INTRODUCTION

The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to question inherited notions of the self, expression and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Increasing globalisation and the development of recording and photographic technologies, running alongside psychoanalytical understandings of selfhood and the impact of scientific principles of uncertainty, are often theorized as having prompted a crisis of identity, representation and authenticity. At the same time, the throwaway playfulness of pop culture and digital manipulation offer endless possibilities for self-reinvention. It is perhaps harder than ever to know who 'I' am, but 'I' am ever more self-aware. The fluid, dynamic, embodied and contingent qualities of subjectivity are experienced on an everyday basis.

Within arts practice, a ‘performance turn’ has allowed for a stronger focus on the production and experiencing of subjectivity in the context of live events: as ephemeral, dynamic, contingent and embodied, resisting conceptualisation into a stabilised notion of an artwork.

The aim of this seminar is to examine examples of such practice. The event will feature presentations, performances and installations by artist-researchers from across Europe  –  whose work relates to these questions:

• How is subjectivity is instantiated and embodied in performance?
• How does the activity of performance reflect and shape our understanding of felt experience?
• How do the dynamic relationships between performer, materials, and context constitute the production of subjectivity?
• How do these issues relate to understandings of creativity and identity?

DENIZ PETERS - KEYNOTE PRESENTATION AND CONCERT

Deniz Peters (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) will give the Keynote Presentation at the ORCiM Seminar 2016 Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation in Artistic Research.

Out of the Self – Into the Musical Other: Improvisation as an Artistic Inquiry into Subjectivity, Empathy, and Instrumentality

Abstract: What are the interpersonal aspects of the musical experience? Are they co-constituted between the musicians, or even the musicians and their instruments, the audience, and the environment? I explore this fundamental question – the question of shared expression – by discussing a case study in which a trio improvisation within a research context led to an instrumental discovery, and further, to the discovery of a new, integral, voice emerging from the ensemble viewed as a combination of human and instrumental agency. I shall probe ways of elucidating the central experience of what in effect was a musical study of joint abandon and aesthetic co-constitution, by arguing and analysing from various conceptual angles: of the self, empathy, and the other, of listening, of experimentation with the comfort zone, of the performers’ body, and of an advanced notion of expression, on the way also considering some key questions regarding the notion and epistemological potential of artistic research.

Linked to the keynote presentation a concert is planned: Hogg:Peters:Vogel (Trio with violin, piano, flute and electronics)

SCHEDULE

Wednesday, 24 February

Thursday, 25 February 

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

A call for presentations is published. (NOW CLOSED)
See full details here, and submit yourt proposal before December 5th.

PLANNED PROCEEDINGS

The convenors plan to produce a joint publication, to include selected presentations: the form of this will depend upon the nature of the work presented.