This was the Forum Artistic Research

"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. After a quick overview of the project, everyone on stage had prepared a three minute statement on something they wished to share (e.g. experiences, things of the past or future tied to the project) to generate the following discussion. The initial quote above is from Charlotta Ruth’s statement.

Apart from other presentations of the immediate simularr orbit, including Shane Finan’s tír-éist – landlisten and Sophie Fetokaki’s Navel, Ear of God, Emma Cocker gave a captivating keynote and also contributed one of the research video trailers shown in Kärnten Museum, adjacent to the GMPU. A big question for us remains on how to rework the panel for the proceedings of the symposium, which is expected to be published in 2025.