound) still can be considered as a way and method of shaping our world. On an equal level of importance, the thesis consists of several musical compositions which extend and materialize what in the thesis is proposed as potentiality and the condition for making music. This interdependence of sound, word, and image (the tracing of sound) is given its own importance in the realization of a strategy of sound. A method, but at the same time not; the strategy gives way to this thesis’s tentative conclusion. Listening is a way of knowledge, through listening the world emerges. And this knowledge is accessible through music’s immediacy of expression. Throughout the thesis the work on sound is given predominance. However, a rich material of dialogue partners of both musical, artistic, and philosophical characters is included, most prominently exemplified by the writing of Lotta Lotass where the thesis’s strategy of sound finds a dialogue partner – a dialogue also with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Simone Weil, the ravings of Antonin Artaud and Giorgio Agamben as well as the music of Diamanda Galás, Giacinto Scelsi and Luigi Nono. The author of this work, places them in a strange and shared space, where the artist and the shaman are brought to a common, wordless, end in a music which is as much sound as silence. I denna doktorsavhandling utforskas det filosofiska begreppet ontopoetik i relation till en konstnärlig praktik där musik (ljud) och lyssnande står i centrum. Begreppet ontopoetik används som bakgrund till det i avhandlingen centrala resonemanget om extatiska tekniker. Extatiska tekniker ses i huvudsak som en evig länk mellan lyssnande och språk och blir till ett mer djuplodande och samtidsfilosofiskt ramverk genom införandet av det ontopoetiska. Ontopoetiken blir i denna avhandling bron mellan det arkaiska och den nutida människan. Min avhandling är ett exempel på ’praktikbaserad’ forskning, men det i en form där ordet, ljudet och bilden samverkar som en kropp. Genom att spegla schamanen och mystikern (ursprungliga användare av extatiska tekniker) gentemot konstnären av i dag ger avhandlingen en fördjupad förståelse av konstnären och möjliggör inblicken i en poetik där ljud, lyssnande är en livsform (förstått som ett sätt att vara-i-ljudet) som fortfarande är det sätt på vilket vår värld formas. Schamanen och mystikern är också vägvisare till ett utforskande av ontopoetiken som ett sätt att förstå ljud, lyssnande och kommunikation – det är något som föregår tolkad mening, men är ändå kunskap. Flera komponerade verk av författaren i detta sammanhang av likvärdig status som avhandlingstexten – utvidgar och materialiserar det som i avhandlingen föreslås som potentialitet och villkor för det ontopoetiska. Denna ömsesidighet mellan ljud, ord och bild visas tydligast i det som i avhandlingen kallas en strategi för ljud i kapitel 5. En metod, men samtidigt inte; strategin ger plats och visar på den process som leder fram till denna avhandlings försiktiga slutsats, eller snarast anmodan: lyssnandet är en väg till kunskap. Genom lyssnandet framträder världen. Denna kunskap står oss till buds genom musikens omedelbara uttryck. Avhandlingen genomsyras av resonemang och exempel på en praktik och en filosofi om ljud och musik. En omfattande författardialog upprättas, av både musikalisk, konstnärlig och filosofisk karaktär. På det skönlitterära planet är den framför allt exemplifierad av författaren Lotta Lotass, för det filosofiska utgör Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Simone Weil och Giorgio Agamben navet. Antonin Artaud, Diamanda Galás, Giacinto Scelsi och Luigi Nono är de främsta företrädarna för konsten och musiken. Författaren till denna avhandling placerar dem alla i ett märkligt och delat rum, där konstnären och schamanen förs till ett gemensamt, ordlöst slut i en musik som är lika mycket ljud som tystnad.

