Elena Cologni

The thesis discusses the development of my artistic research in relation to the critique of the ocularcentric Western philosophical tradition developed by twentieth century French thought, as referred to by Martin Jay and Amelia Jones. The work reviews the positions of both authors with respect to the relationship between Lacan's Mirror Stage and Gaze and Merleau-Ponty's Chiasm or Intertwining, within two areas of investigation: the self and strategies for its engagement with the external world. The research was conducted by adopting an evolutionary approach, which allowed me to test hypotheses through artistic experimentation. The structure of the thesis encompasses these two theoretical discussions in relation to my artistic practice, fully presented in the enclosed cd-rom.

The first discussion, in Part I and II analyses the Mirror Stage and the emerging of the self, its psychological implications and manifestations in the history of art, with particular emphasis on self-portraiture, the performative self, Body Art and my own production.

In Part III, the concept of Chiasm/Intertwining - developed from the notions of visuality and Gaze - is discussed in relation to inter-subjectivity in Body Art. The issue of the interaction between artist/audience and environment is also investigated in my most recent artworks, which question the primacy of vision over the other senses.

I believe my original contribution to be both in the content of the artworks and the methodology adopted, rather than at theoretical level. By adopting a set strategy in the creation of my work, I challenged the static artist-audience relationship implicit in the one-way perception of representations based on central-focus perspective. My hypothesis, which encompasses a two-way artist-audience interaction, was first tested in the body of work I produced in 1999. The theoretical argument of chiasmatic intertwining I subsequently developed, allowed me to place my practice within the antiocularcentric discourse and confirmed the direction undertaken in the practice to be satisfactory. The validity of my initial hypothesis was further confirmed by the participation of the audience in aspects of the art making process of the recent videolive installations.

https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/2279/

The body of work in this book was developed to engage with issues of synaesthesia, the relationship of touch in relation to colour in the context of exploring the process of  ‘memory mapping’ of the environment . The first version of Public Private Perceptions was presented as a video live installation, at Toynbee Studios, London, 2001. This was subsequently followed by a developed iteration at Galleria Neon, Bologna, Italy 2002, as an exhibition. This was also accompanied by the publication Public Private Perceptions 02, in collaboration with art in the London Underground. This project also led to the paper: ‘Private action becoming public, a practical investigation of the performer’s reactions to the environment’, at Performance As Research In Practice Symposium, (PARIP, AHRC funded) University of Bristol 10-11 November 2001. This symposium context allowed me to further investigate the relationship and interchange between myself as performer and a live audience. Key points to emerge here were the impact of a live audience and issues around documentation of the practice. A major outcome of these joint explorations and reflections was the positioning of the performative work within the philosophical Antiocular-centric discourse referred to in my doctorate work. The experience of myself, ‘knowing’ the space whilst blind-folded through the sensory medium of touch, had to be conducted in front of an audience. This action was contextualised in relation to the documentation (pre-recorded or live) of the same action happening in a space without an audience. My thoughts and working diary were collected in this publication together with other essays, to produce a collection of fragments based upon the findings of these inter-related explorations.

https://elenacologni.com/public_private_perceptions/

This paper was presented by Elena Cologni and Rhiannon Jones and was delivered at Nottingham Contemporary for InDialogue Symposium 2016. The paper set out to provide some provocations found through their shared, or parallel dialogues. They described how their practices share a commonality, they both work within the contextual frame named ‘the dialogic’ or, as both having ‘dialogic practices’. These overlaps provided a framework from which the paper emerged dialogically, through conversation. Their individual approaches and practices utilise a performative and experiential approach, the orchestration of space, and the dialogic architectures of site and body. The paper provided a series of provocations - such as how is dialogue used in our practice and how do you define conversation? The paper resulted in a series of discussions, sharing of theoretical frameworks that both presenters use in their research to facilitate practice. The paper set out the context and territory for each of ...

How does an investigation of women’s attachment to workplaces uncover instances of care, and indeed uncare, within power relations and place? Can we consider interventions in public space as forms of (un)monuments celebrating hidden or invisible experiences of place in the everyday? Taking inspiration from an image of the public space in Venice in the Barbara Hepworth Archive, in the ongoing project ‘The Body of/at Work’ (premiered at the Italian Pavilion, 17a Mostra di Architettura, la Biennale di Venezia, 2021) these questions were investigated through the dialogic ‘caring-with’ (Cologni, 2020) methodology, including conversations and situated interventions in the form of ‘experiential exercises’ with the use of dialogic sculptures. The attachment to place (Seamon, 1979) is central to the development of one’s own identity, and it develops in relation to others. In this context, the routes that one regularly takes in the city, the city ballets (Seamon, 1979), are one of the contributing factors (Cologni 2016/20) in this process. “People encounter the world as they move and rest, dwell and journey” (Seamon, 1979, 139), and this is bound up in social memory, and embodied knowledge (Degnen 2015). The project developed stages in relation to specific contexts. It started in dialogue with the workers from the Venetian Bevilacqua weaving company. They discussed how they relate to places in the city on their daily routes to, and back from, work, as well as within the place of work. The archive research in the Venice City Council libraries revealed areas in the city where places of women paid and unpaid labour (Federici 1973) once stood, most of these were and still are public spaces, where these jobs used to be undertaken. These uncover a dynamic of ever-shifting threshold (Vanore, 2021) in the caring/uncaring power dynamics in private and public space. The performative ‘experiential exercises’, carried out in pairs, mark these locations as (un)monuments to the everyday.

The Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London is pleased to welcome delegates to Radical Space, a conference which addresses the problematics of space both as concept and as lived social reality, with a particular emphasis on the tension between spaces of control in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, spaces of resistance and the apocalyptic spaces which emerge from war, forced migration and the failures of consumer capitalism. What are the politics of space in contemporary contexts? How can we rethink space beyond the public/private divide? How do spatial arts re-configure space and the way in which it is experienced? What new configurations of space may emerge from burgeoning forms of community? How do the theatres of contemporary war force a re-assessment of spatial concepts? Is it still possible for the notion of virtual space to function in opposition to the striated space of contemporary cities? Our programme reflects the exciting work that is emerging across diverse disciplines as they respond to the radical potential of thinking space differently. Our call for papers was designed to elicit responses from beyond the social sciences, where the 'spatial turn' of the 1980s is thought to have originated and to foster debate between theorists, practitioners and those working outside the traditional disciplines. We were delighted by both the diversity and quality of the proposals that we received. We hope very much that you enjoy the conference which promises to be both exciting and memorable. The CCSR collective Cover Layout: revangeldesigns.co.uk Photograph: Debra Benita Shaw from Left the Building, a series documenting the traces left by occupants of squatted spaces.

"A sense of responsibility, but at the same time the doubt of being adequate pervades me, when I think of approaching it to try to understand the chapter of history which SR1938 refers to. This inevitably reopens deep wounds, which are now part of social memory. The sense of responsibility is further amplified by the thought of working on a memorial that wants to remember that past, but can also be a fulcrum for dialogue, to indicate shared paths to take in order to activate communicative memory (Assmann 2008). According to the Jewish tradition, history coincides with memory and is linked to divine revelation, not felt as a “mythic” factor, but as an effective presence in human events. The function of the memorial itself as a format therefore acquires an even deeper value.

The conversation addresses the underlaying issues of ROCKFLUID. This was developed from a Residency Cologni had at the Faculty of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge (awarded Arts Council of England Grants for the Art, Escalator Live Art Colchester Arts Centre, and Escalator Visual Art Wysing Arts Centre, 2011/). These include: the relationship between memory, the present and place. More specifically this first phase of the project frames the project and strategies adopted (including psychogeography, by with a relational approach); the interest in 'personal space is a non-verbal language of inter-subjective spatiality' (p 46) as well as microgeographies of everyday life.

to listen to oneself listening... (Dolci 1988:144) Remembering is a realization of belonging, even a social obligation (Assmann, 2008: 114) Can we learn to listen? Or to allow silence to speak to us? Can we visualize the space among us and inhabit it with our memories? These are among the questions raised by, and embedded in, my recent participatory art project 'lo scarto', which evolved through the relational dynamics within the group. It was informed by the Reciprocal Maieutics Approach (RMA Dolci, 1973), a pedagogic process based on collective exploration of individuals’ experience and intuition. This enabled intersubjective exchange, the activation of history and memories, and the construction of a narrative related to the current intercultural process taking place in Italy. My creative process is here discussed as research as art practice, in relation to socially engaged and dialogic art, and communicative memory, to act as an interface in an intercultural society.

To remember is to reconnect with our past, to heal from its wounds and learn from mistakes in order to never commit them again, but also to consider examples of strength and courage such as those of Jewish women in fascist Italy. While the roles of care in families and society are increasingly shared today, those of the past, however, were more traditionally associated with women. We have so much to learn and draw inspiration from these examples from the past even today, particularly when reconsidering social, gender, racial and economic differences, that they must be addressed, as care ethicist Virginia Held (2015) states.

Official URL: http://digital.casalini.it/9788833396132

It is an honour for me to be included in this collective project. A sense of responsibility, but at the same time the doubt of being adequate pervades
me, when I think of approaching it to try to understand the chapter of history which SR1938 refers to. This inevitably reopens deep wounds, which are now part of social memory. The sense of responsibility is further amplified by the thought of working on a memorial that wants to remember that past, but can also be a fulcrum for dialogue, to indicate shared paths to take in order to activate communicative memory (Assmann 2008).

