Skip to main content
An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)

Secondary tabs

Submission Number: 232
Submission ID: 291
Submission UUID: ac220da3-d4c4-46ba-9c92-a09d83b0726f

Cruthaithe: Sat, 28 Feb 2026 - 14:10
Déanta: Sat, 28 Feb 2026 - 15:01
Changed: Wed, 13 May 2026 - 08:45

Remote IP address: 74.71.15.154
Submitted by: Gwen Welliver
Teanga: English

Is draft: Níl
Current page: webform_confirmation

Flagged:
Given name Gwen
Surname Welliver
Email gwelliver@fsu.edu
I understand that by submitting this form, I consent to the use of my data for the purposes of the 2026 Forum on Artistic Research'.
I agree to the terms of service.
Title Unidentified Rehearsals
Format Project presentation
Main language English
Abstract This project begins with Trisha Brown (1936-2017), a groundbreaking choreographer, often seen as dance’s equivalent of better-known (male) contemporaries in other media — John Cage’s experimentalism, Sol Lewitt‘s minimalism, or the chaotic collages of Robert Rauschenberg, with whom she often collaborated. After years of institutional processing, her archives — notebooks, videos, drawings — are becoming available to researchers. But the fact that we have access doesn’t mean we know how to look at them. The aim of "Unidentified Rehearsals", a phrase taken from a label on one of her early rehearsal videos, is twofold: to learn how to work with her archives, and to teach how those lessons can inform artistic research more broadly.

Today we take a woman choreographer in her studio working with video for granted, but when Trisha began doing this every aspect of it was radical. Dancers might be women but (with few exceptions) choreographers were men; lofts were rough alternatives not lifestyle choices; and video was a cheap, reusable tool dismissed by cinema, museums, and academics. So it comes as no surprise that her videos blur the boundaries around artmaking: a dog walks by, someone pops in for a hug, the camera moves out of focus, then reframes to show dance through a new window. This kind of material is typically ignored as incidental; on the contrary, I will show how it was central to how she developed her work on every level, from fine-grained vocabulary to stage composition to, ultimately, the poetics of her bodies — as collages of limbs, as site-specific experiments, as polyrhythmic beings.

These observations are specific to Trisha’s work, but the lessons are broadly relevant. In speculative contexts — artistic and scientific — it’s far from clear what a “document” actually documents. With this project, I invite others to consider examples or parallels in their own domains and research — and why it’s essential to the questions posed by artistic research
Link to the Exposition https://www.researchcatalogue.net/shared/c9d8f5a996d623ee9cb83a587407643e
Image Unidentified Rehearsals.jpeg
Short biographies of the presenter(s)
  • Gwen Welliver is a choreographer and movement director based in New York City. She previously served as Rehearsal Director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, where she led the revival of Brown's early work, the restaging of opera, and the supervision of the company’s international touring repertory. Welliver is a full professor in the School of Dance at Florida State University (US). Her current research explores speculative and open-ended approaches to dance, including emotional tenor through non-figurative drawing, performing simultaneity, and collaborative practices.
Previous presentations or iterations of the research N/A
Additional information This project presentation will involve an oral presentation accompanied with slides, video examples, and live gestural demonstration.
Spatial and technical requirements technical requirements: I plan to project video excerpts and images from a 2024 MacBook Pro, via the built-in HDMI port, a USB-C (Thunderbolt) to HDMI/DisplayPort cable, or potentially wirelessly using AirPlay.

Spatial requirements: Physical demonstrations may occur during my talk but I will need no special requirements for this.
Potential risks or ethical concerns N/A
Create a user account for SAR 2026
Create new user Gwen Welliver
An 17ú Comhdháil de chuid Chumann na Taighde Ealaíonta (SAR)

Welcome to SAR 2026

Endangered Conceptual Worlds

The 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research takes place from 23 to 26 June 2026. Hosted by the University of Galway on the Atlantic coast of Ireland, the Forum addresses the challenges of Endangered Conceptual Worlds. As the 17th annual conference of the Society for Artistic Research it is the largest conference on practice-based research within and through the arts, bringing together more than 300 international participants: leading practitioners, scholars and policymakers from the entire range of arts-based disciplines.

Read More →

Slightly extended deadline for submissions

The 2026 Forum on Artistic Research website has been inaccessible for several hours on Friday night and Saturday morning. Unfortunately, an update to the web server was scheduled to take place, which automatically activated maintenance mode and prevented any work on the submissions during the night and the next morning. We have therefore decided to slightly extend the deadline for submissions to Monday 2 March 2026 at 23:59 GMT. Feel free to work on your proposals until then.