This book is structured as a compilation thesis which includes the different materials that came out of the performance laboratories carried out at specific places in Gothenburg and Rio de Janeiro such as articles, video-essays, questionnaires, laboratory reports, and film. Divided into six chapters, it provides an epistemological and methodological overview of the concepts and approaches that were relevant for exploring site-oriented performance documentation and screen practice. In chapter 1, the focus lies on the selection and sort of “excavation” process of a place, especially by using the concepts of hidden narratives and performative moments as artistic strategies. This is expanded in chapter 2, where the field of site-specific performance is introduced, especially by looking at how the notion of site-specificity can be approached through different forms of agency. In chapter 3, the history of performance documentation is highlighted by, on the one hand, examining how documentation has been contributing to mediate and/or translate a performance work and on the other, by exploring how the camera work can (re)inscribe the body both in a specific place and in the recorded material. This is elucidated further in chapter 4, where the main research methods – mapping, sensing, and recording – of the performance laboratory work are described. In chapter 5, a practical insight into the design process of the screen work I am the Camera, is given, which emerged from Lab #3 at Götaplatsen. Based on the engagement with the Hasselblad memorial, this screen work explores the human relationship with the camera through the co-presence of three characters – influencer, documentary filmmaker and clown – and their technological devices. A matter which is elucidated further in the closing chapter 6, which is devoted to the editing process of I am the Camera, as well as to the idea of using montage as a way of (re)writing and/or (re)imagining the space of the image. Throughout and in-between the chapters, follow the publications produced for different journals and/or contexts during the PhD research. While these publications offer an insight into the performance laboratories and how they connect with other artistic research projects (e.g., “Territórios Sensíveis” in Brazil), they also reflect the research trajectory from site-specific practice to screen performance research. About the author: Nathalie S. Fari is a German-Brazilian performance artist, researcher and lecturer dealing with questions of documentation, mediation and translation of site-oriented performance practices. Since 1997, she has been presenting her work in collaboration with other artists and/or researchers across Europe and Brazil at various contexts such as art-exhibitions, performance-art, performing-arts and film festivals, artist-in-residencies, architecture, design and fashion events. Additionally, she has been since 2010 developing educational programs with the focus on the concept of Body Mapping and on issues around site-specific performance and documentation.

Genom den serie av handlingar, samt den teoretiska genomgång som ingår i denna avhandling, utarbetades en metodik för konceptuell reparation av den onto-epistemologiska tudelning som orsakats med berövandet av böndernas livsvärldar, så som den exemplifierats av Karl Marx i ’Den så kallade ursprungliga ackumulationen’, och som konsoliderats med uteslutandet av deras kunskapssystem ur Systema Naturae (1735) och andra teoretiska verk av Carl Linné. Istället för att uppfinna nya former innebar metodiken att återgå och spåra, samt koppla befintliga, ofta förbisedda tekniker, material och berättelser. Dessa åtgärder av avlärande och omlärande har krävt samarbetsstrukturer på tvärs av etablerade praktikområden och institutionaliserade kunskapsområden. Dessa aspekter pekar på karaktären av detta konstnärliga forskningsbidrag, som förhåller sig till begreppet ’handling’ som en politisk och poetisk intervention med syfte att mobilisera direkt engagemang i verkliga livsvärldar, snarare än att ta form som representativ eller illustrativ gestaltning. Genom att sammanställa de element som samlats in under forskningens gång, samtidigt som uppmärksamhet ges till det som gått förlorat, skapas på platser präglade av kapitalackumulationens paradigm av knapphet kontra tillväxt, former för åter-mobilisering av vad jag kallar bönders traditionella metoder för odling som genererar överflöd. ________________________________________

The study consists of three parts. The first part establishes the research methodology and defines the concrete methods used for inquiry, documentation and analysis. Building on the existing methods of Donna Haraway’s “visiting” (2016), Vikki Bell’s “photo-elicitation” (2012), and Mona Livholts’s “memory work” (2020), the approaches of “having visits,” photo-elicitation, and written memory work are developed. The second part of the thesis discusses four aspects of the study’s context. The first establishes the meaning of “free time” for the context of this thesis, and examines different conceptions of free time craft. The popular conception of free time craft activities as being of socially marginal significance is discussed, and problematized in view to recent scholarship that demonstrates both individual and societal benefits arise from free time craft practices. Secondly, the current situation of hand-weaving in Nordic urban centers is addressed. Findings here indicate that textile craft has been enjoying an increase in popularity, and that craft-related offerings are increasingly varied, appearing in unconventional shapes and adapting to contemporary urban lifestyles. A third contextual aspect is given by the historical development of small, mobile looms which paralleled the processes of industrialization and urbanization in Northern Europe. Their evolution shows that the field of free time hand-weaving has been developing continuously in response to evolving social arrangements since the late 19th century. Lastly, prevalent contemporary organizational models for weaving spaces in Sweden, Denmark and Finland are presented. These models reveal the variety of contemporary offerings and offer examples of relevant support structures for hand-weaving currently available in the three countries. The third part of this study analyzes the practical aspects of the Weaving Kiosk project (February 2017 – present). The eleven iterations of this itinerant hand-weaving workshop are discussed from three perspectives: Space, Craft, and People. The section Space considers the practical development of the Weaving Kiosk in regard to spatial design, choices of location, contextual settings, and accessibility. The practice-led inquiry of the Kiosk is evaluated with consideration of the project’s ambition to create a mobile, urban and technically accessible weaving space. The section Craft describes the main findings from the development and realization of the eleven Weaving Kiosks that relate to the material and technical dimensions of the weaving and sewing processes involved. It shows how material choices have been significant factors for making the experience of the hand-weaving process an accessible and satisfactory introduction. Lastly, the section People reviews observations regarding the Weaving Kiosks’ participant demography and evaluates how these weaving spaces were interpreted differently by young urban adults.

