The Bookseries ArtMonitor

Becoming Beethoven: Re-Enacting Aesthetic Ideas and Mindsets from an Early Romantic Discourse of Musical Performance

Expressivity in musical performance has sparked increasing research interest over the last decades. Still, a musical performance is not always recognized as the complex, multi-sensorial and interactive artistic act it is.

Musical performers often use metaphors as expressive tools, some of which derive from early nineteenth-century aesthetics. But the early Romantic performance discourse also includes metaphors and prompts that are not commonly used today, but might nevertheless prove helpful in creating an expressive performance. This book explores French and German early Romantic music aesthetics from the perspective of the performer, and shows how ideas and mindsets found in early nineteenth-century discourse can be used for creating expressive performances.

As signalled by the often non-systematic and non-dialectical, magnificent language of the early Romantics, an ideal musical performance was conceived as a magical, ecstatic event, where value corresponded to affective engagement and the music's ineffability and indefinability. A performance was attributed with the potential to create an experience of synthesis between the real and the ideal, the material and the spiritual, as well as between the actors involved: the performers, listeners, composers, the sounding music and musical instruments. Music was said to be able to give access to another, supernatural world of the unfathomable. The performers wished to enchant and move the listeners, to make them respond sympathetically to their feelings. The listener's reactions in turn could inspire the performers, create thrilling and wondrous effects in their hearts.

To transport oneself outside of one's own self and sympathetically identify with somebody else, was a common way of thinking about relations in early Romanticism. For a performer, engaging in the ineffable and unutterable, constantly changing sentiments of the music requires both an inward orientation, and an act of sympathy. According to the early Romantic performance discourse, music incorporates the composer's inner feelings and ideas, and the performer who sympathetically resonates with the music can identify with the composer's self. This idea of self-transformation involves the performer's imagination, memories, and experiences. It further supports a feeling of shared geniality and creativity, and of extended self-expression and authority.

The book includes two video recordings of chamber music by Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Karin Berggren (violin), Magnus Pehrsson (viola), and Frida Bromander (cello), where ideas and mindsets from the early Romantic aesthetics are re-enacted by both musicians and listeners, and where the listener's real-time thoughts and feelings are visualized. Maria Bania is a flute player and Professor of Musical Performance and Interpretation at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg.

Konstens kunskap/Knowledge of Art

Konstens kunskap/Knowledge of Art is a bilingual anthology in which twelve writers look at artistic research through the lens of twelve different artistic doctoral dissertations presented at the University of Gothenburg. At the center of the various readings are the methods, theories and, not least the results of artistic research.

As a discipline, artistic research has existed in Sweden for more than 20 years and the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg was the university where the discipline was first established. The anthology is an attempt to show, in a concrete and factual way, what artistic research has achieved, how it works, how it relates to other research disciplines but also what challenges it faces.

The anthology is arranged chronologically and covers many different research topics in order to show both progression and width. The twelve writers are active both within and outside the academic field, but have all shown an interest in artistic research and its establishment as a scientific discourse.

Our hope with the anthology is that it will give an in-depth picture of what artistic research is and can be, and not least to take the conversation about the discipline one step further.

The ‘Essentially’ Feminine — A Mapping through Artistic Practice of the Feminine Territory Offered by Early Modern Music

Above is the somewhat complicated title of this book. But the content is not hard to understand a year into the #metoo-movement. It turns out that 400-year-old songs use the same rules as abusive men still do. Songs of love from a man to a woman in seventeenth-century England often contain patterns that today’s survivors of domestic violence recognise: to reject a ‘no,' accuse, threaten and question the loved one’s character. The researcher Katarina A Karlsson has read 755 songs from the time. Among the love songs from a man to a woman, more than half use these rules to varying degrees.

Is it possible to perform the songs at all? Katarina A Karlsson, who is also a singer and a writer, has worked with the songs together with musicians, singers, directors, costume designers and lighting designers. Photos document some of this scenic work.

Other authors include a psychologist, associate professor Ulf Axberg, a director, professor emerita Gunilla Gårdfeldt-Carlsson and the renowned expert in Early Modern English Music, professor Christopher R. Wilson from the University of Hull. The unique collaboration frames the English Lute Song through artistic research, psychology, musicology, and gender theory.

So what kind of feminine territory was offered through the early modern love song? A place where a woman would risk losing everything.

Queer Moving Images

Queer Moving Images includes texts, talks, films, music and lectures, all of which concern issues surrounding the moving image in a queer context.

Essays such as Amelie Björck’s To come into being in a queer time and Louise Wolthers’ Queering the family: images of reproduction both make links to the film Spermwhore, the creation process of which is outlined in On Research In What’s Most Private by Anna Linder.

The somewhat overlooked film Mai Zetterling’s Stockholm is discussed in detail within. Ingrid Ryberg’s article further contributes to the knowledge of the unique Swedish film scene in the 70s by addressing films such as Damned Queers, The woman in your life is you and Eva & Maria. You are invited to take part in the panel discussion on Susan Sontag’s time in Sweden and to follow the experimental cinematic process of Joey Carducci.

The volume also includes moving images; the film Spermwhore and Barbara Hammer’s lecture MAKING MOVIES OUT OF SEX AND LIFE (and making it all transparent).

Graphic design: Bastion – Agency Studio Lab 

Performing the Curatorial: Within and beyond Art

Edited and introduced by Maria Lind, and with a preface by Johan Öberg, and contributions by Doug Ashford, Beatrice von Bismarck, Boris Buden, Clémentine Deliss, Helmut Draxler, Eungie Joo, and Marion von Osten.

Within contemporary art, the curator’s mediating function has developed into “the curatorial” itself. The curatorial is akin to methodologies used by artists that focus on post-production approaches—that is, principles of montage, with disparate images, objects, as well as other material and immaterial phenomena that are brought together within a particular time and space-related framework. Because the curatorial has clear performative sides, ones that seek to challenge the status quo, it also includes elements of choreography, orchestration, and administrative logistics—like all practices working with defining, preserving, and mediating cultural heritage in a wider sense. Is curating therefore essentially an act of translation? If so, with what purpose, and can it be performed elsewhere?

Performing the Curatorial brings together a diverse group of curators, artists, art historians, educators, and thinkers, all of whom reflect on the curatorial motives, tendencies and tactics, pitfalls, and exegeses in translating, and thus performing, cultural heritage.

I Hear Voices In Everything! - Step by Step

I Hear Voices in Everything – Step by Step, is a practise-based dissertation in fine arts. It includes three art exhibitions, several independent art works and an essay. It discusses the role of the artist and the making of art mainly through the ideas of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1875- 1975) but also by reflecting on similarities between the artist and the curator. Being a dissertation in fine arts, the aim is not primarily to develop any certain philosophy but to use theory to discuss art, and vice versa.

Tell It Like It Is – Contemporary Photography and the Lure of the Real

Tell It Like It Is – Contemporary Photography and the Lure of the Real brings together a number of discourses of the changing same, through the specificities of contemporary philosophical argument (common sense vs. deniers of the worth of the concept of truth) and argument in contemporary photography and art (inherent truth claim vs. cultural contextualization of an image). It does this not only by flying high on the effects of abstract theory, but by seeking dialogue with practice.

The dialogue takes place through the engaged partici- pation of all four artists involved: Mads Gamdrup, Annika von Hausswolff, Esko Männikkö and Vibeke Tandberg. All have a long-term position and back catalogue of works and visions into these matters that matter.
This book is made with and for both students and professionals in contemporary practice and discourses of photography – not understood as a strictly con- trolled medium, but as a content-driven activity with a clear sense of its past, connected to the variations of its present articulations.

Mika Hannula is a writer, critic and curator. He is a professor for artistic research at the Department of Photography, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg.

School of Photography at University of Gothenburg 2009

"All of us, who possess a special interest in the photographic image, have at one time stood devoutly fingering through a photography book, which we might not have been able to afford. We admire the paper, the binding, the print, and the unique circumstance provoked by the photography book; a sense of unity within a well-defined spatial area where we follow the flow of images just as the dramaturgy dictates, but undoubtedly with a commitment to the multitude of possible meanings that may occur. The format has few restrictions and we turn the pages over and over again; that is why we love and desire the photography book, even crave it.."

The School of Photography at the University of Gothenburg is one of the most important Institutions for Photography in Scandinavia, with prominent courses - undergraduate to postgraduate level. The book features work by the final year students from the masters course and the bachelor course, as well as work by their respective tutors Lotta Antonsson; professor at the masters course, and Karl-Johan Stigmark; course director for the bachelor exam course 2009. The book also provides an insight into the School focus and activity within education, research, book- and exhibition-production.

Ytans materialitet

I arkitekturen behandlas ofta ytan som något rumsavskiljande, där ytans materialitet får bli den gräns som ska definiera rumsligheten. Men om rummet är något föränderligt i våra medvetanden blir också ytan något obeständigt. Denna gräns får en subjektiv laddning, och ytans materialitet blir föränderlig. I den japanska traditionen uppfattas rum som en subjektiv upplevelse, en fysisk erfarenhet och en föränderlig process, det vill säga som något icke-fysiskt i en människas medvetande.

I boken Ytans materialitet ställs frågan om och hur sättet att använda olika material i rumsskapandet är kopplat till olika kulturers föreställningar om rum.
Två japanska och två svenska arkitektkontor/arkitekter jämförs: Kengo Kuma & Associates/Kengo Kuma, SANAA/Kazuyo Sejima och Ryue Nishizawa, Wingårdhs/Gert Wingårdh och Claesson Koivisto Rune/Mårten Claesson.

En annan del av boken beskriver de utforskande experiment som gjorts med fokus på byggnadsglas. Ett fyrtiotal glasprover visar hur upplevelsen av glasets materialitet kan förändras och manipuleras genom laminerade, mönstrade skikt samt screentryck direkt på glas. Kopplingar har gjorts till föränderliga rum i skikt och glasets föränderliga egenskaper har undersökts genom att låta glaset samspela med ljus och omgivande rum.

"Ytans materialitet" är ett forskningsprojekt som i huvudsak har finansierats av Vetenskapsrådet. Projektet har pågått ca tre år och är knutet till HDK, Högskolan för Design och Konsthantverk vid Göteborgs universitet.

RAIME - Research Alliance of Institutions for Music Education

Proceedings of the eight international symposium held at Schaeffergaarden, Copenhagen September 29-October 1, 2005

Allt eller inget. Kritisk teori, samtidskonst och visuell kultur

Published by Valand School of Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg, Art Monitor.

This boook has previously been published in Finnish by Bildkonstakademin under the title: "Kaikki tai ei mitään - kriittinen teoria, nykytaide ja visuaalinen kulttuuri" (2003)

Artistic Research - Theories, Methods and Practices

Published by Bildkonstakademin, Helsinki, Finland and The University of Gothenburg, ArtMonitor, Gothenburg, Sweden 2005.

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