Official URL: http://digital.casalini.it/9788833396132

This body of work was developed to engage with issues of synaesthesia, the relationship of touch in relation to colour in the context of exploring a ‘memory mapping’ of the environment. The first version was presented as 'Public Private Perceptions' a video live installation, at Toynbee Studios, London, 2001. This was subsequently followed by a developed iteration at Galleria Neon, Bologna, Italy 2002, as an exhibition. This was also accompanied by the publication Public Private Perceptions 02. Other contributors included Wallace, M., Le Grice, M., GrazioLi, E. published by Galleria Neon, Bologna, Italy, March 2002. This project also led to a paper: ‘Private action becoming public, a practical investigation of the performer’s reactions to the environment’, at Performance As Research In Practice Symposium, University of Bristol 10-11 November 2001. This symposium context allowed me to further investigate the relationship and interchange between myself as performer and a live audience. Key points to emerge here were the impact of a live audience and issues around documentation of the practice. A major outcome of these joint explorations and reflections was the positioning of the performative work within the philosophical Antiocular-centric discourse referred to in my doctorate work. The experience of myself, ‘knowing’ the space whilst blind-folded through the sensory medium of touch, had to be conducted in front of an audience. This action was contextualised in relation to the documentation (pre-recorded or live) of the same action happening in a space without an audience. My thoughts and working diary were collected in a publication together with other essays, to produce a collection of fragments based upon the findings of these inter-related explorations.

Tracing is a performative video live installation, first presented as a paper at the Performance As Research In Practice Conference, University of Bristol, 11-14 September 2003 (http:I/wwwbris.ac.uklpariplcologni.htm). The work was subsequently performed in the exhibition “Border Crossing here and somewhere”, Gallery X, Istanbul (curator Gulsen Bal, supported by British Council). The performance included one video projection, one monitor and the resulting drawings. These were left in the exhibition space for one month. This material was subsequently included in the exhibition and conference Coscienza di Sè, Galleria Neon and University of Bologna, Italy. Other related conference presentations include: 'An investigation into the role of documentation in performance art research in the digital age and its relation to liveness. Tracing', Pixel Raiders, 6-8 April 2004, Sheffield Hallam University; and ‘What might be the role of documentation in performance art research in the digital age?’, International Digital and Media Arts 2004, University of Central Florida - School of Film and Digital Media, and Ball State University, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 10-12 2004. The performance project ‘Tracing’ was a work that first embedded my practice as research methodology, where I investigated the impossibility of documenting an action in the very moment of its making. This was paralleled by my growing interest in Derrida’s work and particularly the notion of ‘supplementarity’ in the context of performance documentation practices. To present the performance event itself at PARIP instead of a paper represented my belief in the nature of this work as action based research. This has directly influenced the basis for my current research and interest in documentation of performance, particularly utilising and exploring the impact of moving image formats in relation to live action, mark making, recording and projecting filmed action into the space

This work was developed during the Creative Lab Residency at Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow. It is a site specific structure for one-to-one video performance designed to allow artist and audience exchange through dialogue, whilst simultaneously looking at each other’s own live delayed video recording. It also includes the projection of historical video materials. The piece was tested by students from the Glasgow School of Art and Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama - Contemporary Theatre Program over 4 days (15-19 November 2006). The whole process was recorded and published on the website (www.elenacologni.com/experiential). As part of the developmental stage of the project, research was carried out at the Scottish Screen Archive and the People’s Museum to find films of life in the Gorbals district of Glasgow. This geographical area is integrated into people’s memory through personal stories, but also through pictures, photos, films etc. The relationship between a...

During the Cambridge Festival of Ideas (2015) the program Cologni devised Gropius’ Impington, modernism and power, art and the rural opens up a debate on the importance of the connection between people and places, and the construction of memory, cultural (monuments) and communicative memory (live interaction, Assman). According to Paul Connerton (2009) this connection may be institutionalised, as in the case of the memorial monuments, such as architecture, but it is in often apparently anonymous places, experienced through the individual’s and everyday’s bodily actions that the individual’s memory’s grid is founded. Through the memories that these places evoke the individual can domesticate the surrounding world. However, Modernity has imposed a frantic pace to the transformation of human environments. The result is that memorials and architecture last, but the common, anonymous places that are the individual’s loci of memory (Connerton 2009) are often altered beyond recognition. In...

