SAR Annual Prize for Best Research Catalogue Exposition 2020

 

The Executive Board of SAR is delighted to announce the winners of the Annual Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2020. This year, and unusually, the prize is offered jointly, to:

 

Christoph Solstreif-Pirker – “Breathing into the Ecological Trauma: The Case of Gruinard Island”
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/638234/638235

 

Ernie Roby-Tomic – “Reclamation: Exposing Coal Seams and Appalachian Fatalism with Digital Apparatuses”
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/748182/748183

 

The prize aims to foster and encourage innovative, experimental new formats of publication and to give visibility to the qualities of artistic research artefacts. We received twenty-four innovative submissions for the prize, and the jury (Ang Bartram, Karst de Jong and Christopher Williams) felt these two expositions met these conditions to a high level and in equal measure.

 

Christoph Solstreif-Pirker’s exposition presents a beautifully minimalistic use of the Research Catalogue, which effectively supports the journey of the author and his experiences during an intimate encounter with a traumatized part of our planet. The layout is simple, but elegant and effective, and the documentation within is conceptually rich and visually appealing. The layout of the exposition has clarity in the positioning of text and visual, and there is a subtle interplay and connectivity between the two because of this consideration.

 

Ernie Roby-Tomic’s exposition presents a quirky and engaging critique of mining and the destruction of nature, which is cleverly underscored by taking the reader out of the usual and familiar notion of the Research Catalogue, into the experience and aesthetics of vintage computer games. The exposition deftly combines geopolitical history and artistic responses to coal mining in the Appalachia, and the layout, which includes often poetic narrative and the chattels of mining, takes advantage of the limitations of the Research Catalogue.

 

 

Both authors will receive 250€, a joint split of the annual 500€ prize money.