A new article, an exhibition, a conference and a seminar

September 2023 has been busy and super fun! So much has happened that I only briefly recap it here:

Conference presentation and Article

September 20th, 2023, I held a presentation at the Biennial international conference for the craft sciences, BICCS, September 20th. I participated online to audiences both in-person in Mariestad, and online. After my presentation i received several interesting questions that we could discuss, and I also received more comments afterwards on email. The paper I presented, was published the same day as an theme-number article in the scientific journal FormAkademisk:

• Gulliksen, M. S. (2023). What I learned by doing craft when I got terminal cancer: On woodcarving and psychophysical wellbeing from an insider perspective.  FormAkademisk , 16(4). https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.5378

In this article i I use theory on craft and psychophysical wellbeing to extract insights on the value and meaning I found in woodcarving after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I discuss three lessons I learned and I believe these lessons, and the insider perspective could be useful for art therapists as well as other persons living with cancer.

Exhibition participation “The forest in our brain”/”Hjerneskogen”

September 22nd, 2023, the research group of Artistic Research at University of South-Eastern Norway opened an exhibition at Campus Notodden. I participated with an installation of all my works from both the Purkinje Series and the Astrocyte Series. The total of 12 objects were placed tightly together on a plinth covered with a plant dyed green wool cloth. I refer to this installation as “The forest in our brain”, see pictures below.

Photo credit: Morteza Amari

Research seminar at USN

As the Norwegian National Research Day Festival always comes around in September, the research groups EMAL and ForEst organized a seminar presenting key achievements of our research from this last year. I participated with a presentation called “What is learning on a microscopic level? – Artworks as scaffolding and a incitement for wondering” (“Hva er læring, sånn helt på mikronivå? – Kunstverk som konkretisering og utgangspunkt for undring“. I brought all the participants in the seminar (about 30 persons) to the gallery where my artworks were exhibited, and I used them to talk about is going on in our brains and bodies when we learn. The audiences had a lot of questions and reflections, and the idea of making microscopic neurons and glia in a macro scale to be touched and used to explain transduction, synapses, and other key concepts was well received.

All in all, I’m not sure how I managed to do all this in the span of just a week, but it was very rewarding and interesting. Especially the feedback from colleagues, visitors and audiences in general.