KuvA Research Days 2023
KuvA Research Days 2023 examined the diverse contexts of artistic research from the perspectives opened up by three independent program days. The unifying line of thought is a curious and open-minded return to phenomena and skills that have not received the attention they deserve. You can find here a more detailed programme and speakers’ bios for each day.
- Day 1: Romantic irony (programme details below)
- Day 2: Material Matters (link to the programme and speakers bios)
- Day 3: Object Studies (link to the programme and speakers bios)
Day 1: Romantic irony
Symposium of a series of lectures and discussions around the topic of romantic irony. Romantic irony is an idea about art in its “modern state” developed by a group of poets of Jena romanticism*. It was formulated in the group’s collective practice of experimental poetry, which made use of indirect ways of expression to maintain meanings that are not bound to fixed standpoints – it is a specific mode of ‘irony’ that is ‘romantic’ in its character. Eventually it was meant to unite art and philosophy. At this symposium, romantic irony makes up the context to discuss artistic means of creating subversive spaces of fiction. Finnish and international scholars and art enthusiasts specialized in the topic look into its particularity and relate it to the arts. The day ends with a moderated dialogue with the participants as well as the audience.
* (Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis & al., 1790s Germany)
Note there will be additional programme on the day before, Monday 11.12.2023 at 17:30: Screening programme of select art films related to romantic irony (scroll down for details).
Programme, Tue 12.12.2023
Partly streamed on the Uniarts Helsinki YouTube channel at 9:05–16 (Time zone: UTC +2).
Go to YouTube
8:45 Morning coffee
9:05 Welcome words
9:10 Introduction, Miklos Gaál
9:20 Jeroen Boomgaard: The end of irony
Contemporary art appears to be very non-ironic. Today, serious research and engaged statements form the core content of the major part of visual artworks. To better understand this situation I want to look back at Romantic irony, and to open a perspective for new forms of irony today.
9:55 Antti Arnkil: “… in the universe of poetry nothing stands still”*. Some remarks on Schlegel, poetry and irony.
The presentation is an attempt to shed some light on the creative tension between the finite and the infinite in Friedrich Schlegel’s fragmentary writing. (*Athenaeum fragment 434)
10:30 Coffee break
10:50 Vesa Oittinen: Romantic irony – what was it about?
The lecture summarizes some post-Kantian philosophies in the late 18th century Germany that were at play when the Jena romantics developed their literary work. Their poetic mode of writing had the aspiration to solve the problems that philosophy is incapable of solving.
11:25 Asko Nivala: Romantic irony: Transcendental reflection of artistic form
Friedrich Schlegel’s concept of irony emphasises self-awareness and self-reflexivity, allowing the work of art to create and question its own rules. Much like Kant’s transcendental knowledge, Schlegel’s formulation of art generates its own poetical rules from within, underscoring an autonomous quality.
12 Q&A – “How are we doing?”
12:15 Lunch
13:15 Jamie MacDonald: Saying what I think you think I think
The genre of stand-up comedy allows performers heightened freedom of speech and minimised social transgression. My practice as a stand-up comedian is an activist way based on a certain ironic twist: I speak from the position of a performer who is a member of a gender minority, reaching for empathy and understanding with cisgender audiences by saying things that don’t mean what they say they mean.
13:50 Tuomas Nevanlinna: Criticism & the modern state of art
Art in its modern state, after the 18th century, is not anymore bound to rigid rules of expression or to fixed forms of receiving either. So, what is today’s art criticism based on?
14:25 Coffee break
14:40 Veli-Matti Saarinen: Ludwig Tieck and creative madness
The key to understand the nature of literature and art of Jena romanticism is the transcendental of Kant’s critical philosophy – the power of words and the artistic ways to create worlds lead to vertigo and madness.
15:15 Panel discussion: Can we learn something about romantic irony today?
Moderated with the speakers, along Q&A
16 Drinks!
16:15 Book launches
un/luck publication
The understanding of luck has taken many forms across history, culture and language, asking questions of power, agency, influence and chance. This publication is a collection of artistic documents, that collects the thoughts and artistic process of a group of artists connected with the Doctoral programmes at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, New Zealand and the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland.
