PhD Programme in the Arts

Johanna Binder: 

Natur aus zweiter Hand deals with the displacement of plants and the power-political systems and entanglements that are archived and reflected in the flora. With the arrival of Columbus in the Americas in 1492, transoceanic plants became protagonists, alongside humans, of European exploration and investigation, of conquest and cupidity, of (literal) uprooting and long sea voyages on which only the most resilient survived. Today, the descendants of these well-travelled plants live among us, and most of us have a piece of "exotic paradise" in our homes, or: a piece of colonial history. 

But the fate of some plants has changed: they have gone from being displaced to becoming invasive themselves, transforming ecosystems and endangering endemic plants. With these plants—invasive neophytes— hegemonic power relations, at least in nature, seem to be renegotiated, as they propose a different distribution of habitat, land use and resources other than (neo)colonial politics and economy might pretend.

Natur aus zweiter Hand aims to reveal what different narratives of world-making and history might be told by the (invading) plants themselves, and to scrutinize the anthropocentric gaze and interests on established and emerging ecosystems. In doing so, a particular focus is placed on the political and economic aspects of these interests. The world-making narratives unfold in a series of exhibitions and writings in which the neophytes are acknowledged to have agency and are both the main protagonists and narrators.

Aline Braun:

What is commonly seen as a "choreography" is very often a final performed production: "the piece." How can one perceive a choreographer's true labor by seeing only its finished product? As only the end of the process is shared, the entire chronology of the real choreographic praxis is erased and its true labor remains invisible to the audience. From a solo research and conceptualisation, to bodily collaborations in a dance microcosm, to a product shared with the public, the complete labor of choreography remains invisible while being essential to the creative work and its comprehension.

"The invisible path of choreographic creation" challenges the view of the choreographer as reduced to the creator of set or improvised movement phrases transmitted to the dancers, and reveals the constant choices he/she/they must navigate in order to create a movement piece as well as his/her/their invisible labor and responsibilities. Contrasting a monolithic identity, the project tries to create a hybrid figure where the tasks of the choreographer, artistic director, curator or performer are intertwined. Navigating the artistic creation and the industry affecting it, how can one unveil the invisible labor of the choreographer in its artistic process? What does the unfolding path of creation encompass in its unseen labor? By showing the invisible, "The invisible path of choreographic creation" exposes the dynamics of the notion of ethics from the point of view of the creation and questions the intertwined responsibilities and constraints linked to the creation of a choreographic process.

From conceptualisation and the first ideas of a work in progress, to the research phase and the production of the piece that will be documented through different artistic methods, "The invisible path of choreographic creation" explores the chronology of the making of several pieces made alongside the research project. In this exploration it might perhaps emerge that the piece itself is not the most important element of a choreographic process. Perhaps the choices made and all the elements that happen around its production process are the real piece. The piece seen as a process allows for a redefinition of the word "choreography" and puts into perspective the choices made during the creation that may be more significant than any artistic product. Which methods of documentation are relevant to unveil the choreographer’s labor? In an alternation of methods and materials, the broader documentation of choreography and the accessibility of invisible labour question the limits of the notion of a "piece" and suggest a redefinition of the work of the choreographer and its figure as an entity. The piece thus becomes a space for physical, systemic, industrial and artistic negotiations from the point of view of the creation.

Renato Grieco:

While the socio-technical alliance enshrined between industry and users is geared exclusively toward a market model adhering to a very stereotypical audience, Audio Erotica represents an unreleased and under-explored platform for implementing adult content in an inclusive and fluid domain, constructed with permeable languages.

Renato Grieco is focusing on a mediarchaeological compositional praxis that can be put at the service of all scholars, producers, activists, and consumers oriented toward the ontological exploration of the format of Audio Porn, Audio Erotica, and ASMR as a poietic and political medium.

