joa hug

My doctoral research Propositions for Unfinished Thinking: The Research Score as a Medium of Artistic Research has recently been published online on the Research Catalogue, an international database and publication forum for artistic research, and is openly accessible.

The Defence took place on September 19th, 2020. The opponents were Dr. Jaana Parviainen (Tampere University) and Dr. Ben Spatz (University of Huddersfield). Custos was Professor in Artistic Research Leena Rouhiainen. Due to the current situation, the event took place in the format of a video defence with live streaming on the Uniarts Helsinki YouTube channel. A recording of the opening lecture will be posted soon as part of the Theatre Academy’s publication series Acta Scenica. research.

I want to thank everyone who has been involved in and contributed, in one way or the other, to the development of my research! Here are my Acknowledgements as stated in the thesis:

“The incipience of my doctorate reaches back far before joining the doctoral program in 2011. Training and performing with Body Weather Amsterdam between 2002 and 2009 created the grounds for my doctoral research, and I am greatly indebted to Frank van de Ven and Katerina Bakatsaki for sharing their knowledge, as well as the many practitioners I was able to work with at this time, especially Ailed Izurieta, Ema Nik Thomas and Milou Veling. From 2007-2009, I joined the first cohort of the Artistic Research Master Program at the University of Amsterdam; the MA studies were key in giving a direction to my desire to unite academic research and artistic practice, and I am particularly grateful to Henk Borgdorff for the significant theoretical impulses he gave to my own research and to the emergence of the field of artistic research as a whole.

Throughout the years of my doctorate, the pedagogical and research input as well as the administrative support I received from the staff of the Performing Arts Research Centre were overwhelming and beyond any expectations. I want to thank Annette Arlander, Annika Fredriksson, Elina Raitasalo, Esa Kirkkopelto, Hanna Järvinen, Hanna Westerlund, Isto Turpeinen, Kay Lehikoinen, Kirsi Heimonen, Kirsi Rinne, Laura Gröhndahl, Leena Rouhiainen, Pilvi Porkola, Riita Pasanen-Wilberg, Siiri-Maija Heino, Stefano de Luca, Teija Löytönen and Tuija Kokkonen. The knowledge and expertise of the other doctoral candidates at the department was a huge source of learning and growth. Thank you, in particular, Outi Condit, Simo Kellokompu, Tuuja Jännicke and Vincent Roumagnac for generously sharing not only the issues concerning your own research, but also your feedback about the research of other colleagues. I deeply appreciate the commitment of everyone else working at the Theatre Academy and your efforts to serve the students’ growth and development; during my doctorate there was not a single moment when a request for help would have been rejected. Thanks also to Anna Estarriola and Julius Elo, and their partners, for generously hosting me during my regular trips to Helsinki.

For the development of my research—and for its methodology—my participation in, presentations for, and exchange of ideas at conferences, symposia, meetings and festivals were highly useful. I want to thank the Theatre Academy Helsinki and the Performing Arts Research Centre for their travel grants that allowed my participation at these events, as well as the people behind the following organizations:

ADiE (Artistic Doctorates in Europe)

Body IQ Festival/Somatische Akademie Berlin

Colloquium for Artistic Research in Performing Arts

Conference Series on New Materialisms

Festival for New Dance and Performance (Ehkä/Turku)

German Dance Congress

German Society for Dance Research

Hollo Institute

Institute of Philosophy/Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Interdisciplinary Colloquium SCIENCES COGNITIVES ET SPECTACLE VIVANT: Langages, Émotions, Communication

International Platform for Performer Training

Nordic Forum for Dance Research

Nordic Summer University

PSI/Performance Philosophy

Society for Artistic Research

Society for Dance Research (UK)

Summer Academy for Artistic Research

Tanzfabrik Berlin

Theatre Academy Helsinki

Zodiak Helsinki

The collaborative research for the second artistic part in 2016—made possible by a generous production grant from the Performing Arts Research Centre—was one of the highlights of my doctorate. It was a huge pleasure to be able to work with Josh Rutter, Outi Condit, Paula Kramer, Riikka T. Innanen and Tashi Iwaoka. The short but intensive collaboration with these artists was crucial to enable my research to show its mettle.

The journal articles written during the course of the doctorate helped to sharpen the conceptual articulation of what is at stake in my research. I want to thank:

• • Undine Eberlein, for inviting me to contribute to her anthology Intercorporeity, Movement and Tacit Knowledge (2016), and to the publisher Transcript, for the permission to reproduce this contribution, entitled Modes of Knowing in Body Weather Performance Training.
  • Mary Paterson, for editing the special issue Showing and Writing Training (2016) of the journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, and the publisher Taylor & Francis, for the permission to reproduce my article Writing with Practice: Body Weather Performance Training Becomes a Medium of Artistic Research.
  • Daniela Jobertová and Alice Koubová, for editing the anthology Artistic Research: Is There Some Method? (2017), and for the permission to reproduce my contribution No Solutions: The Research Score as a Medium of Artistic Research.
  • Outi Condit, especially, for co-editing the issue Poetics of Writing (2017) of the online journal Nivel. My article To Call that ‘Writing?’ was prompted by one of our discussions during the collaborative research for my second artistic part.

I am indebted to the Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation for supporting my doctoral thesis with research grants (2012-2014), as well as to the Performing Arts Research Centre for the allocation of Research Associate positions (2015-2018) that enabled me to carry out my research and to complete the commentary (2019).

My heartfelt thanks go to Christine Quoiraud, Frank van de Ven, Katerina Bakatsaki and Viviane Duvergé, for sharing their experiences and personal views about Body Weather, as well as for their feedback on the manuscript. Le Centre National de la Danse cordially provided me access to the archive of Christine Quoiraud. Contemporary Arts Media in Melbourne granted me the permission to use two images by Serge Tampalini from his work Butoh – Body Weather Farm, A Personal Insight to the Work (Contemporary Arts Media, Melbourne, Australia. Copyright 2009. http://www.artfilms-digital.com).

Many thanks to my pre-examiners, Dr. Jaana Parviainen and Dr. Peter Snow, for their insightful and helpful comments about my artistic parts, as well as about the pre-publication version of the commentary. My colleagues from AREAL_Berlin­—Andrea Keiz, Bettina Mainz, Crosby McCloy, Katja Münker, Paula Kramer, Sabine Zahn and Susanne Martin—collegially supported the evolution of my research at various moments of the process by sharing their feedback, both about practical elements as well as on pieces of writing. Zoe Goldstein edited my non-native English and thus made the text part of the commentary much more readable and understandable. Tero Heikkinen provided vital technical and editorial support for the publication on the RC.

The creation of the commentary was far more challenging than I ever expected and took me to my personal limits. My deepest thanks go to my supervisors, Erin Manning and Leena Rouhiainen, for guiding me through this time with all their patience and persistence.

Finally, I want to thank my partner, Dagmar Frohning, for going with me through all the ups and downs, and for standing by, time and again, with advice and encouragement.

September 2020

Joa Hug