Obliquo Book Look book fair

• Valiz will be attending Book Look this year: a bookfair in Pordenone, Italy
• On Sunday 20 September Mirna Vrdoljak will give a talk and present Valiz's recently published Thinking Back, Making Forward

What: Book fair Book Look
When: Friday 18 September 17.30–21.00, Saturday 19 September 10.30–21.00, Sunday 20 September 10.30–18.30
Where: Ex Convent of Saint Francesco, Via della Motta, 13, 33170 Pordenone PN, Italy
Entrance: Free
Language: English

More information here

Valiz is for the first time attending Book Look this year: a book fair organized by Obliquo. The fair is part of the book festival Pordenonelegge in Pordenone, Italy. Mirna Vrdoljak will be present on behalf of Valiz for this three-day fair. On Sunday morning 20 September, Mirna will give a talk on the occassion of the recently published book Thinking Back, Making Forward. 

About Thinking Back, Making Forward
In the last three decades, creative practice disciplines, such as art, design, architecture, creative writing, fashion, and others, have undergone a ‘research turn’, strongly stimulated by doctoral programmes to deepen artists’ reflections on the roots, relevance and urgencies of their work. There are many reasons why an individual practitioner might decide to undertake a PhD: a desire to uplift one’s practice, to contribute to the intellectual artistic climate, to teach, to pursue an academic career, or some combination of these, or other reasons.

The rise of artistic research or practice-based research is subtly transforming these disciplines. The integration of research into practice, however, has not always been smooth, and the transformations not unequivocally positive.

For this book we issued an open call to ask artists how PhD research has influenced their making and thinking. Our questions were: What are the impacts, urgency, and significance of the PhD for creative practitioners? How are these understood, captured, communicated? How did it change your practice? We even asked: should creative practitioners undertake a PhD in the first place?

Through its thirty contributions Thinking Back, Making Forward tackles these questions in an open way, to acknowledge, equally, the advantages and disadvantages of the creep of the PhD into artistic practice. At the same time, this book shows a wide range of possibilities of what research in artistic practice can entail.