At the same time, from the speculative point of view, Renato is documenting with scientific rigor the research with the aim of sharing the artistic perspective of those who actively employ and rethink media and technologies for a scientific community of researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as Porn and Media Studies, Organizational Studies, Media Archaeology, Radio Art, and Poetry. 

Francois Lemieux:

My phd research and project at Salzburg's Mozarteum University explores the intricate relationship between Haiti and Québec (Canada); language and the open geographical, political and cultural imaginaries that connect the Caribbeans and the valley of the Saint-Laurence river. This process, in general terms, asks how can solo and multiply authored artistic projects be envisaged such that they register, in their ways of making and enacting, the legacies and effects of colonialism. Currently, my research engages the colonial, migratory and cultural ties between Haiti and Québec as a general starting point for writing, exhibition and film making. 

I am interested in the fluid boundaries between fiction and reality, probing the past and present ramifications between space, language and power. Often resisting classification, my work uses the fugitive vocabulary of art to experiment with the ambiguous relationship between documentary observation, modes of address and representation, emphasizing the plasticity of narration. This process develops in a post-disciplinary perspective, informed by collective study, publishing, conversation, image making, text, performance, exhibition and film making. With my artwork, my work and research, I ask how stories and images may be told, collectively processed, re/composed and shared today.

Rebecca Kressley:

'The Excess of Cacophonies (E)' is studying how the modalities of excess arrive in and as art and life, via desire, survival, ecstasy, uselessness and disorder. The project works with text, sound and interdisciplinary art work through a series of collaborations, wherein aesthetic practices are combined with what is otherwise unfigured, and unpredictability is used as a technique for staying with intractability. The collaborations have public presentations and a continuum between them. E is proposing an outcome that flexes with the work itself.

The project's discursive work is interested in where and how 'excess' is used as a device in writing that holds a place for what is otherwise intractable, in a way that differs from the use of the term that applies directly to 'excess' or 'surplus' as philosophical categories. E is asking how this use began as a writing technique and is tracing its development through the present. From this questioning, the project is exploring whether this development can provide some insight into the project's broader study of ecstatic surplus as a simultaneous relation and reaction between art and the quotidian, as it is generated by and becomes within them. The art created throughout 'The Excess of Cacophonies' is in dialogue with but not determined by the project’s discursive framework; space is kept for the art work to move past it. Throughout, E engages with the relations between intractability, excess and possibility, and the paradoxical connections between art, the accidental and ecstatic surplus.

Agata Cieślak:

“Artistic Practice as a mode for Secular Ethics of Late Capitalism” is an interdisciplinary project that consist of the exhibition series, a musical and written thesis. The general aim of the proposed project is to research how—by implementing Marxist Critique and Lacanian Psychoanalyses onto the category of contemporary art—the notion of artistic practice could be considered as an emancipatory strategy that might generate new notions of freedom of subjectivity within late capitalist society. The practice that leads to production of the visual outcome of this project; the art-labor, which I’m forced to undertake simultaneously to my unpaid studies; as well as the enjoyment, which comes from the illusion of “freedom” of such a lifestyle—constitute of the case study for my theoretical thesis. What is important, the exhibition series and a musical are related to each other, too: The final installation of this series will become the movie set for the musical written by myself, which will be developed as a movie. 

I build space around and inside shelters—which form an architecture of the uprooted—in which I place objects of a symbolic nature. The installation is inhabited by variety of organisms, such as plants, mycelium, or ants, which are captured without their permission. The idea of a shelter constitutes a narrative of the project and carries its impact, as well as it is utilitarian. The exhibition is foldable, can be displayed anywhere in similar form, and doesn’t take much storage space. The process of making the first half of the whole exhibition-set is the subject of my theoretical research, where every different hut becomes a representative of different chapter of the thesis: such as 'labor, beliefs and “nature”, enjoyment, materialism, history / immediacy.' The notion of a secular ethics understood both in the universal and individual context is the defining characteristic of this research.