Duration: 15.15–17.00

Organised by the Research Node of Aesthetic Studies, Department of Art and Cultural Sciences, HT, Lund University.

Laura Toxværd and Marie Højlund, who are guesting LU this semester, present their research with a focus on how their artistic practices influence their research.

Abstracts:

Laura Toxværd: The saxophone and the woman play me
In this presentation I will be discussing as well as musically performing how my artistic practice as an improvising and composing saxophonist works in my research. The focus is on the wealth of connections, both of human and non-human nature, that arise in the intertwined research and artistic processes. I investigate Donna Haraway’s concept “apparatus of bodily production” in relation to the bodies of the woman and the saxophone (Haraway 1991).

Marie Højlund: Slow and Dark – an attuning approach to practice-based research

I will perform and show examples from my various artistic projects, and hereby illustrate how slow and dark attuning processes interplay in my art, research and artistic research practices. I will show examples from my Ph.D. project on sound in Danish Hospitals, where I developed an attuning approach as a methodological framework capable of accommodating both the multisensory atmosphere and the active engagement of the enactive user through practice-based experiments. Other artistic examples of mine, I will include are: songs from my latest album ‘intet er nok’ (which will performed live); a gigantic wind-turbine controlling the tempo of music (Nephew vs. Overheard); an atmosphere design for new delivery rooms at Danish hospitals (with photographer Morten Hilmer); imagining the sound world of a woman turning blind through interactive sound design for Dancer in the Dark (Aarhus Theatre) and placing a range of sound installations around Denmark mixed together through audio satellites on a website (2017, The Overheard).

Read the Ph.D. project on sound in Danish Hospitals here – www.ebooks.au.dk

Visit the Overheard (2017) website here – www.overheard.dk

Biographies

Marie Højlund is Assistant Professor in Sound Studies at Audio Design, Department of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. PhD in Audio Design with a dissertation about sound and noise in Danish Hospitals entitled “Overhearing – An Attuning Approach to Noise in Danish Hospitals” (2017). Marie is an active sound artist and composer and a part of the bands Kh Marie & Nephew. During her work she has been engaged in designing sound environments and installations for various public spaces and hospitals, including the Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture project The Overheard.

Laura Toxværd is since 2019 PhD Research Fellow at Department of Classical Music and Music Education, University of Agder, Norway with the project “Female Saxophone Expressions?” Laura is saxophonist, composer and author of the art book Compositions – 18 Graphic Scores (Hellerup: Forlaget Spring). Her works are performed regularly in Europe and North America, most recently in New York and Chicago and have been released internationally since 2002 on 15 albums with, among others, John Tchicai, Marilyn Mazur, Carsten Dahl, Kresten Osgood and Jacob Anderskov. Scores published by Edition S and in the anthology Notations21 (NYC: Mark Batty Publishers). Studies at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris and DPU, Aarhus University. 2009-2011 awarded the Danish Arts Foundation’s 3-year work grant. For several years taught and examined at the Danish music conservatories and conducted artistic research as a lecturer at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory.

Illustration: Laura Toxværd, Cacklecabin (score)