We were excited to present the simularr project on 08 May in Porto at the Conference of the Society for Artistic Research – SAR25, under the theme of ‘Resonance’.
It was a great opportunity, as we have now completed all three project intervals, and could therefore draw connections among them. SAR is a lovely conference with a chance to meet and network with a lot of people across all disciplines within artistic research. We travelled with many colleagues and students from our research institution, the GMPU Klagenfurt.
simularr was, from the very beginning, planned to conclude with an exhibition, among other things, that brings together the distinct approaches developed over the project’s time span.
A lot has been said and written about the exposure or exposition of artistic research, and we have constantly employed means to expose our research to the fellow team members, using
digital platforms such as the Research Catalogue or physical spaces in form of ‘meta-expositions’. The idea of meta exposition being that artefacts and notations that had already
be exposed within the group as we were working together would be brought back and united in a space to form of a database that we can than rearrange, interrogate, interrelate.
Beginning the third interval straight with the intensive weeks, meant that we had a relatively long in-situ phase following. Different from the other intervals, it also meant that we developed most materials during the first two weeks which we now brought back to our workspaces as starting points. The main spaces for most of the time were the three studios and the social room at Reagenz. We began with weekly group meetings that lead into a mode of ‘practice sharing’, wherein each of the artists-researchers would ‘host’ a day of activity that emerged from their practices.
The project’s third and last interval followed close to the preceding one, giving us little time for pause. What would be a suitable space for its intensive weeks? Kicking off right at the beginning of September, still in Austria’s summer semester break, we seized this opportunity to plunge straight into the ‘intensive weeks’, as the incoming artist-researcher Andrea Bakketun arrived from Norway. Seeking closer proximity with the Mahler university as the main research institution, we had secured the opportunity to work at the Hoke Werkhaus in Saager, half an hour east of Klagenfurt in Carinthia. Conceived by late artist Giselbert Hoke and carried forth by his family, the Werkhaus consists of a number of workshops and is located on a hill, surrounded by forest and lakes. For a part of the intensive weeks, we had again support for facilitation, this time by anthropologist Caroline Gatt.
"I tapped into a me who is more aware of potential connections. Not only to people but to possible points in a process and how ideas arrive."
The first international three-day symposium Forum Artistic Research at the GMPU in Klagenfurt was a wonderful event, and a success to follow up upon. The theme Listen for Beginnings created
just the right amount of cohesion between the various projects presented across art disciplines, and a significant number of which related to questions that are also at the heart of simularr.
We therefore felt that we did not need to center ourselves on stage more than necessary, instead grouping contributions on the second day of the symposium around a panel on simularr.
