RUUKKU CALL: ECOLOGIES OF PRACTICE

During the past two decades artistic research has established itself as a part of academic research culture in many countries. The general legitimation struggles that were characteristic of its early years are not any longer in focus; the fronts have shifted and become more situational. Today, it makes more sense to demonstrate and disseminate what artistic research does than to ask what it is.

Spurred on by a general ecologization of thinking, and as an extension of the current edition of the Research Pavilion, RUUKKU #14 entitled "Ecologies of Practice" will highlight ethico-political issues on the level of artistic research practices. What can artistic research do in our current decade, where we suffer from a loss of common orientation, a common world, a common planet? How to develop sustainable modes of artistic research in and through processes of exhibiting, performing, exposing, collaborating, curating and discussing? How to articulate these research processes with related forms of critical reflection? How to deal with the individualistic tendencies in artistic research?

RUUKKU #14 "Ecologies of Practice" invites individual artist-researchers and research groups to ponder and share their ways of addressing the idiosyncratic environments of artistic research. This implies taking situational and historical responsibilities into account as well as striving for viable interconnections between a multitude of contemporaneous practices. At stake is a shift from disciplinary and territorial framings to more permeable, entangled and terrestrial modes of thinking, that is, towards articulation of research ecologies in a world that is forced to think of its ends. Therefore, we certainly need new coordinates, another distribution of metaphors and sensitivities, as well as novel fictions and imaginaries in order to address the ecologies of the present in a compelling way and to restate speculations about future directions of art and research.

The exposition submissions can find their starting point for example in:

• specific settings addressing research ecologies, such as Research Pavilion #3
• general ecology and critique of environmentalism
• experiential challenges of the ongoing ecocatastrophe
• the ecological potential of new fictiveness and speculative approaches
• phenomenal, biological, political and cultural diversity as ecological forces
• ethics and politics of gathering

The issue is edited by Mika Elo, Henk Slager and Tero Heikkinen. We ask you to create your proposals for research expositions in the Research Catalogue (RC) at www.researchcatalogue.net. Note! The creation of an exposition requires registration and a complete RC user account (see ‘register'). Please submit your proposals (complete expositions) via RC ('submit to publication', 'submit unlimited publication to', and 'ruukku') no later than 1st of October 2019. In need for additional information, contact mika.elo@uniarts.fi

Draft submissions can be discussed with the editors before 15th September. In this case the exposition should be shared with the editors using the RC link share function. Use ‘share', keep the exposition private but select the last option (‘When enabled…'), confirm the selection and send the link via e-mail to the address above. If you need assistance, please contact tero.heikkinen@uniarts.fi

Detailed instructions for submitting and draft submissions can be found from https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/661336/661337

RUUKKU is a multidisciplinary, multilingual, peer-reviewed rich media journal on artistic research launched in 2013. RUUKKU is published and supported by the University of the Arts Helsinki, Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture and the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, with a particular focus on multi-lingual publication. The primary languages of publication are Finnish, Swedish and English.