The Art and Critical Studies Research Group, created in 2013, conducts investigation on contemporary art practices, with special focus on visual arts and in its intersections with other epistemological fields.
The multidisciplinary scope of the research is our guiding principle, in the same way as its time horizon is subtracted to chronological categories and conventions.
To optimize dialogue between researchers, critics, curators, artists and structures in the art field, to promote theoretical-critical production, applied research and exhibition practice are amongst the objectives to be given privilege.
Principal Investigator: Eduarda Neves
MAIN RESEARCH AXES FOR 2018-2022:
Europe. Art, Curatorship and Critical Studies - Coord: Eduarda Neves
Europe has been a subject of complex debates in which some artists have been called upon to participate, questioning either the political organization of post-World War II, recent political decisions, or the artistic mapping based on strategies of global geopolitics. Taking Europe's multiple representations as our starting point, we aim at undertaking research on the critical approaches that configure some of the present debates, with particular focus on the contemporary art field. (axis website)
Film in Contemporary Art - Coord: Nuno Faleiro Rodrigues
Since the 1960s visual arts have questioned the possibilities, but also the fragility, of cinema as mass-media. The outcome of that relationship is broad and heterogeneous, but is generically grounded on the distinction and correlation between film and cinema. Film in Contemporary Art proposes to explore several territories of research framed by the relationship between film and contemporary art. As possible lines of enquire, we propose: Cinema in Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art in Cinema; Cinema, film, and artistic practices; Expanded Cinema and Expanded Cinematographic Field.
South-South Trajectories - Coord: Juan Luís Toboso
Starting from aesthetic and political practices situated in the idea of the "South", not only as a geographic framework but as a dissident aesthetic perspective of the dominant circuits of cultural production, this line of research aims to study the perception of space and body in the arts from its social and political conditioning in the Ibero-American context. Through multiples itineraries, we will visit archives, museums, institutions, collectives, researchers, artists and social movements.