The so-called ‘intensive weeks’ of the simularr intervals live up to their name. We open our senses, our intellects, and we let others into our working processes, which are interwoven with collaborative and group activities. For the spring 2024 interval, we were lucky to work at the Palazzo Russo in San Cesario di Lecce, hosted by Alessandra and Nikolai Pomarico (Free Home University). With an uncanny resemblence to some of our prior imagined drawings of a suitable ‘house of simultaneous arrivals’, the palazzo is based on a circular layout of rooms encompassing a patio. The space offered ample possibilities for distributing the research team, consisting of the core researchers, the two invited researchers (Elena Redaelli and Fulya Uçanok), the invited facilitators (Susanne Bosch, arriving by bike from Rome, and Miguel Castillo).
In the past week, we have begun the in-situ work of the project’s second interval, meeting at Reagenz and Alte Technik.
The photo was taken on the first day in front of Reagenz, space for artistic experiments, from left to right: Fulya Uçanok, Daniele Pozzi, Hanns Holger Rutz, Franziska Hederer, Nayarí Castillo, Elena Redaelli.
This time, both incoming artists work with the principle investigators at the two adjacent spaces of Reagenz. We begin with a three weeks phase in Graz, followed by an intensive two weeks retreat near Lecce, in Italy, where we are joined by Susanne Bosch as facilitator, and the second part of the interval takes place at the Mahler university in Klagenfurt (GMPU).
Some initial results will be presented at
the GMPU’s Forschungsforum (research forum) on 16 April at 5 pm (Mießtaler Straße 8, Klagenfurt).
Under the title Listen for Beginnings, we co-organise the first interdisciplinary symposium Forum Artistic Research at the Gustav Mahler Private University for Music (GMPU) in Klagenfurt, AT, which will
take place 27–29 June 2024. A major focus of the three day event is approaches to collaboration and togetherness in artistic research, thus creating a strong link with simularr. Please see the Call-for-Contributions which is open until 02 February 11 February 2024.
The symposium Walking is still honest in Vilnius was an excellent
opportunity to show our ongoing research in simularr, discussing
findings, and experimenting with methods.
The symposium at SODAS2123 was dedicated to walking and represented a
great framework to share not only the individual research processes
opened during the intensive weeks phase of the first simularr
interval, but also some overarching questions and proceedings. Daniele
Pozzi presented his ongoing experiment, a project based on sonic
mapping of the spaces of the Schrattenberg compound, allowing the
participants to feel and record the space while hearing and correlating
with memories, simultaneous with the documented experience of the person
before. Nayarí Castillo presented her transposable objects, a
performance activating liminal spaces and found objects of the compound.
The action gave context and opened magical portals on the different
surfaces of transposed objects. Hanns Holger Rutz, on his side, revealed
dialogical objects and other conceptual movements within space.
simularr’s Nayarí Castillo has been invited to take part in the
Techno-disobedience week work session in Graz (23–27 October 2023),
co-organised by Constant Brussels and esc medien kunst labor Graz. The workshop focused
on collective processes, technological environments, and projects that
contest capitalist forms of art production. This environment allowed
Castillo to present and discuss different findings of simularr, mostly
on collaborative practices and forms of disobedience. Castillo provided
input from simularr with a specialised workshop on walking as a method
for research. For this occasion, she presented question walks as a
research method and discussed possibilities for implementation with the
workshop participants.
photo: A. Ivinskaitė