Artistic Practice Research Articles

马一浮“六艺论”及其印学思想初探

As a representative figure of modern new Confucianism, Ma Yifu not only has deep national learning and solid traditional learning, but also has original ideas in the field of Indian studies.Ma Yifu's “six arts theory” and his art practice also have mutual achievement relationship, reaching the academic and art two-phase confirmation, so that his works give new meaning and connotation, more pointed to the “sacred” level.This paper presents Ma Yifu's “six arts theory” as a link between aesthetic ideas, combined with its printing works, and expounds its printing ideas.

Autobiographical myth by Igor Kholin in the context of soviet discourse (based on the novel “Cats and Mice”)

The article is aimed at considering the genesis, structure and representation forms of the autobiographical myth by “Lianozovo School” poet Igor Kholin in his novel “Cats and Mice”. It is proved that the sociocultural context and world-modeling category of this myth is the opposition between official and uncensored literature, which is characteristic of Soviet discourse and brings to the fore the author’s role of a nonconformist poet. The latter is formed through introducing a system of characters – Igor Kholin’s “twins” – into the text, to whom he attributes not only the details of his private life, but also his published works. As a result, artist and amateur poet Nikolai Sergeevich, poets Holly and Savely Volin and the Author writing the novel “Cats and Mice” are united by a common biography which excludes their involvement in artistic practices that dominate the cultural space. The desire to dissociate himself from them also determines the key semes of Igor Kholin’s myth – “opposition to official art” emphasising the contraposition of underground literature to any “permitted” forms of literature and “pretense to aesthetic superiority” absolutising its artistic primacy and avant-gardism. The first seme is explicit and “served” by the motifs of an aesthetic demarcation between “state publishing” and “self-publishing”, their mutual intolerance and notorious inadequacy of assessments. The second seme is implicit and “supported” by motifs realising the thematic invariant of “freedom Vs. oppression” (with the former being uncensored literature with sharp “discrepancy” with reality and the unpredictability of text unfolding). Therefore, complicated and contradictory relationships between official and uncensored art in Igor Kholin’s autobiographical myth are whittled away to a spectacular yet extremely simplified scheme which excludes any forms of their interaction other than confrontation.

Contemporary art practices: terminological features and main characteristics

Contemporary art practices: terminological features and main characteristics

Mentoring as affective practice

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the potential contributions that an arts mentoring program can make to the support of artists and creative practitioners contending with the challenges of the post-pandemic creative sector. In so doing, it also considers possible criticisms of the efficacy of arts mentoring, given the uncertainty and precariousness that characterise careers in the cultural sector. To explore these ideas, the paper presents an analysis of interview data from research on a recent arts mentoring program in Australia. Utilising the concept of ‘affective practice’ from critical discursive psychology, the paper argues that the benefits of mentoring go beyond practical contributions like skills guidance or ‘gate opening’ by mentors. Additionally, a mentoring program can function as a site in which the ‘feeling experiences’ that derive from the cultural and personal associations of a creative or artistic practice can be reinforced, through the program itself and through the relationship between mentor and mentee, potentially strengthening artistic and creative activities and their practitioners, and thereby perpetuating the survival and growth of contemporary art worlds.

An Introduction and Recent Advances in the Analytical Study of Early Synthetic Dyes and Organic Pigments in Cultural Heritage

This article reviews the research recently undertaken to characterise and identify early synthetic dyes (ESDs) and synthetic organic pigments (SOPs) as well as study their degradation pathways with a focus on cultural heritage applications. Since the invention of the first fully synthetic dye in 1856, these materials have been used in a variety of historic objects and artworks, such as textiles, furniture, prints, paintings, drawings, etc. The synthesis of new dyes and their implementation into pigment formulations were rapid phenomena, so that by the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of new molecules were patented and commercialised. This review will focus on these early formulations synthesised up to approximately 1914 and the outbreak of World War I. ESDs and SOPs represent a challenge from an analytical point of view. Molecular databases are fundamental for the unequivocal identification of these compounds, but reference materials are not always readily available. A combination of analytical techniques is often needed for characterisation, especially in the case of SOPs, which have both organic and inorganic components. Furthermore, the degradation of these molecules can jeopardise their detection in historic objects that have been exposed to light, humidity and temperature fluctuations. Nevertheless, ESDs and SOPs are important research tools. As the dates of their first synthesis are often known with precision, based on patent information, their detection can be used to refine the production date of objects. Additionally, their trade from Europe to the world and their adoption in artistic practices around the globe is an active area of research.

