Materializing Care
Kindly supported by a Strategic Research Fund Grant, Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Anders Bærheim ( Research Group for General Practice, Interprofessional Education in Primary Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bergen, Norway)
Anna Harris (Department of Technology and Society Studies (TSS), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, The Netherlands)
Beatrice Allegranti (Dance Movement Psychotherapy, Choreography, Film, Artistic Director, University of Roehampton, UK)
Carole Pearson, (Artist, UK)
Claire Todd (Artist, Scholar-University of Sunderland, UK)
Ewald Van der Straeten (BVDS Architects, Fieldworks, Rooftop Studio B, London, UK)
George Bradley (BVDS Architects, Fieldworks, Rooftop Studio B, London, UK)
Jill Halstead (Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway)
Kjell Morten Stormark (NORCE Helse/RKBU Vest: Child and adolescent mental health and child welfare; UiB/HEMIL – Research Centre for health supportive work, ecology, and lifestyle, Bergen, Norway)
Neil Max Emmanuel (Freelance Motion GFX Artist & Illustrator, Storyboard Artist, Visual Facilitation, London, UK)
Rika Ikuno-Yamamoto (Faculty of Core Research, Ochanomizu University; Lecturer & Supervisor on Music Therapy, Tokai University, Japan)
Robert Gray Jr. ( University pedagogy, Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age project (TALIDA), University of Bergen, Norway)
Sabine Popp ( The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway)
Simon Gilbertson (Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway)
Simone Ghetti (Architect, Asplan Viak, Bergen, Norway)
Tia DeNora (Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, UK)
Wolfgang Schmid (Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway)
Wouter van de Velde (International Accounts Manager: Noldus Information Technology: Human behavior/ecological interaction research software/hardware, The Netherlands)
Xueli Tan, (Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway)
Background to Materializing Care
This project supports of the establishment of a cross-professional, international research and development collaborative network, titled Materializing Care
In this initiative, the term materializing is used to distinguish processes and practices through which someone or something becomes available for further discursive negotiation. In Materializing Care, the term care is understood as a social, collective practice of negotiation of what is considered to be significant and needed to be done in everyday life. Care is used here as a fluid concept that springs from a plurality of knowledges (Mol, Moser and Pols (2010). Put together, Materializing Care deals with enactments of caring through processes and practices of materialization. Though materialization and care are commonly dealt with in uni-disciplinary, and at times bi-disciplinary work within academia, it is highly uncommon that collective considerations of this topic are carried out by a cross-professional group involved in academic and commercial professions. However, this is exactly what the Materializing Care project will facilitate. Some of the 15 participants for example, write, film, perform, move, measure, collect, talk, draw, illustrate, or fuse materializations, either alone or collaboratively. All of the participants, who work in Norway, UK, Netherlands and Japan, use these processes to research, document, equip or portray aspects of the lives of others. Participation in Materializing Care is based on a multitude of partial indirect overlaps and a commitment to the discovery of additional ways to describe, analyze, produce, sell, engage in, and teach and learn about Materializing Care.
Goals
The orienting goal for Materializing Care is to establish a purposeful and committed network of individuals to collaborate in funded research and development work for the advancement of care in contemporary societies. The establishment of this network aims at establishing a seedbed for sustainable and ongoing collaborations and short, medium and long-term goals are planned. Thisproject also aims to develop a shared conceptual distinction of the domain(s) and preliminary assessment of possible research and development projects and to draft research project concepts and identify potential funding sources.
Context
Advancing research methods in understanding care in contemporary societies cannot be undertaken without a serious effort of critical analysis of process of the materialization of care in research and development. Materializing Care is situated within discourses on critical reality, posthumanism and humanism, and the significance of caring about care in contemporary societies.
Materializing Care is strategically aligned with research discourse and finance infrastructures as exemplified by the EU call: Visionary and integrated solutions to improve well-being and health in cities (SC5-14-2019) (ec.europa.eu). At a national level, the work of Materializing Care is aligned with the FINNUT call made by the Norwegian Research Council.
Materializing Care distinctly expands the existing scope of research and development ongoing at the University of Bergen. This project gives the participants an opportunity to meet the University’s expectations of cross-professional, multi-faculty and academia and commercial collaborations.
Materializing Care is conceptualized as an auxiliary project to the recently KMD awarded project ‘Social Acoustics: Sound, Embodiment, Community’. With a number of common participants, the two initiatives enhance one another conceptually, opening up a wider scope of potential research funding in the future.