This project represents the outcome of an AHRC Small Grant for the Creative and Performing Arts. The project investigates the relationships between liveness/present and memory/past in a mediatised performance art context. The work explores the process of memorisation in relation to that of video documentation within the delivery of the piece itself, hence the title Mnemonic Present. The body of work produced is formed by 9 versions of the Video Live Installation ‘Mnemonic Present. Un-Folding’, which was partially drawn from Derrida’s notion of ‘supplementarity’ and Suddendorf’s psychological studies (as reported in related publications). New collaborations for research include: TaPRA, 2007; PSFG, ATHE Conference, New Orleans, 2007. The developmental aspects of this project include collaborations with Blaker, Andrea Lissoni, Kelina Gotman. Additional outcomes emerging from the practice include publications in which time in performer-audience relationships and the notion of a ‘perform...

In my video live installations I investigate the perception of time (psychological time), non simultaneous artist and audience interchange in liveness, and the ontology/production of the video document. Particularly, how live recording, pre-recording and their transmission, can all be perceived as overlapping layers of representation of time, and unfold in duration. ‘Wh en we think of this present as what ought to be, it is no longer, and when we think of it as existing, it is already past…all perception is already memory’ (Bergson, Matier et memoire, 166-167). I refer mainly to time implied in audience fruition of works of art, where synchronicity of vision is not taken for granted. Where vision is considered only one of the instruments for knowing, as psychological studies have shown. I am thinking of appreciation of painting in Gestald terms for instance (example of use of perspective and distortions), Arnheim, the structuralist theory of perception of space. Aspects of these I h...

I consider the workshop as a form of peripatetic participatory practice where produced and shared knowledge informs the artist's creative process. This is based on the multidisciplinary approach of my current project Rockfluid (rockfluid.com), where site specific art practice is underpinned by elements of cognitive psychology and philosophy. Hence, here the relationship Memory – Time – Perception is informed by Bergson's notion of the present within duration and as produced by the body in space,24 and by Merleau-Ponty's reference to 'sensation' as the basis for knowledge.25 On the other hand the role of memory in the present is seen from a shared perspective (psychology and philosophy of science) including the definition of specious present26 as well as the nature of retention as involving perception of duration. The variable within this is an element of interference in our experience, which will vary every time Spa(e)cious takes place (e.g. the image above is fo...

This session will focus on the recent contemporary art context characterised by a strong theorisation of practice defining a research practice of its own. The session will look at existing models of artistic (academic and independent) research, while introducing the dimension of participation in research and its impact.  Within this paradigm we shall also consider: the ontology of the produced and/or embedded knowledge on the one hand, and the role of the artist as interface in society (and education) on the other.

The 'art practice as research as art' discussed set out to investigate through dialogic art how identity formation is linked with micro-social experiences and place. The project "Seeds of Attachment" by Elena Cologni is centered around a newly developed non-verbal strategy in the form of a sculptural prop, informed by psychologist Margaret Lowenfeld's "Mosaic Test" (1938-1954), and discussed in relation to historical precedents in socially engaged art. The activation of the prop during encounters with 'mothers' on the school-run route, aimed at offering a context for an understanding of how their attachment to their children influenced the development of an attachment to place. This relational approach is defined as caring with, and underpinned by care ethics and ecofeminism. The implications of the adopted non-verbal dialogic artistic approach are considered in relation to new forms of gendered spatial practices to research on place, including affordances of place, and how these might lead to future post-disciplinary research.

This issue highlights lived experiences of people with care through a post-disciplinary style. Linking artistic and creative research with care ethics and theory may ultimately open new, post-disciplinary spaces that advance our understanding and engagement in cultural, political, and social contexts of care. Such a decentered approach to care allows for silences and ambiguities, and it perceives the aliveness of participants and praxes in continuous processes of mutual transformations and becomings significant to art-making and curating strategies. The articles describe and evoke, inviting the reader to engage with branches of care, such as praxis, experience, paradigm and concept. This special issue fosters creative and critical approaches to rereading economic, environmental, planetary, and political challenges from a care and artistic perspective. Offering situated views from around the world, including Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and the US, contributors of this special issue show what it is like to live a care aesthetics.

How do we get to know through making? How tacit is the produced knowledge in creative research? Can we identify and distinguish practice from practice research, and should we make that distinction at all?
For more than two decades creative researchers have asked these and other questions, through new and experimental approaches often embedded in their art, design, films, performances, creative writing, and more. 
This breadth of original and rigorous research has had quite an impact in academia, breaking through set methodologies, and becoming instrumental for engagement. Creative thinking has become more and more central in cross disciplinary and collaborative ways of working in research, education and practice. Creative methodologies and methods are also increasingly embedded within different contexts; and creative research, education and practice projects are often underpinned or informed by theories coming from other disciplines and contexts. These interconnections, while disrupting set narratives and methods, often allow for new and unexpected results, and contribute to new and open territories of knowledge.