Together with Dr. Marina Velez, Heidi Seppälä is organising an artistic research conference for Nordic Summer University’s Summer Symposium 2022 in Oslo, Norway 27.7-4.8.2022.

The theme of the conference is Experiencing Artistic Research Through the Senses. During this symposium an international, carefully selected group of artist researchers will be investigating phenomenology (empirical research, direct experience) micro-phenomenology (experiences that trigger specific micro-gestures or micro-acts of attention) and reverse-phenomenology (how one experiences a landscape and how the landscape experiences one) as methods for reflecting on the experiential in artistic practice research. The intention of the symposium is to create spaces for exploring artistic methodologies with the aim to develop reflection as a means to address the experiential in knowledge-making and processes of artistic practices. This is done in the belief that critically investigating the artistic research process will promote understanding of the role of the experiential in artistic practices and will provide a framework from which to explore reflection to develop sensemaking capacities for artistic practices.

The Circle 7 of NSU, run by Heidi Seppälä and Marina Velez, is called ‘The Experiential in Artistic Practice: Methods, Knowledges and Reflective Processes’. Throughout its series of symposia organised in 2022-2024, Circle 7 will document research and findings, which will be published in an anthology, on-line journal or other publishing platforms. Taking in the questions How do knowledges emerge in artistic research practices through the experiential? and What kind of knowledges are they? as a starting point, this study circle will provide opportunities for investigating and experiencing other forms of knowledge through building trust in imagination, intuition and working-with others in the artistic practice process.

The focus of this three year cycle is the investigation of the methods, knowledges and reflective processes involved in artistic practice research in a collective effort to explore and articulate how, in artistic research, experience informs experience and the experiential changes the researcher and the practice as it unfolds. Experience is what different disciplines of artistic research have in common, as Mika Hannula states, ‘artistic research is a way in which experience reflectively changes itself’ (Hannula et al, 2005, p. 39). As such, it is different from other types of research as it merges subject, researcher and process in the experiential as a way of advancing practice.

More about NSU’s Artistic Research Circle, see:

https://www.nsuweb.org/study-circles/circle-7-the-experiential-in-artistic-practice-and-research-methods-knowledges-and-reflective-processes/