Roma Anderson, Katrina Beekhuis, Matthew Cowan, Paul Cullen, Miklos Gaál, Matthew Galloway, Henna-Riikka Halonen, Sean Kerr, Ngahuia Harrison, Yukari Kaihori, Louise Menzies, Ilya Orlov, Mirimari Väyrynen and Denise Ziegler all consider Luck and its connotations from a wide variety of artistic positions across cultures, geographies, and practices. The project will also include group exhibition presentations in both Auckland and Helsinki in 2024.
The publication will be introduced by Matthew Cowan and some of the other artists involved.
Figurations of Peripheries Through Arts and Visual Studies – Peripheries in Parallax
Figurations of Peripheries Through Arts and Visual Studies – Peripheries in Parallax book is a collection of approaches from several disciplines where the spatial, conceptual, and theoretical hierarchies and biased assumptions of ‘peripheries’ are challenged. The book provides a multidisciplinary cross-exposure through a collection of chapters and visual essays by researchers and artists. The aim is to illuminate the existing, hidden, often incommensurable, and controversial margins in society at large from equal, ethical, and empathic perspectives.
The authors are Annette Arlander, Liisa Ikonen, Maiju Loukola, Denise Ziegler, Harri Laakso, Mari Myllylä, Jonna Tolonen, Eimear Tynan, Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, Leena-Maija Rossi, Mari Mäkiranta, Eija Timonen and Raila Knuuttila. The book includes an In Memoriam article draft by Ari Hirvonen. The book is edited by Maiju Loukola, Mari Mäkiranta and Jonna Tolonen
Additional programme, Mon 11.12.2023
Screening at 17:30: Select art films related to romantic irony
Venue: Screening room K-224, Mylly, Academy of Fine Arts (Sörnäisten rantatie 19, Helsinki)
Including pieces by Francis Alÿs, Ryan Gander, Hito Steyerl, Guido van der Werve among others. Duration 1hr 45min. The capacity of the screening room is 30 people.
Registration needed for attending the screening.
The sceening in our events calendar
Register here for screening 11.12.2023
Open screening: Phil Collins: Tomorrow Is Always Too Long
11.12.2023 at 19:30–20:50 (no registration)
Phil Collins: Tomorrow Is Always Too Long (2014). Duration of the screening is 1hr. 21min. The event is curated by Doctoral researcher Miklos Gaál, Academy of Fine Arts.
The venue is the Screening room K-224 in Mylly, the Academy of Fine Arts main building.The capacity of the screening room is 30 people. The screening is open, no registration needed. Read more here
Speaker bios
Antti Arnkil is an essayist and literature editor who has written a number of texts dealing with Jena romanticism with emphasis on its’ mode of irony. Arnkil is passionate about Schlegel’s fragments and thinks about them frequently.
Jeroen Boomgaard is an art historian specialized in art theory. He is a former professor of Art & Public Space at Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and head of the Artistic Research MA programme at the University of Amsterdam.
Miklos Gaál
(b. Espoo, Finland) is a visual artist living in Amsterdam. Gaál has presented his works in galleries, institutions, and publications internationally since 2001. He is currently occupied with doctoral research comparing the historical conceptualization of art by romantic irony with contemporary artistic practices.
Jamie MacDonald is a stand-up comedian and a PhD student of performative arts at Theatre Academy at Uniarts Helsinki. He works with queer, feminist and intersectional stand-up comedy since 2018.
Tuomas Nevanlinna is a philosopher, writer and educator. Also more recently, a representative politician. In his pastime, Nevanlinna has set himself the impossible task of translating Schlegel’s iconic Athenaeum fragments into Finnish.
Asko Nivala is a cultural historian (University of Turku). His research delves into the philosophy and aesthetics of German Romanticism, as well as spatial and digital humanities. Nivala has authored the monograph “The Romantic Idea of the Golden Age in Friedrich Schlegel’s Philosophy of History” (Routledge 2017).
Vesa Oittinen prof. emer., fields of interests cover the history of ideas and philosophy, with a focus on epistemology: Spinoza, classical German philosophy (Kant, Hegel), Nordic philosophy, Enlightenment thought, Russian history of ideas and Soviet philosophy. Oittinen is the author of a seminal 1984 translation of Novalis’ poetry into Finnish.
