Research-based Art as Docudramaturgy ~ an essay by Yota Ioannidou (DAI, 2009) now published by Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain
Within Open! Academy, Open! occassionally publishes research, essays and reports that came into being within educational contexts. This text by artist Yota Ioannidou is an individual writing project she produced as a PhD candidate at PhDArts Leiden University / KABK Den Haag that offers a doctorate in art and design.
The project The Storyteller, The Knife and The ‘Machine’, created for the Athens Biennale in 2013, serves here to introduce the research topic. It is a form of ‘research-based art,’ which denotes artworks whose research process – in situ, visits to archives, discursive conversations, research material, etc. – includes images, texts, interviews, documents, records and other forms of data, constituting dominant elements in the shaping and presentation of the artwork itself. The research process and material thereby become the artwork – either in the form of a performance, an event, an installation or a publication.
http://onlineopen.org/how-does-a-document-act
Yota Ioannidou (Athens) graduated with a BA from the Athens School of Fine Arts and a MFA from the Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem). In her projects Ioannidou creates and revises archives, following a process of research (visits in archives and in situ research), collection (texts, images, data, maps, films), recordings of interviews or discussions. The formulation of the research material combines performance as storytelling and formation of reading and performing groups on the research subject. Ioannidou's projects investigate issues related to social struggles and act to question and cross-examine phenomena triggered and maintained by various hierarchical structures for political, cultural or social reasons. Recent projects include Good Morning Mr. Mesmer, 2015–present, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; The Storyteller, The Knife and The ‘Machine’, 2013, 4th Athens Biennale; Voice_Over, 2012; Aula Intergalactica (with Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio), 2011, Word of Mouth curated by Kernel for the 3rd Athens Biennale; and On the hill one happens to be sitting on – A tribute to failure, 2011–2013, various locations.