RESEARCH THROUGH ART PROJECTS
REACCLIMATING THE STAGE (SKENOMORPHOSES)
Artistic Research Doctoral project 2015-2020
Tutke/Performing Arts Research Centre, Theatre Academy, UNIARTS Helsinki
Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses) is an artistic research doctoral project that investigates transformations in the notion of the stage, and, consequently, in scenic practices, amidst the climatic and anthropo-technological shifts of the 21st century. It explores scenic thinking and time ecology (queered temporalities) within the paradigmatic shift from stage-as-center to stage-as-milieu. Grounded in my artistic experience as a metteur-en-scène, the research is driven by concerns about the inherent anthropocentrism in Western theatre, particularly in an era when human actions significantly impact the environment. The artworks within this research framework function as experiments, addressing questions such as: How can we redesign, redirect, and reimagine the stage amidst environmental and biospheric traumas, in an era dominated by algorithmic influence and increasing digitization of life? How can we extend dramaturgical and performative hospitality to other-than-human entities, both artificial and non-artificial, as co-actors on the contemporary stage? How can we ecologically renegotiate human aesthetic control of the stage to accommodate other-than-human agencies and temporalities? This artistic research project seeks to deepen, re-ecologize, and re-temporize the stage, shifting from top-down directing to in medias res redirecting, and to usher in new forms of stage affordances. These move beyond the now-internalized conventions of postdramatic theatre, entering the speculative terrains of hyperdramatic theatre and post-theatre drama.
Supervision / Direction de la recherche: Esa Kirkkopelto, philosopher, performing artist, researcher and Professor of Artistic Research at the Performing Arts Research Centre, Uniarts Helsinki (supervision period: 2015 – 2019) & Mika Elo, visual artist, researcher and Professor of Artistic Research at the Fine Arts Academy, Uniarts Helsinki (2016 – 2020)
Supported by / Soutien à la recherche: CIMO Fellowships Programme (2015-2016), KONE Foundation (2016 – 2020)
DATA OCEAN THEATRE
Postdoctoral artistic research project (2020-2024)
Data Ocean Theatre (D.O.T.) is a four-year artistic research project that explores the intersection of myths, western theatre memory, new media, digital animism, climate emergency, sea and ocean transformations, queer subcultures, and technological mutations in relation to aspects of “submersion” as a contemporary living condition. Expanding on the claimed unsustainability of western theatre’s anthropocentric foundations, D.O.T. examines how the notion and practice of the stage transform amidst climate urgency, technological hypergrowth, and discipline-fluid hybridization. It seeks to generate experiments on a new temporal ecology of the stage, examining how theatre-making infrastructures might transition within a multi-agential dynamic of emergence. D.O.T. appears, disappears, and reappears through a series of polymorphic artworks and research affordances based on the eco-dramaturgical consideration of the simultaneous phenomenon of 1. the rising sea and ocean levels, 2. the exponential growth of big data in our informational age, and 3. the emotional overload caused by the latter two happening, projection, and prophecy. D.O.T. explores inherited sea-and-ocean-oriented myths and revisits theatre plays with a marine backdrop, looking simultaneously into contemporary nautical vocabulary and sea imagery used as metaphors for computational realities. D.O.T. proposes to re-mythologize western theatre foundations by forming an alternative pantheon for a queer, hydrofeminist, and technoanimist reset of the “tragic,” at the interplay between a syncretic marine mythology and the ambiguities of “technology-as-monster” narratives. In D.O.T. project, the forces and fragilities of transforming marine ecosystems intersect with algorithmic-conditioned life and crossbreeding of diverse art disciplines and research fields based on collaborations, generating imaginary prototypes for future societal constructions in the floods. D.O.T. is structured around several key components: the prologue entitled “Simultaneous Environments” consisting of a series of experiments and works exhibited and/or shared autonomously, the central project entitled “Tragedy and the Goddexxes” consisting of a series of works initially exhibited autonomously, then grouped together for three public exhibitions (at Titanik Gallery Turku/Fifth Research Pavilion Helsinki/Kiasma Theatre Helsinki), a three-month research residency (HIAP Helsinki), a series of workshops in art schools (Tromsø, Helsinki, Tallinn), and a publication in the form of a final exhibition on the Research Catalogue.
