WW2 Memorials in Estonia

by Nico Carpentier, with Ruth-Helene Melioranski, Pille Runnel and Inês Moreira

The WW2 Memorials in Estonia project is a collaboration with Ruth-Helene Melioranski, Pille Runnel and Inês Moreira aimed at comprehending the complex dynamics of WW2 memorialization in Estonia, focussing on the struggles over the fixation of memory and the resistances these fixations provoke, by paying attention to the human contestations (mainly through a politics of mourning) but also the material resistance and the recalcitrance of historical traces, through everyday lifes desacralizing routines and novel infrastructures, and material decay and neglect.

Mirror of Conflict

Iconoclastic Controversies 2

by Nico Carpentier

The Mirror of Conflict is an exhibition that investigates how the memorials on the island of Cyprus represent the Cyprus Problem in very particular ways, often supporting antagonistic nationalist discourses and constructing the other as Enemy. It is an arts-based research project, grounded in academic research, that uses an artistic repertoire to communicate and co-produce knowledge.
The 93 photographs, capturing acts of memorialization both in the south and north of Cyprus, show the presence of national(ist) markers, but also how they are undermined by the practices of everyday life and how material processes such as decay, or the spaces where they are placed, work against these memorials. Moreover, a number of informal and formal memorials try to actively resist and disrupt the antagonistic nationalist discourses, even though they remain rare. When displaying these photographs next to each other, we can also see the structural similarities between these memorials. Even when they refer to different people, events and analyses, the memorials in the north and south of Cyprus are remarkably similar in how they focus on history and identity, on victims, heroes and leaders, and on freedom, victory and sacrifice.

Wolf Talks in Uppsala

by Nico Carpentier

The Wolf Talks exhibition is on display in Uppsala, Sweden, during October 24-November 5, 2022. The Wolf Talks exhibition is an arts-based research project, created by Nico Carpentier, that combines photography and sound art to analyse and rethink the power dynamics of the discursive-material relationships between human and non-human animals. The series of 12 photographs combines wolf portraits, cat-face filters and super-imposed theoretical questions. Deeply conscious of all contradictions related to humans speaking on behalf of animals, this exhibition experiments with a lupocentric position to induce empathy and respect.

Artist-in-residence at MEC

SQRIDGE supported the series of artist-in-residence (AiRs) at the Mistra Environmental Communication reearch programme. Within this project, artists were invited to collaborate in a dialogical fashion with academics and to become immersed in the Mistra Environmental Communication research programme, to develop creative work that situates environmental communication in art and explores academic research through an artistic lens. The dialogues with researchers serve as inspiration for artwork(s), and enriches the perspectives of the researchers. The goal of the AiRs is to foster collaboration between participants and to unlock new perspectives on environmental communication. The AiRs is coordinated by the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at Charles University, and includes three artist-in-residencies: (1) AiR@CU is hosted by the Mistra Environmental Communication research team at Charles University in Czech Republic; (2) AiR@SLU is hosted by the Mistra Environmental Communication research team at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Sweden; (3) AiR@USC is hosted by the Mistra Environmental Communication research team at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.

New Modes of Environmental Communication:

Four Street Art Experiments

by Ali Minanto

New Modes of Environmental Communication: Four Street Art Experiments is a 23:34-minute documentary film by Ali Minanto, that reflects on how knowledge about the environment is produced and shared in creative ways, moving beyond the, sometimes, narrow spaces of academia, without disregarding academic knowledge. One of these spaces of knowledge production and creative communication is street art, where artistic aesthetics and practices of civic expression are combined. This video features the experiment, where academic researchers, based at Charles University in Prague and affiliated to the Mistra Environmental Communication Research Program and the 4EU+ European University Alliance, commissioned four Indonesian street artists to produce four street artworks in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

Wolf Talks

by Nico Carpentier

Wolf Talks is an arts-based research project that questions the power dynamics of the discursive-material relationships between human and non-human animals. Part of the Fotograf Festival, the project is an invitation to go on a Wolf Walk, and visit the twelve wolf-and-cat-face collage photographs, located at 12 different places in Prague, guided by a website. On each location, visitors can listen to a Wolf Talks sound fragment (connected with the photograph through a QR code), where a wolf will speak to the visitor. Exceptionally, as a curtesy to the visitor, the wolves will speak the visitor's language. Or at least, visitors will understand them, even if the wolves might challenge them a bit.

