Connecting Principle is an art centred international multi-disciplinary research forum at Newcastle University instigating a dialogue between art and other disciplines. The aim of the forum is to increase opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration within academia and independently. Connecting Principle sees itself as an international network of artists, theorists and researchers.

'The neuralgic point'
Prof Tina Haase and Yvonne Leinfelder, Munich
Tuesday, 21 February 12, 4pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University

This presentation focuses on art in the context of particular spaces or locations. By means of simple and often minimal interventions, such art aims to bring into focus the particular quality or "neuralgic" point of a space or location. In this way, a space or location can be endowed with a completely different mood, thus inviting a second consideration of its nature and function, which in turn often reveals the viewer's own expectations.

The sculptor Tina Haase investigates the qualities and properties of objects, spaces, and locations. On the basis of their specific physical, visual, or contextual features, she creates a variety of artworks, including objects, installations, percent-for-art projects, performances, and short films. The search for the essence of something - or, indeed, its idiosyncrasy, its specificity - is often accompanied by a shift in identity. On occasion, this interface between recognition and reappraisal can give rise, as a by-product, to something very much akin to humour, or even joy.
Prof. Tina Haase (*1957) initially studied German and Education in Cologne. From 1979, she studied Art at the Academies of Art in Muenster and then Duesseldorf, where she graduated as a master scholar of Fritz Schwegler. She has been awarded travel scholarships to work in the U.S. and Italy. Thanks to regular exhibitions, largely in Germany, but also in Spain, Belgium, the U.S., the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland, her work is now well known. In addition to works of sculpture, she also produced short films in the 1980s (Paranose Produktion) and space-specific choreographies in the 1990s. She was appointed Professor of Basic Design at the Hochschule Niederrhein in 2004 and has been Professor of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technische Universitaet Munich since 2007.

Yvonne Leinfelder's videos and photographs bear the fictional qualities of a documentary as well as a reliable artificiality. Light and time have a pivotal function. It's not important which object is apparent, but in what light it appears.
Yvonne Leinfelder (*1972) studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Munich. Recent exhibitions and projects include: Interference/DVD Project, De Blinde Muur Breda NL, es diu que les dones son romantiques, Fundacio Vallpalou, Lleida E (2011), Ausstellung zur PIN.-Versteigerung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Nonstop, Raum 58, Munich (2010), Dimke Egger Engl Erb Leinfelder, Kunstarkaden, Munich (2009), Connecting Principle, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2008).