At the SAR conference 2023 in Trondheim

11.5.2023 0 Like 0 kommenttia

The SAR (Society for Artistic Research) conference with the theme Too Early – Too Late took place 19-21.4.2023 in Trondheim.

To get an idea of the program, see the conference website. This year’s conference was slightly shorter and smaller than the previous one in Weimar in 2022, but nevertheless stimulating and well worth a visit. I was very happy to have my proposal peer reviewed and accepted to the conference and presented my talk “Is it too late to start talking with trees?” on Friday 21.4. My Power point and the podcast episode of Talking with Trees that I made for the occasion are openly available on the Research Catalogue, here (unlike the exposition made for the proposal, which the organizers have not made public). I also advertised the book Performing and Thinking with Trees, a little bit, as planned. If you have not encountered it yet, you can find it here: It was encouraging to see so many people finding the topic of talking with trees interesting, and wanting to discuss problems related to it as well.

Later the same day we had a “TV-session” with the editorial board of JAR (Journal for Artistic Research), a conversation recorded with the students in the TV-studio of the art school. It was a combination of pre-recorded and live contributions, which ended in a conversation between those present. I had made a brief video clip “Hello Pine or the Future of JAR” with the same pine tree that I talk with in my podcast. The recorded conversation will probably be published on the JAR network pages at some point. Meanwhile you can watch my small video clip here.

Although not that many of us in the editorial board were present, it was the highlight of the conference to be able to meet in person after all our conversations via ‘basecamp’ online.

Other highlights of the conference were the two key notes, by economist Pier Luigi Sacco and the artist Anjalika Sagar from the Otolith group, both rather provocative, albeit in very different ways. See documentations.

The SAR general assembly, placed in the middle of the conference rather than afterwards, as before, was rather lively, too, and it seems like there is a lot of constructive dialogue and planning going on.

All in all, I was very happy to be able to join the conference this year again, and grateful for the support from University of the Arts Helsinki to that end. Traveling to conferences is not a given these days, but rather exceptional. Luckily the event was meaningful and perhaps even productive.

Annette Arlander