Misfits Meet Art and Technology: Cripping Transmethodologies

This article thinks with disability theory and artistic praxis to explore how disabled artists repurpose and invent technologies in artistic processes designed to enact care and access, extend embodiment, satiate the senses, and create crip culture. Drawing on four examples, we claim that disabled artists are creative technologists whose non-normative culture-making practices approach accessibility as a transmethodological process that requires and generates new forms of interconnected technology and artfulness. Disabled artists, as “creative users,” change the uses and outcomes of technology, dis-using technologies in ways that lead to a more dynamic understanding of access and with it, of crip cultures as processual, artful, and political.

Art, Extractivism, and the Ontological Shift: Toward a (Post)Extractivist Aesthetics

This article aims to contribute to a (post)extractivist aesthetics at a time of ontological shifts, meaning an aesthetics that focuses on the role of art in struggles for (post)extractivist worlds. First, it argues for a contextualized approach to the use of the extractivism framework and proposes that this framework is particularly productive for approaching the socio-environmental crisis due to the way it allows us to engage with the ontological basis of this crisis. The article then builds on empirical research conducted in Argentina to develop the concept of prefigurative ontological design, one of the key functions, it is proposed, of artistic practice in anti- and post-extractivist movements. In this way, the article aims to expand our understanding of the potential of extractivism as a framework of analysis and contributes to the theorization of the relationship between art and extractivism through the lens of political ontology, offering new concepts for developing a (post)extractivist aesthetics.

Synthetic Fracterm Calculus

Previously, in [Bergstra and Tucker 2023], we provided a systematic description of elementary arithmetic concerning addition, multiplication, subtraction and division as it is practiced. Called the naive fracterm calculus, it captured a consensus on what ideas and options were widely accepted, rejected or varied according to taste. We contrasted this state of the practical art with a plurality of its formal algebraic and logical axiomatisations, some of which were motivated by computer arithmetic. We identified a significant gap between the wide embrace of the naive fracterm calculus and the narrow precisely defined formalisations. In this paper, we introduce a new intermediate and informal axiomatisation of elementary arithmetic to bridge that gap; it is called the synthetic fracterm calculus. Compared with naive fracterm calculus, the synthetic fracterm calculus is more systematic, resolves several ambiguities and prepares for reasoning underpinned by logic; indeed, it admits direct formalisations, which the naive fracterm calculus does not. The methods of these papers may have wider application, wherever formalisations are needed to analyse and standardise practices.

Artistic practice in Waldorf teacher education: a sensory-aesthetic concept for a digital age

One of the general concepts underlying Waldorf education is that teaching is an art. Although this idea is certainly not unique to Waldorf education, what is unique is the way it has been integrated into Waldorf teacher education. While Waldorf teacher education programs are diverse, both in national and international contexts, one of the central elements which they share is the prominent role which different forms of artistic practice play throughout the course of pre-service and in-service programs. This article explores the reasons and aims behind the inclusion of subjects such as music, sculpture, and speech in Waldorf teacher education, at first within the larger context of viewing different perspectives and justifications for the inclusion of the arts in teacher education outside of Waldorf pedagogy. In light of the educational challenges posed by widespread sensory deficits among children and adolescents, viewed here as being connected to the extensive role/s which different forms of digital media play in their lives, the case is made for the potentials of the arts as a way to address those deficits. In examining both the arguments for arts-based courses in teacher education and the pedagogical challenges of our times I propose a concept for the inclusion of the arts in teacher education connected to the concept of aesthesis, from the Ancient Greek concept of aisthésis, understood here as the primary perceptual-sensory basis of aesthetic experience. The integration of scientific courses with arts-based practice in teacher education is seen as providing a fruitful basis for teachers to be able to take on these educational challenges.

