Following up on Research Pavilion #3: Research Ecologies

After the high season in Venice, the third Research Pavilion will continue in the form of an extended research presentation and concluding seminar in Helsinki, as well as a special issue of RUUKKU – Studies in Artistic Research.

Research Pavilion #3 in Venice (May 9–August 28, 2019) was a meeting place, a catalyst of emerging co-operations, and a generator of new artistic thinking. It brought together manifold topical practices of artistic research in a jointly agreed form. The participating artist researchers—operating in six different research cells—engaged in various modes of creative thinking in parallel processes of exhibiting, performing, exposing, discussing, and articulating material encounters and related forms of critical reflection.

Spurred by a general ecologization of thinking, Research Pavilion #3 set the agenda for ethico-political statements on the level of shared practices. In our current decade marked by devastating ecological, economic, and social developments, potential ends of the world have become an urgent issue. We desperately need another distribution of metaphors and sensitivities, as well as novel fictions and imaginaries to address configurations of the present and to restate speculations concerning directions in the future.

In this situation, artistic research is challenged to articulate its idiosyncratic modes of thought ever more vehemently and to address the present global environmental crisis while taking historical responsibilities into account and creating sustainable interconnections between research practices and their environments—in short: to articulate research ecologies. By linking the two concepts of research and ecology—or rather, by placing these two concepts as two focal points in an ellipse—their contours and conditions could become decisive for the current situation and direction of artistic research discourse. Research Pavilion #3 not only called attention to these urgent themes, but also explicitly took the form of a process-oriented Lab for testing and negotiating ecologies of practice.

The Research Pavilion is an ongoing project created and hosted by Uniarts Helsinki. Research Pavilion #3 is created in cooperation with the Louise and Göran Ehrnrooth Foundation and international partner institutions.

Documentation
In order to highlight the processual nature of the Research Pavilion #3 project, the participating research cells have published their research processes in the form of Research Expositions in the Research Catalogue. The project is also discussed on the Universes in Universe website.

Publication 
RUUKKU – Studies in Artistic Research special issue, “Ecologies of Practice”
A further output of Research Pavilion #3 will be a peer-reviewed artistic research publication that re-situates various dimensions of the discussions initiated and generated by the project. A number of participants and their international colleagues have submitted their proposals as a response to the Open Call that was published this summer by RUUKKU. Editors Mika Elo, Tero Heikkinen, and Henk Slager expect to release this issue in spring 2020.

More information about RUUKKU 

Extended Research Presentation
Research Pavilion #3 Info Lab, October 25–November 17, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki
Research Pavilion #3 has transformed the series of Research Pavilion editions into an ongoing project that will continue in the form of different modules after the high season in Venice. The first follow-up module is organized in Helsinki, at University of the Arts Helsinki’s Exhibition Laboratory. Here, in the form of an interpretation of the proven info-lab model, the research cells will present the outcomes of the project and add new, perhaps reflective, performative and speculative dimensions to their research.

Concluding Seminar
October 26 at 11–16, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki
Research Pavilion #3 uses a different kind of curatorial logic. The project did not start with a well-defined narrative. Instead, the narrative was articulated and developed during a series of Assemblies in which members of the cells participated. In this concluding seminar, the research cells will critically evaluate their ecologies of practice and the cellular method of the Research Pavilion #3 project.

More information can be found on the Research Pavilion website.