Undertaken against a background of urban aestheticization processes, this doctoral research explores how Swedish postwar suburbs are imagined and how design is employed through “urban renewal” projects that seek to rebrand urban areas. The research project investigates nostalgia in particular, arguing that its social and political function in this context is to distinguish the studied suburbs from stigmatized and racialized suburbs by rendering them as historically rooted and thus “Swedish.” The central case study is the suburban center of Hökarängen in Stockholm, and the urban renewal project Hållbara Hökarängen, which took place 2011–2015. In addition, the two nearby suburban centers of Bagarmossen and Bandhagen are also studied in relation to the primary case, in order to follow the migration and developments of the concepts and practices embedded in Hållbara Hökarängen. Methodologically, the research proceeds by way of a discourse analysis of: 1) a signage system manual; 2) interviews with representatives of the property ownership and management of the studied suburb centers; and 3) other collected media, documents, and publications that are related to the renewal projects. The discourse analytical study is informed by, tested through, and intertwined with a series of situated artistic/archival interventions framed as “reparative interstices.” A combination of paranoid–reparative (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2003) operational modes, based on a double situatedness as resident– practitioner, stand as central to this methodology. The study shows the importance attributed to micro-practices and sensory and atmospheric qualities when imagining how public spaces in Swedish suburbs could be redesigned. Building on Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of distinction, the study further describes design strategies as “distinction-making,” (Trinch & Snajdr, 2017) a term employed in order to describe how design establishes narratives of an “authentic” and “progressive” character, with connotations of the (idealized) inner-city. This place identity and narrative is constructed and conveyed, inter alia, through the sense of the ‘50s as a central theme and rhetoric, which can be understood as “restorative nostalgia” (Boym, 2001). The study thus challenges the idea of the renewal project in general, and its claims to authenticity and progressiveness in particular, showing that the design practices employed in the field of urban renewal are not innocent: rather, there are powerful social and political implications and exclusionary mechanisms at work in them that need to be attended to. Furthermore, the study offers a renegotiation of the designer’s role and suggests methods for reparative practices based on a “dig-where-you-stand” positionality (Lindqvist, 2023 [1978]).

Auktorskap och musikaliska resurser – experimentellt musikskapande i samverkan är en doktorsavhandling som undersöker hur musikalisk auktoritet verkar och förändras i kreativa processer. Studien befinner sig i skärningspunkten mellan pedagogisk forskning och konstnärlig praktik och bygger på en analytisk autoetnografisk metod där författaren, i rollen som kompositör och forskare, analyserar sin egen praktik i samspel med medskapare. Avhandlingen utforskar hur konstnärliga dimensioner uppstår när auditiva, visuella och kroppsliga resurser används för att stimulera kreativitet och kollektivt musikskapande. Ett särskilt fokus riktas mot hur ljud och visuella symboler, som emojis, kan fungera som verktyg för att skapa musikaliska strukturer och öppna för uttryck bortom traditionella genrer och notationer. Genom multimodala strategier visar studien hur musikaliskt meningsskapande kan ta form i experimentella och kollektiva sammanhang där gränserna mellan komposition och improvisation blir flytande. Resultaten visar att konstnärliga kvaliteter utvecklas i spänningsfältet mellan struktur och frihet, där kontrast, variation och överraskning bidrar till upplevelse av musikalisk helhet. Dessa kvaliteter relateras till livgivande processer som aktiverar kroppen, frigör energi och ger utrymme för att ta plats och ge sig hän. Analysen synliggör hur förhandlingar om musikaliskt auktorskap – auktoritet i musikskapandet – sker i skapandeprocessen och hur dessa dynamiker påverkar både uttryck och upplevelsen av delaktighet. Studien belyser hur kroppens roll som ljudkälla och konstnärlig resurs öppnar för nya sätt att gestalta musik, och hur rummet kan fungera som en aktiv komponent i det konstnärliga arbetet. Genom att iscensätta ett magiskt rum skapas förutsättningar för lekfullhet och konstnärlig frihet, vilket i sin tur stimulerar kreativitet och samverkan. Avhandlingen belyser hur konstnärliga dimensioner framträder i musikskapande praktiker och hur dessa kan förstås i relation till kollektiv och kreativ utforskning. Genom att synliggöra spänningsfält mellan musikskapare, resurser och kontext bidrar studien till en fördjupad förståelse av villkor som påverkar deltagande, uttryck och meningsskapande i musikpedagogiska sammanhang. Om författaren: Dan Alkenäs är konstnärlig universitetslektor i musik samt filosofie doktor i musikpedagogik vid Linnéuniversitetet och verksam som kompositör och forskare med fokus på kreativitet, samspel och musikaliska uttrycksformer i kollektiva processer.