“Arrest the dance!”: rethinking Tejumola Olaniyan’s “postcolonial antinomy” and the politics of art activism

Drawing on fieldwork on the emerging radical street performance culture in Nigeria, I reflect on the implications of Tejumola Olaniyan’s approach to popular culture and political activism, with a particular focus on his profound and provocative analysis of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat. In Arrest the Music!, Olaniyan adopts a cultural-materialist approach to locate Fela’s Afrobeat in the postcolonial conditions that generated its aesthetics and politics. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the oppositional messages in Fela’s lyrics, Olaniyan excavates the “antinomies” structuring Fela’s music practices and reads these antinomies as embodiments of an oppressive yet “enchanting” postcolonial modernity. In the context of Olaniyan’s readings, I interpret the production of a radical street performance culture in Lagos in relation to the extensive processes of neoliberal restructuring taking place in urban Nigeria, and I examine in which ways postcolonial antinomies continue to structure contemporary artistic practices. This paper calls for a more nuanced reading of the politics of activist art in contemporary Africa, and especially the agonistic entanglements of local artistic activism and the neoliberal agendas forced upon it.

SATIRE AND ITS RHYTHM THROUGH THE LENS OF CARICATURE AND CARTOON PRACTICES IN INDIA: A REVIEW

The major key factor of modern ‘caricature’ art has been not only constricted to only the voice of society and the political domain, neither is it still subjected to newspapers, magazines and journals, banners, templates, and posters but it is legitimated to be spontaneous equally an ambiguous ‘etiology’ of art practice having its inseparable bonding through 21st century as ‘digital expression’ as well. Caricature art has always been hands-up with its impact on the human psyche or vice-versa as well and its elongated limbs hold a tremendous grip over any fragile, discursiveness, and expectation that weakens the stimulus growth of society which can never be overlooked. This research paper- ‘Satire and its Rhythm through the Lens of Caricature and Cartoon Practices in India: A Review’ fundamentally has made an attempt to showcase the study of satire through caricature and cartoon art by Five eminent artists from India and their perception of this subject.

Ethnomedicine in the USA: Aesthetics of Performance and Organic Wellness as a Posthuman Construct In the ‘Ifa’ Ritual of the Santeria

Performances across time have promoted human wellness, especially as we continue to incorporate the lived experiences of healing rituals into our contemporary artistic practices. Audience members practice good physical, emotional, social, and psychological health through their ability to create an illusion of mental escape, enlightenment, and entertainment. The paper comments on a specific shamanistic practice – “Ifa Ritual,” practiced by the African diaspora of the Americas as a metric for evaluation. I shall explore documented research on the performance expressions noticeable in the Yoruba Ifa ritual exemplary in the Santeria and their communal benefits to Afro-Cubans in the USA. The Afro-Cuban Yorubas called Lucumi are believed to have migrated as slaves from the Yoruba subgroups of Africa to the New World, and there they introduced a cultural practice called the Santeria. The Santeria is an attempt to decolonize the impact of Western religious ideologies on their spiritual and social life by performing Ifa rites as a mode of worship and healing. I interrogate how the performative styles and elements of “Ifa” including the divination techniques contribute to promoting the well-being of contemporary Ifa practitioners. Theoretically, the study considers rituals as a fundamental approach to performance and wellness that seeks to reinforce and provoke discourses in post-humanism. The scope of this study is confined to the branch of humanities and soft sciences devoted to prevalent research on the Yoruba belief system and Lucumi Santeria, aiding the discussion of "Ifa" as a post-humanist construct of performance and wellness.

Composition Color Space: Three Key Words in Art Design

As found in the practice of arts, which is the same as of sciences, a design without imagination is like the water running from nowhere and trees without roots, deprived of vitality and artistic appeal. As illustrated in the old saying that a thousand li journey is started by taking the first step, the three compositions work as both the foundation of art design and provider of unlimited imagination and creativity for urban design and city planning.