Veli-Matti Saarinen is the author of several publications and a number of articles about Jena romanticism. His 2007 doctoral thesis is ”The Daybreak and Nightfall of Literature. Friedrich Schlegel’s Idea of Romantic Literature: Between Productive Fantasy and Reflection”.
- Day 1: Romantic irony (programme details below)
- Day 2: Material Matters (link to the programme and speakers bios)
- Day 3: Object Studies (link to the programme and speakers bios)
Day 1: Romantic irony
Symposium of a series of lectures and discussions around the topic of romantic irony. Romantic irony is an idea about art in its “modern state” developed by a group of poets of Jena romanticism*. It was formulated in the group’s collective practice of experimental poetry, which made use of indirect ways of expression to maintain meanings that are not bound to fixed standpoints – it is a specific mode of ‘irony’ that is ‘romantic’ in its character. Eventually it was meant to unite art and philosophy. At this symposium, romantic irony makes up the context to discuss artistic means of creating subversive spaces of fiction. Finnish and international scholars and art enthusiasts specialized in the topic look into its particularity and relate it to the arts. The day ends with a moderated dialogue with the participants as well as the audience.
* (Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis & al., 1790s Germany)
Note there will be additional programme on the day before, Monday 11.12.2023 at 17:30: Screening programme of select art films related to romantic irony (scroll down for details).
Programme, Tue 12.12.2023
Partly streamed on the Uniarts Helsinki YouTube channel at 9:05–16 (Time zone: UTC +2).
Go to YouTube
8:45 Morning coffee
9:05 Welcome words
9:10 Introduction, Miklos Gaál
9:20 Jeroen Boomgaard: The end of irony
Contemporary art appears to be very non-ironic. Today, serious research and engaged statements form the core content of the major part of visual artworks. To better understand this situation I want to look back at Romantic irony, and to open a perspective for new forms of irony today.
9:55 Antti Arnkil: “… in the universe of poetry nothing stands still”*. Some remarks on Schlegel, poetry and irony.
The presentation is an attempt to shed some light on the creative tension between the finite and the infinite in Friedrich Schlegel’s fragmentary writing. (*Athenaeum fragment 434)
10:30 Coffee break
10:50 Vesa Oittinen: Romantic irony – what was it about?
The lecture summarizes some post-Kantian philosophies in the late 18th century Germany that were at play when the Jena romantics developed their literary work. Their poetic mode of writing had the aspiration to solve the problems that philosophy is incapable of solving.
11:25 Asko Nivala: Romantic irony: Transcendental reflection of artistic form
Friedrich Schlegel’s concept of irony emphasises self-awareness and self-reflexivity, allowing the work of art to create and question its own rules. Much like Kant’s transcendental knowledge, Schlegel’s formulation of art generates its own poetical rules from within, underscoring an autonomous quality.
12 Q&A – “How are we doing?”
12:15 Lunch
13:15 Jamie MacDonald: Saying what I think you think I think
The genre of stand-up comedy allows performers heightened freedom of speech and minimised social transgression. My practice as a stand-up comedian is an activist way based on a certain ironic twist: I speak from the position of a performer who is a member of a gender minority, reaching for empathy and understanding with cisgender audiences by saying things that don’t mean what they say they mean.
13:50 Tuomas Nevanlinna: Criticism & the modern state of art
Art in its modern state, after the 18th century, is not anymore bound to rigid rules of expression or to fixed forms of receiving either. So, what is today’s art criticism based on?
14:25 Coffee break
14:40 Veli-Matti Saarinen: Ludwig Tieck and creative madness
The key to understand the nature of literature and art of Jena romanticism is the transcendental of Kant’s critical philosophy – the power of words and the artistic ways to create worlds lead to vertigo and madness.
15:15 Panel discussion: Can we learn something about romantic irony today?
Moderated with the speakers, along Q&A
16 Drinks!
16:15 Book launches
un/luck publication
The understanding of luck has taken many forms across history, culture and language, asking questions of power, agency, influence and chance. This publication is a collection of artistic documents, that collects the thoughts and artistic process of a group of artists connected with the Doctoral programmes at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, New Zealand and the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland.
Roma Anderson, Katrina Beekhuis, Matthew Cowan, Paul Cullen, Miklos Gaál, Matthew Galloway, Henna-Riikka Halonen, Sean Kerr, Ngahuia Harrison, Yukari Kaihori, Louise Menzies, Ilya Orlov, Mirimari Väyrynen and Denise Ziegler all consider Luck and its connotations from a wide variety of artistic positions across cultures, geographies, and practices. The project will also include group exhibition presentations in both Auckland and Helsinki in 2024.
The publication will be introduced by Matthew Cowan and some of the other artists involved.
Figurations of Peripheries Through Arts and Visual Studies – Peripheries in Parallax
Figurations of Peripheries Through Arts and Visual Studies – Peripheries in Parallax book is a collection of approaches from several disciplines where the spatial, conceptual, and theoretical hierarchies and biased assumptions of ‘peripheries’ are challenged. The book provides a multidisciplinary cross-exposure through a collection of chapters and visual essays by researchers and artists. The aim is to illuminate the existing, hidden, often incommensurable, and controversial margins in society at large from equal, ethical, and empathic perspectives.
The authors are Annette Arlander, Liisa Ikonen, Maiju Loukola, Denise Ziegler, Harri Laakso, Mari Myllylä, Jonna Tolonen, Eimear Tynan, Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, Leena-Maija Rossi, Mari Mäkiranta, Eija Timonen and Raila Knuuttila. The book includes an In Memoriam article draft by Ari Hirvonen. The book is edited by Maiju Loukola, Mari Mäkiranta and Jonna Tolonen
Additional programme, Mon 11.12.2023
Screening at 17:30: Select art films related to romantic irony
Venue: Screening room K-224, Mylly, Academy of Fine Arts (Sörnäisten rantatie 19, Helsinki)
Including pieces by Francis Alÿs, Ryan Gander, Hito Steyerl, Guido van der Werve among others. Duration 1hr 45min. The capacity of the screening room is 30 people.
Registration needed for attending the screening.
The sceening in our events calendar
Register here for screening 11.12.2023
Open screening: Phil Collins: Tomorrow Is Always Too Long
11.12.2023 at 19:30–20:50 (no registration)
Phil Collins: Tomorrow Is Always Too Long (2014). Duration of the screening is 1hr. 21min. The event is curated by Doctoral researcher Miklos Gaál, Academy of Fine Arts.
The venue is the Screening room K-224 in Mylly, the Academy of Fine Arts main building.The capacity of the screening room is 30 people. The screening is open, no registration needed. Read more here
Speaker bios
Antti Arnkil is an essayist and literature editor who has written a number of texts dealing with Jena romanticism with emphasis on its’ mode of irony. Arnkil is passionate about Schlegel’s fragments and thinks about them frequently.
Jeroen Boomgaard is an art historian specialized in art theory. He is a former professor of Art & Public Space at Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and head of the Artistic Research MA programme at the University of Amsterdam.
Miklos Gaál
(b. Espoo, Finland) is a visual artist living in Amsterdam. Gaál has presented his works in galleries, institutions, and publications internationally since 2001. He is currently occupied with doctoral research comparing the historical conceptualization of art by romantic irony with contemporary artistic practices.
Jamie MacDonald is a stand-up comedian and a PhD student of performative arts at Theatre Academy at Uniarts Helsinki. He works with queer, feminist and intersectional stand-up comedy since 2018.
Tuomas Nevanlinna is a philosopher, writer and educator. Also more recently, a representative politician. In his pastime, Nevanlinna has set himself the impossible task of translating Schlegel’s iconic Athenaeum fragments into Finnish.
Asko Nivala is a cultural historian (University of Turku). His research delves into the philosophy and aesthetics of German Romanticism, as well as spatial and digital humanities. Nivala has authored the monograph “The Romantic Idea of the Golden Age in Friedrich Schlegel’s Philosophy of History” (Routledge 2017).
Vesa Oittinen prof. emer., fields of interests cover the history of ideas and philosophy, with a focus on epistemology: Spinoza, classical German philosophy (Kant, Hegel), Nordic philosophy, Enlightenment thought, Russian history of ideas and Soviet philosophy. Oittinen is the author of a seminal 1984 translation of Novalis’ poetry into Finnish.
Veli-Matti Saarinen is the author of several publications and a number of articles about Jena romanticism. His 2007 doctoral thesis is ”The Daybreak and Nightfall of Literature. Friedrich Schlegel’s Idea of Romantic Literature: Between Productive Fantasy and Reflection”.