The symposium of Sonic Acts Academy unpacks artistic research, discusses the way artistic research creates knowledge, and challenges what we know about the world. Nora Sternfeld’s keynote lecture discusses artistic and curatorial research. Susan Schuppli tackles the challenging unpacking of the processes of artistic knowledge. Solveig Suess maps the New Silk Road through video, interviews, field recordings, and found WeChat videos. Lorenzo Pezzani presents Logistical Nightmares, an artistic research programme exploring the increasing ubiquity and prominence of logistics as a model for organising social life and politics. Looking at megaports and megaships Charmaine Chua examines the obsession with monstrosity in the logistics industry. Students of the Research Architecture MA from Goldsmiths discuss their research into Australia’s immigration policies and practices at sea, producing spatial and visual analyses that reveal a striking pattern of human rights violations taking place against asylum seekers.

These lectures and presentations are aimed at an exchange and dialogue between art, science, civil society and the general public. The presented artistic research seeks to activate audiences to engage in new ways with the current critical, social and political challenges of climate change, migration and technological advances. The symposium also provides transnational working opportunities for artists and cultural organisations.

Photo Pieter Kers