Picnic methodology: rethinking multispecies relationships through alfresco meals

This essay introduces a speculative “picnic methodology” emerging from site-specific performance art practice with a herd of reindeer. The practice expands from the justice-oriented picnic tradition and stages picnic as a space to envision nonhierarchical multispecies relationships. The picnic blanket is offered as a meeting place to appreciate more-than-human ways of being, thinking, and knowing, starting with our relative, the reindeer. The essay draws from the short film City Reindeer (2022), documenting the durational picnics in the wintery Arctic. The performance art practice forms here a contemplative and playful intervention to decenter the human and give the reindeer a voice, with an underlying commitment to promoting veganism.

THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRACTICES OF SOCIO-ARTISTIC EDUCATION AT PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITIES OF RUSSIA AND CHINA

This scientific article is devoted to a comparative analysis of pedagogical higher educational institutions in China and Russia in the field of art education and social practice. The main purpose of the study is to identify similarities and differences between the educational systems of the two countries, their approaches to teaching contemporary art, as well as interaction with the artistic community and the social environment. The article provides an overview of the existing research in the field of socio-artistic education at pedagogical universities in Russia and China. The key aspects and practices are analysed, such as the organisation of the educational process, inclusion of students in art projects and practices, interaction with the local art community and social organisations. The results of the study help to identify similarities and differences in the approaches to socio-artistic education in educational institutions in Russia and China. The author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each system and gives recommendations for improving the practice of socio-artistic education in pedagogical higher educational institutions of both countries. The research is of interest to educators, scientists and specialists in the field of art education, as well as those who are interested in comparative analysis of educational practices of art in different countries. The results of the work can be used to develop training programmes and improve the quality of socio-artistic education at pedagogical universities.

Between Calligraphic Untranslatability and Symbolic Translatability: Xu Bing’s Pictographic Art

ABSTRACT Emily Apter’s conception of the “untranslatable” taps into the dynamics and difficulties of translation between languages and cultures. The process of translation is described as a “intransigent nub of meaning that triggers endless translating in response to its resistant singularity.” When words are taken out of their context, the idiosyncratic meaning is obliterated and revamped. On the one hand, different from the Derridean critique of Western logocentric bias of writing, Chinese characters, particularly written in the form of calligraphy, are faced with great challenges when they need to be translated into other non-pictographic languages. The strokes, pauses, structures, ink tones and sizes in Chinese calligraphy all contribute to the meaning of the text imminent to the artist’s spatiotemporal situation and fluctuations of his/her mental state. To a large extent, the calligraphic art resists the temptation of translation, either into other languages, or into Chinese characters in print. On the other hand, Chinese characters with their pictographic quality have the potential to transcend the phonocentric confines of languages and are possible to be translated into a universal language. The Chinese artist Xu Bing 徐冰 plays with the calligraphic form of Chinese characters in his artworks. In his project Book from the Sky 天書 (Tianshu), he extracts the strokes and radicals from the Chinese characters and rearranges them into new artificial and meaningless ones, containing the imagist form and obliterating the meaning. In Book from the Ground 地書 (Dishu), Xu uses symbols from the public sphere and makes them into a book, which is accessible to people of different linguistic backgrounds. I argue that by playing with the Chinese characters as pictographic signs and other public signs, Xu Bing’s artistic practices challenge the border between the singular and the universal, and the translatable and the untranslatable, rendering implications for the cross-lingual translation.

Reframing videotelephony through coexistence and empathy in the third space

ABSTRACT Predicated on the telephone, the history of videotelephony has continually adopted a two-way model of communication between ‘newsreader’ participants, confined to boxes on a screen. This article identifies philosophical approaches and practical solutions to overcome this ‘horseless-carriage’ syndrome using a phenomenological methodology to reframe the concept of videotelephony as a third space encounter through the author’s telematic art practice. By reflecting on audience participation in the Installations Telematic Dreaming (1992) and Telematic Vision (1993) participants interact through a third-person self-image and transcend their physical vulnerabilities and self-conscious inhibitions to engage and identify through coexistence and empathy. These observations draw on analogies between Martin Heidegger’s ‘hammer’ and the television screen, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘extension of bodily synthesis’ and the telepresent image of self. By drawing on these phenomenological approaches, the author’s AHRC research project Telepresence Stage (2022) responded to the mass entrapment of two-way videoconference apps during the COVID-19 lockdown, and the inevitable Zoom fatigue, to provide alternative fit-for-purpose telepresence solutions for the performing arts sector. The project exposes the flaws and misconceptions of conventional videotelephony by employing open-source resources and practical green-screen techniques to embody a shared third space between remote performers, arriving at alternative telepresence solutions for future coexistence.

