October 1–31, 2021
The Arts Lab is a laboratory of the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon. The central question of this programme is how research becomes a medium in the visual arts, in the same way that sculpture or installation could be. There have been artists throughout the 20th century who conducted research, either at a scientific and academic level or as part of their visual art production. However, since the beginning of the 21st century an increasing number of artists have begun to integrate their (academic and non-academic) research as a fundamental part of their visual art projects. Despite this fact, there is not a consistent body of research work developed on this matter and how this impacts in knowledge production across various disciplinary areas. This circumstance gives rise to a situation in which, on the one hand, artists who conduct research are not aware of others doing the same and, on the other hand, relevant knowledge is being produced via different methodologies without enough fruitful combinations among diverse methods and disciplinary areas. With the Arts Lab we aim to create collaborations between researchers and artists and to produce knowledge via this silently widespread artistic development.
As its foundation, we will host a research-based art residency programme and complement it with a series of exhibitions, performances, and publications, which will be grounded in collaborations among individuals and institutions.
For its first edition, in October 2021, the research-based art residency programme will count on the participation of Jane Jin Kaisen. The programme will include talks during the residency followed by an intervention at A Espuma dos Dias, curated by the MA and PhD students of The Lisbon Consortium of the Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in December 2021, and a solo exhibition at the Travessa da Ermida accompanied by a screening at the Appleton BOX May–June 2022.
Artistic and scientific coordination: Luísa Santos
Scientific and artistic committee: Isabel Capeloa Gil, Alexandra Lopes, Peter Hanenberg, Paulo Campos Pinto.
Jane Jin Kaisen (born 1980 in Jeju Island, South Korea) is a visual artist and Professor at the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Working with video installation, experimental film, photographic installation, performance, and text, Kaisen’s artistic practice is informed by extensive interdisciplinary research and engagement with diverse communities. She is known for her visually striking, multilayered, performative, poetic, and multi-voiced feminist works through which past and present are brought into relation. Engaging topics such as memory, migration, borders, and translation, she activates the field where subjective experience and embodied knowledge intersect with larger political histories. Her works negotiate and mediate the means of representation, resistance and reconciliation, thus forming alternative genealogies and sites of collective emergence. Kaisen represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale with the film installation Community of Parting (2019) alongside artists Hwayeon Nam and siren eun young jeong in the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter curated by Hyunjin Kim. She was awarded “Exhibition of the Year 2020” by AICA - International Association of Art Critics, Denmark for the exhibition Community of Parting at Art Sonje Center and Kunsthal Charlottenborg and awarded the Montana ENTERPRIZE at Kunsthallen Brandts in Denmark in 2011. Kaisen has participated in the biennials of Liverpool, Gwangju, Anren, Jeju, among others. She holds a PhD in artistic research from the University of Copenhagen, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from the University of California Los Angeles, an MA in Art Theory and Media Art from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and she participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. She serves as a member of the Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Visual Arts Project Funding (2018–21).
With the kind support of the Danish Arts Foundation, and the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union (in the frame of the 4Cs: from Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture).
