Research Catalogue

PROJECT DESCRIPTION “Working Title” is an art performance about labor conditions and class structures. The motivation behind the piece is to interrogate the many ways in which work affects us. The boundaries between labor and art are also examined, as the physical and mental demands placed on the performers reflect the burdens of modern working life. The format mirrors a regular workday: the performance lasts eight hours, including a break. It is presented in two versions—a day shift and a night shift. Today, many sectors are marked by rapid change, demands for efficiency and ever-increasing productivity. Which values are prioritised, and which are undermined to meet the needs of such a labor market? In the piece, structural challenges will be studied and observed through scenarios acted out on stage. Some examples of questions that will be used to form these scenarios: -At what cost do you actually sell your time? -What kind of value is, beyond the monetary, created for those who buy your time? -In what ways, physically and mentally, do you experience your labouring hours, after you have clocked out? The performance will explore themes such as: - Monotony and repetition as fundamental elements of labor - Power dynamics in the workplace and how privileges are maintained and reinforced - The body’s needs in relation to work: illness, disabilities, menstruation, and pregnancy - The physiological consequences of labor - The value of time as an economic and social divide - The close link between economic stability and mental health In a time when the job market is shaped by rapid technological development, climate change and an uncertain future, thinking through alternatives for how to organise ourselves has become crucial. With this performance, we aim to dig into the mechanisms at stake in order to hopefully be able to both raise questions and think deeply about how we may face the challenges ahead collectively. A dynamic, experimental and collectively driven form of artistic expression is combined with societal critique. We believe in art as a way of adding to the discourse in poetic manners, activating questions through embodied experiences. With this unique format, we hope to open new perspectives on what labor means for individuals and society—and what values we wish to build our common future upon.

Based on the Jungian concept of the shadow, I wanted to develop illustrations that depict a journey within the self, leading to the discovery and understanding of one’s own shadow. It represents the dark side of our personality, which we refuse to acknowledge and accept.

When preparing for the dead, may we peep into the future? In the broader geography of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, we cook our coffee in the briki or cezve. Every region has its own variation, some heat up the water before adding the powder, some add spices, some make it thick, others thinner. And every person has their own variation as well. Coffee is something as personal as communal. Apart from the daily morning and evening consumption, we also share two uses of the coffee that are central of interest here: the coffee cup reading and the tradition of coffee drinking in funerals and memorials. Imagination and memory, future and past, the association with grief; and the unique timelines traced in each cup. I think that it has been with me for years, the memory of my grandmothers, my mother’s morning ritual of cooking a light Greek coffee in a big cup. The familiarity of the Kafenio. And most importantly, community dynamics; sharing others, participating. Here I aspired to create a meeting space with people, artists or not, with whom I have met over the years and share the subtle fascination about this type of coffee and its rituals. Acknowledging the blood, oppression and displacement behind and around the product. The Cafe Imperial.

This exposition invites you to reflect on the various things you do in your doctoral artistic research and to consider how these activities might form an interconnected system — a methodology. In a guided tour of words, images, and visits to my garden, I reconsider several research models I encountered as a PhD student investigating transdisciplinary performing practices. However, my primary aim is to carve out a pathway — from model to metaphor — one that offers a viable means of seeing your doctoral project existing within a terrain of complexity rather than utter chaos. Throughout the exposition I employ metaphors inspired not only by my artistic work, but also by my garden in Abruzzo, where I lived throughout my PhD studies. To fully discover Abruzzo, it is necessary to slow down — even allow yourself to get bored — before inevitably being revitalized and inspired by its natural beauty and ever-welcoming ambiance. I hope you will embrace this exposition’s journey. Permit yourself to be a rural-Italian wanderer, enjoy the breaks, and take extra ones so you can also enjoy an espresso or glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Download Accessible PDF

The research project BODIES IN TRANSITION (2023-2024) searches for sensitive and collaborative bodies of the future by interlacing voices and materials from the Wadden Sea into a cosmology of plants, animals, bacteria, humans and planets. In the context of global crises, which appear as symptoms of a patriarchal and hierarchical self-understanding of human existence, three performers travel to the island of Sylt (Germany) to relearn ‘being’ in this more-than-human-world. Performative research is undertaken in the protection zone 1, the Morsum cliff and the mudflats near Munkmarsch. These dynamic ecosystems, with their tidal rhythms dictated by the moon and sun and their diverse life forms, ranging from Japanese berry seaweed to Pacific oysters, make the world’s processualism perceptible and remind us that our lives are intertwined with dynamic ecosystems. The performers immerse themselves in a fluid space of video, sound, natural materials, and performance, rethinking and questioning the diverse relationships between the organisms of the Wadden Sea and their own state as living beings. The leading question of this research is what we can learn from this dynamic interplay, to transform our existence with planet Gaia and all its organisms into a sensitive and resilient future. Download Accessible PDF

Post-Interpretive Criticism and the Seven Liberal Arts: How Ancient Disciplines Produced a Contemporary Method documents the emergence of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC) as a methodological consequence of classical intellectual training rather than as a theoretical innovation or aesthetic preference. The essay argues that PIC arises when the seven liberal arts—grammar, logic (dialectic), rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—are rigorously internalized and applied without modification to contemporary art criticism. Rather than proposing a new interpretive framework, this study traces how long-standing disciplines of clear thinking expose structural failures within dominant modes of contemporary criticism, particularly the proliferation of unfalsifiable claims, category errors, rhetorical excess, and disproportionate commentary that displaces the artwork itself. Drawing on the trivium’s emphasis on distinction, validity, and proportionate articulation, alongside the quadrivium’s cultivation of ratio, harmony, distance, and order, the essay demonstrates how interpretive excess becomes visible not as an ideological disagreement but as a violation of established intellectual standards. The essay situates Post-Interpretive Criticism within a continuous lineage extending from classical antiquity through medieval university education, the scientific revolution, and non-Western traditions emphasizing proportion and restraint (including Islamic geometric practice and Japanese concepts of ma). It argues that PIC is replicable, falsifiable in procedural terms, and resistant to misuse because it depends on disciplined application of inherited methods rather than subjective taste or theoretical allegiance. By reframing Post-Interpretive Criticism as a diagnostic instrument rather than an advocacy position, the essay positions PIC as a restorative application of classical liberal arts to a contemporary domain that has largely abandoned them. The work contributes to debates in art criticism, aesthetics, philosophy of interpretation, and methodology by demonstrating that interpretive restraint, silence, and proportion are not evasions but outcomes of rigorous intellectual discipline. Post-Interpretive Criticism; Liberal Arts; