We are happy to announce the Swap Spaces catalogue, which we celebrate with a simularr Soirée – Swap Spaces Catalogue Presentation, Wed 25 October, 19:00h, at Grazer Kunstverein, Burggasse 4. Some of the contributing artists will be present, sharing in a round table, and accompanied by a musical improvisation and other contributions.
We celebrate the first year of simularr with the presentation of Swap Spaces — a catalogue recollecting the experiences of the pilot phase of the project. Edited by Nayarí Castillo and Hanns Holger Rutz, the book gathers the stories of the different participants by revealing ways of artistic production and research, acknowledging influences between artists, and highlighting positive contaminations among practices. With texts from Shane Finan, Franziska Hederer, Jackie Karuti, Alisa Kobzar, Johanna Lettmayer, Consuelo Méndez, David Pirrò, Daniele Pozzi, and the editors themselves, this catalogue paves the way for understanding other forms of working together.
The Swap Spaces catalogue is now ready for ordering via Reagenz’ publishing portfolio.
It has been three months now that incoming artists-researchers Ludvig Elblaus and Charlotta Ruth have left the in-situ phase with the resident simularr team in Graz, concluding thus the first interval of the project. Yet, we are only beginning to work through the many materials produced, thoughts and concepts, sketches, sonic and performative actions. While in-depth analyses are saved for forthcoming articles and chapters, and the digitised materials remain, for the time being, in our internal repository, this blog entry will provide a glimpse into our doing.
A good amount of techniques, concepts and formulations were brought in by each member of the team in the end of March and beginning of April, put to test and transformation in the group. What are the connecting surfaces between compositional, choreographic, installative and architectural thinking that would make it possible to share our processes? Is it possible to think while doing, or need there be rhythms of making and reflecting? What is everyone’s individual working rhythm, and what happens to these rhythms as they meet and overlap?
Read moreOn 26 August, simularr member Hanns Holger Rutz gave a keynote at the Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts (CARPA). His talk, entitled “Beyond self and other: Shifting research from automation to endomation”, proposed the provisional neologism to describe a situation in which an ensemble of interdisciplinary artist-researchers, with or without mediation by machines and devices, establishes a spatial situation that allows to think and move within a common boundary, where thoughts and artefacts can circulate and be shared without the need for an equalisation of intentions and approaches. Case studies included the first simularr interval.
Founded in 2009, CARPA is organised every two years by the Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke) at the University of the Arts Helsinki. As a colloquium and laboratory, it aims to discuss the challenges and possibilities of artistic research, especially in the field of performing arts, understood in a broad sense and involving a variety of different creative practices. The event included three plenary lectures, 27 presentations, three setting-things-in-motion workshops and three overview workshops. There were also outdoor group walks and a selection of short films. CARPA8 had 96 participants from 22 different countries. A proceedings publication is planned.
In July 2023, the simularr team was in Weimar, Germany, for the 11th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X. xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects and characterises them all.
Nayarí Castillo, Hanns Holger Rutz and Daniele Pozzi presented two sound and intermedia installations—Swap Rogues and Trópos, exhibited at Eigenheim Gallery—and an experimental live sound project—Strip & Embellish, performed at Nivre Studios. The works are accompained by three articles which are published in the conference proceedings.