Correction of manifestations of psychoemotional stress in students: meditative techniques in combination with pharmacological support in the martial art of ju-jutsu

The goal is to substantiate and experimentally verify the effectiveness of the combined meditative-pharmacological methodology of relieving emotional stress in students of higher education institutions during Ju-jutsu martial arts classes. Methodology: analysis and generalization of educational and methodological literature, systematization of scientific data, generalization of practical experience, comparison of different views on the investigated problem; pedagogical survey for the purpose of studying the level of stress resistance. Scientific novelty. An analysis of modern scientific and scientific-methodological literature was carried out and factors influencing the mental health of students were investigated, in particular, the severity of manifestations of psycho-emotional stress during studies in institutions of higher education, and the negative impact of this phenomenon on the functional state of organs and systems of the body was proven. deterioration of health and quality of life. The expediency of using meditative techniques to reduce the severity of stressful manifestations is shown. For the first time in the practice of martial arts, a combination of meditation was used during the training process of students engaged in the martial art of ju-jutsu to reduce the severity of manifestations of stress, and the use of a special nutritional supplement with a neuroprotective focus "Acetyl-L-carnitine" to correct the manifestations of emotional stress that occurs in students of higher education institutions during their studies. Conclusions. To reduce the manifestations of stress, students use means that not only do not correspond to the prevention of mental health, but also often have a negative effect on it (nicotine, alcohol, drugs, physical and mental overload, etc.). For this purpose, the use of meditative techniques in combination with special neuroprotective agents significantly helps to reduce the severity of manifestations of psychoemotional stress of university students.

PXRF and Polychromy: Identifying Pigments on Limestone Statuary from the Roman Limes, Preliminary Results

This paper presents the preliminary results of an investigation on the unexplored topic of polychromy on provincial stone sculptures from the Roman provinces in Germania through the innovative application of heritage materials science techniques. A group of three life-sized statues dating to the 1st Century CE recovered from Ingelheim, near Mainz, retains remarkably well-preserved traces of pigments. These are ripe for emerging non-invasive technologies supplemented by micro-sampling to validate results and provide information relating to mixing and layering not available to the naked eye. The most strikingly visible areas of extant polychromy were retained on the sculpture of a young woman, reported on here as the first phase of this programme of research. The results suggest that the statue was originally covered in a gypsum layer before the application of complex and diverse recipes of pigment applied as mixtures and in layers to create required hues and shadowing on sculpted features. The palette includes ochres and green earth mixed with small amounts of minium (red lead), realgar and lapis lazuli (ultramarine blue) added to create skin tones, and a vibrant blue-green tunic created from Egyptian blue, bone black, ochres, cinnabar and green earth; the palla and peplos contained ochres, bone black, and orpiment, and mixes of these created the detail of coloured jewellery. Of great interest was the detection of bone black on many features, particularly as a shading agent to enhance sculpted features, such as folds in cloth, providing a more realistic and flowing articulation. This is a revolutionary observation that provides previously unexplored insights into artistic polychromic practice in Antiquity.

„Mitu nie zdradzajcie”. Modernistyczna koncepcja tańca w eksperymentach studia „Heptachor”

The Heptachor (Гептахор) studio was a leading early 20 th-century Russian modern dance school committed to a revival of the art of dance and the development of new forms of musical movement and new concepts of artistic creation. In the years 1914–1934, it was the centre of the Musical Movement dance school, experimenting with a wide range of artistic, educational and therapeutic practices. The aim of the article is, first, to present the history of the Heptachor studio on the basis of the recollections and memoirs of its co-founder Stephanida Rudneva, contemporary documents and archive materials, and, second, to analyze the typical creative process narratives included in those sources.