Paper-composite porcelain is a type of paper clay which is made by combining any kind of porcelain with paper. Paper is added to clay to improve low green strength and plasticity - two of the main practical problems of working with porcelain. Despite widespread interest in the material, the characteristics of paper- composite porcelain have remained undetermined. The purpose of this research was to understand the artistic applicability of, and obtain reliable knowledge of the properties of paper-composite porcelain. The research involved a combination of practical artistic experiments and laboratory experiments used within material science. The artistic experiments investigated the workability and applicability of paper-composite porcelain with different amounts of paper in various casting models. The technical studies qualitatively investigated the material characteristics and microstructures using Xray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The qualitative physical properties tests involved different casting body recipes, production methods and firing temperatures. Quantitative studies were used to measure and analyse the properties of porcelain and paper-composite porcelain. The artistic experiments involved the development of a slip casting method which recycled the excess water from the process. Slip casting of various tableware models showed that there was significantly less cracking, warping, bending and deformation of the paper-composite porcelain than of the mother porcelain. Furthermore, sharp angles and fine lines and surfaces were obtained even with the highest paper-fibre content used (90% in volume). Paper-composite porcelain had the same whiteness as ordinary porcelain, but it had a silkier lustre and was more translucent when glazed. Fibrous structures were identified in both green and fired states. It was proved that the presence of paper fibre, the paper type and the paper-fibre content were the factors behind the increased green strength of the paper-composite porcelain. In comparison, paper-composite porcelain has higher green strength, lower shrinkage, lower deformation degree and wider firing range. The results provide new knowledge of paper-composite porcelain by identifying the reinforcement role of paper fibre in the formation and fabrication stages. They also demonstrate a practically tested and documented method for slip casting which shows some of the potential application of paper-composite porcelain in artistic practice.

How do you improvise? How can you learn the art of improvisation? By considering these two questions this thesis aspires to make a contribution towards a greater understanding of what the production of improvised music actually involves. The organ has long traditions of being used to play improvised music and is the main focus of this thesis. The study also includes three different recording projects presented on four CDs. These musical manifestations are intended to serve as demonstrations of working methods, references to this thesis but can also be seen as independent works of spontaneous music pieces. Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musical Performance and Interpretation at the Academy of Music and Drama, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg. Including 4 music CDs. Denna avhandling är nummer 6 i ArtMonitor-serien.

Off the grid is an artistic research thesis which puts a Swedish housing estate in a video interview dialogue with homeowners in the Northeastern US through focusing on three topics: travel, self-definition, and community. Based on the situated, visual and conceptual image the project merges seemingly incompatible experiences: eight residents in Husby, an immigrant community outside Stockholm, and eight households not connected to the utility grid, in upstate areas of New England and New York State and two artistic researchers at University of Gothenburg. The interviewees are paired together and handed unedited copies of each others reflections. We asked them for their comments, elucidating the practical and metaphorical consequences of travel, self-definition, and community. Even though backgrounds, stories and current conditions differ, an understanding of common interests and similarities are clearly identified. Among the three questions discussed the right to self-definition stands out as central: it is opposed, delayed in its implementation, violated or threatened still, all participants individually and/or collectively struggle to uphold it. In thinking with the visual and conceptual image Off the grid also offers new perspectives on the significance of artistic research, contributing to its further contextualization.