Artistic production has always expressed the forms in which we know, explore, and sense the world we live in. The current practice of research in the arts consciously assumes this exploration. In the past decades the focus on research in the domain of the arts has grown – as well as its role in universities and other research contexts – expressing its engagement with the realities of the world at large.

‘In The Making’ will address how artists conduct their research. Guest artist researchers and artist researchers from Leiden University will present their projects, approaches, methods and results. Each session will address questions inherent to these projects. ‘In The Making’ aims to deepen a perspective which conceives of artistic practice not as the sole product of individual visionaries but as a collective endeavor embedded in society. It addresses the role of art in the construction of the present and the creation of possible futures.

About In the Making #5: Barbro Scholz and Li Lorian, Experiencing Text and Textile

In this session researchers Barbro Scholz and Li Lorian ask the following questions: How does light feel on the body? What sort of togetherness is there in reading text?

They will explore tangible and intangible experiences of voice and textile light. In their practice, both artists are interested in ways of communicating aesthetic experience. Procedures of documentation and transmission bring up questions concerning audience, spectatorship and participation in the art field and artistic research. We aim to open up for participative thinking and valuing aesthetic and experiential knowledge of ourselves and others.

Artist and designer Barbro Scholz deals with experiential qualities of tangible (textiles) and intangible (light) materials, and how their interplay invites for novel forms of performativity.

Performer and artist Li Lorian is interested in practices of reading text, to oneself and outloud, voicing and finding new means of commonality. Both of them have an interest in movement, affect, and entanglement to be investigated in a playful, participatory, collaborative research. This session is a great opportunity for them to find ways to share their yet unformulated thoughts in an experiential method with an audience.

About In the Making #4: Marcel Cobussen, MinJi Kim, Kevin Fairbairn, Nele Möller

This session will address two fundamental questions:

What can the arts — and sounding art in particular — contribute to the liveability of a densely populated area like ‘De Randstad’?

How can sounding art have an active and substantial role in thinking about and dealing with issues like biodiversity, climate change adaptation, heat stress, and/or water-related issues?

Minji Kim — ACPA PhD candidate — is a sound artist and instrument builder working on the relation between sound and ecology in coastal areas in The Netherlands and South Korea.

Kevin Fairbairn — Postdoc at ACPA — is a musician and a scholar, working around the edges of installation, improvisation, composition, and craftsmanship.

Marcel Cobussen — Professor of Auditory Culture at ACPA — investigates how redesigning public sonic spaces can enhance the general well-being of both humans and nonhumans.

Nele Möller — KU Leuven and LUCA School of Arts PhD candidate — is a Brussels-based artist working primarily in sound, performance, and writing. Her research-based practice focuses on forest conversations, historical nature inscriptions, critical field recording and listening practices.

Kim, Fairbairn, and Cobussen are also members of ACPA’s newly established Sound Studies Center.

About In the Making #3: Artistic Research and the Techno-aesthetics of Infrastructure

In this session on media technology, multimodal practices and transversal methods in the production of knowledge, Kristoffer Gansing will present his research on the shifting techno-aesthetics of moving images as infrastructure for research and what this means for artistic research. The presentation will explore the thesis of a ‘Cinema of Extractions’, where moving image technology is not seen as primarily a vehicle for film as cinema, but as a continuously evolving technological and aesthetic infrastructure for film as research. The presentation aims to rewire how we see and artistically respond to the film medium’s connection to research in a way that speaks to our contemporary moment of images as part of networks of data extraction, analysis and optimisation. It will discuss contemporary artistic practices that seek to challenge such extractive infrastructures and that build alternatives.

Kristoffer Gansing will enter into a dialogue with Francesco Ragazzi from ReCNTR, which is an interdisciplinary research centre focused on promoting multimodal and audiovisual research methods in social science and the humanities.

Events and reservation

Sunday 28.04.2024, 14:00In the Making #5:
Barbro Scholz and Li Lorian, Experiencing Text and Textile
Information + RSVP: https://InTheMaking-5.eventbrite.nl

Sunday 26.05.2024, 14:00In the Making #6:
Anna Scott, Jed Wentz, Laila Neumann, Emma Williams Art Without Soul? Embodiment and Historical Performance
Information + RSVP: https://InTheMaking-6.eventbrite.nl

About ACPA

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is a research institute within the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, where it offers composers, performing artists, visual artists and (graphic) designers the opportunity to perform research in and through artistic practice.

The University of the Arts The Hague (which is made up of the KABK and the Royal Conservatoire) has a unique collaboration with Leiden University. The collaboration is realised in the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), which provides artistic research and education in the arts.

ACPA also offers education in the arts for Leiden University students, and provides academic electives for students of the University of the Arts The Hague.