Doctoral Defense of Marina Kazakova

Marina Kazakova will defend her doctoral research in the Arts, titled

“Symphonism as a strategy of translating a lyric poem into an audio-visual aria”.

How to translate a written poem into other media like music, painting, or film? Marina Kazakova focuses on prosody, the rhythm of the language. Via the concept of symphonism, established at the beginning of the 20th century, two aspects come into play: 1. Is this modernist concept still valuable as an artistic framework for intermedial transfigurations? 2. How can the formal dimension of lingual rhythm be transposed to and integrated in the needs of melody, still and moving image(s)?

Marina Kazakova designed four experiments as correspondences with the singer John David Vandevert, the music composer Giorgio Briani, and the visual artist Sara Maino. Starting from a poem, Foresta Rossa by Marina Kazakova, which was written in response to a painting Da-No by Maino, they all tried to do right to the second aspect of the research, while the first aspect is discussed during the whole process by Marina herself. So, there is no origin – the starting point itself is already a transfiguration, a puzzling moment to question more profoundly the exchange between different media and their conditions.

The members of the examination committee are:

• Dean dr. Simon Van Damme (chairman, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Dr. Volkmar Mühleis (supervisor, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Dr. Jan Peeters (co-supervisor, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Dr. Steven Malliet (co-supervisor, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Prof. dr. Anna Kisiel (KU Leuven)
• Dr. Annelies Monseré (LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Prof. dr. Swantje Lichtenstein (University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf)

The doctoral defense will take place on Friday October 27th, 15h00 at LUCA Campus Ter Beken, Beekstraat 1-3, 9030 Gent. From 18h00, you are invited to a reception. You can attend the defense by purchasing a free ticket here.