Iconoclastic Controversies

by Nico Carpentier

The Iconoclastic Controversies project uses photography and written text to analyse the role of memorials and commemoration sites in the construction of antagonistic nationalism. Taking Cypriot memorializations as a case study, it shows how these memorials often support, but sometimes also undermine, the discursive-material assemblage of nationalism. Iconoclastic Controversies 1 focuses on the memorials in the south of Cyprus, while Iconoclastic Controversies 2 ("the Mirror of Conflict") analyses the similarities and differences between the memorials in the north and south of Cyprus.

Conceptualization of Change

by Kristýna Kopřivová, Nico Carpentier and Vaia Doudaki

Conceptualization of Change is a 12-minute film that provides a theoretical reflection on the signifier change, and its five dimensions: Normativity, Scale and Intensity, Focus, Control and Time. Filmed in Prague, with the integration of archive material that is mostly related to the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the essay unpacks the significatory complexity of change, mapping the diversity of meanings that have been allocated to this notion. The films five chapters organize a dialogue between fast-paced and still poetic imaginaries and voice-overs, starting with the normativity of change, and its utopian and dystopian meanings. The Scale and Intensity chapter reflects on the sometimes minute and sometimes all-encompassing nature of change, combined with its hegemonic and counter-hegemonic roles. The Focus chapter deals with the autonomy and dependency of change, while the Control chapter focusses on how change can be controlled and controlling. Finally, the Time chapter brings in differences between process and outcome, and patterns and events. Analytically and methodologically, the film uses a post-structuralist paradigm to assist theory formation, grounded in, and combined with, an analysis of the content produced for the Mediating Change Colloquium, that took place in Prague on 20 and 21 November 2020. To render this source of inspiration and analysis visible, the film starts with a one-minute preamble, including a selection of voices from this Colloquium, in order to then shift to a more general theoretical discussion on change, with its five dimensions.

Arts-based Research in Communication and Media Studies

A Special Issue of Comunicazioni Sociali

Edited by Nico Carpentier and Johanna Sumiala

This special issue was published in 2021. It is driven by the belief that still more could be done at the level of theorizing arts-based research practices, and at the level of deploying them in different contexts. The aim of this special issue is to further stimulate the discussion on this topic, bringing together a diversity of voices, formats and approaches. In order to translate this objective into practice, a very strict (and restrictive) definition of arts-based research was avoided. Instead, all contributions that allowed for an artistic-academic dialogue on arts, academia and research were welcomed. This became translated into an intentionally-kept-vague structure, with more general reflective texts first, and then a series of more case-study-based approaches and more targeted and specific discussions, divided into a cluster on participation and interaction on the one hand, and mediation on the other. For the very same purpose, also a variety of formats was welcomed, including multimodal formats, more artistic contributions and policy-oriented statements, even though all contributors were asked for relatively short contributions, to maximize the diversity of voices. This strategy produced a variety of contributions that aim to inspire researchers in the field of Communication and Media Studies, and beyond, to reflect about the potentialities (and limitations) of arts-based research, and to consider adapting some of these approaches and methods in their own academic practice.

Silencing/Unsilencing Nature

by Nico Carpentier

Silencing / Unsilencing Nature is an educational package that unpacks the discursive-material relationship between humans and nature, and reflects on how nature often has been silenced. At the same time, it investigates how nature can be given a voice and become unsilenced again. A series of video essays explain how human control is exercised over nature, partially through discoursesstructured ways of thinking about the world, ourselves and othersand partially through humans ability to manipulate the material world. But our discourses are not perfectly stable and all-encompassing; they are object of political struggles and thus contain many contingencies, contradictions and gaps. Moreover, the material world has its own agency, and is not perfectly malleable by humans. It resists our manipulations. These gaps and resistances also open up opportunities to rethink our dominant ways of dealing with nature, and allow us to develop discursive-material practices that take nature seriously, and empathically speak from natures perspective. One example, developed in the video essays, is the position of the wolf in the zoo assemblage, how these animals are discursively and materially entrapped, and how their voices can be made audible and gain more strength. Furthermore, the package offers strategies to unsilence nature, and give nature more of a voice, through an assignment that generates a photography exhibition and catalogue. The package consists of an introductory video, four mini-lectures on video (each with one or two exercises), two assignment videos, an epilogue video and a workshop script. The package has been developed through a collaboration with Färgfabriken and the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism (ICSJ) at Charles University in Prague, within the framework of the MISTRA Environmental Communication (MEC) Research Programme.