REFERENCE PLAYS: Philoctetes, SOPHOCLES, 409 BC / Iphigenia in Aulis, EURIPIDES, 405 BC / The Tempest, William SHAKESPEARE, 1610 / Phèdre (Phaedra), Jean RACINE, 1677 / L’île des esclaves (Slave Island), Pierre de MARIVAUX a.k.a. MARIVAUX, 1725 / Fruen fra havet (The Lady from the Sea), Henrik IBSEN, 1888/ Le soulier de satin (The Satin Sleeper), Paul CLAUDEL, 1929 / Embers, Samuel BECKETT, 1957 / The Sea, Edward BOND, 1973 / L’Eden Cinéma, Marguerite DURAS, 1977 / Une Tempête (A Tempest), Aimé Césaire, 1979 A Summer Day, Jon Fosse, 1999
REFERENCE SEA MYTHS/MONSTERS: Amphitrite (Greece) / The Oceanides/Aallottaret (Greece/Finland) / Iku-Turso (Finland) / The Kraken (Scandinavia) / Xixili (Basque Country) / Hanzaki Daimyōjin (Japan)
Research affiliation: Visiting postdoctoral artist researcher in the Performing Arts Research Centre at Theatre Academy at the University of the Arts of Helsinki (1.1.2021-31.12.2024)
RESTAGING FLOWER POWER (2025-2029)
Restaging Flower Power builds on the doctoral and postdoctoral artistic research projects Reacclimating the Stage and Data Ocean Theatre. It revisits the historical foundations and contemporary resonances of the Flower Power movement at a moment marked by renewed armed conflicts in Europe and an urgent need to imagine forms of collective resistance and care. Engaging with the plural notion of powers and their diverse manifestations today, the project examines theatre’s historical capacity to support social change and expands this research into the growing field of ecodramaturgy. Through a series of multidisciplinary art and research affordances, it traces the movement’s path from its countercultural and pacifist origins to its current expressions across global contexts.
The project investigates how forms of power entangled with flora, including symbolic, aesthetic, collective, political, energetic, technological and affective modalities, are staged, embodied and debated today. A central component is the integration of Artificial Life as a framework for understanding contemporary techno-ecologies, in which synthetic organisms and computational environments reshape how flowers are perceived as agents of relation and transformation. This focus opens new ground for reflecting on the ethics and politics of life as it is constructed and enacted within technoscientific culture.
Restaging Flower Power renews the Flower Power imaginary by considering its relevance for contemporary societies and by pursuing a long-term effort to re-ecologise Western theatre. It rethinks scenographic practices and imagines the stage as a site of more-than-human hospitality, peaceful coexistence and the restoration of justice in damaged environments. The work develops through collaborations with flower-oriented artists, researchers and activists who contribute to an aesthetic experiment on the many layers through which flowers operate as aesthetic, social, political and ontological signifiers, as well as active participants in shaping collective experience.
Grounded in ecological awareness, posthuman ethics and discipline fluidity, Restaging Flower Power cultivates artistic and social imaginaries that respond to contemporary forms of power, resistance and regeneration. The research unfolds across four interconnected areas:
- Peacebuilding and community-based actions, with a focus on how flowers can participate in practices of collective healing and nonviolent resistance.
- Posthuman relations and floral healing powers, reactivating Flower Power through ecofeminist and new materialist perspectives developed during more than ten years of Anthropocene-focused research.
- Decolonising botany, challenging extractive and colonial approaches to flowers and foregrounding situated and plural knowledges through collaborations with researchers, artists and communities in regions of the Global South including Southeast Asia and Africa.
- Flowers and technology, critically engaging with emergent techno-floral forms shaped by AI and A-Life, and examining how these systems influence perception and imagination while revealing tensions between technological hope and ecological precarity.
Over four years, the artistic research project unfolds professionally and publicly through multiple components: a performative installation for a public theatre; two site-sensitive installations-performances situated in botanical/organic garden environments; two exhibitions, one hosted by a gallery or visual art museum and another in an unconventional venue that resonates with an art and science multidisciplinary orientation; and a publication on the Research Catalogue, whose processual and final forms will be presented throughout the project at various artistic research events.
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VINCENT ROUMAGNAC 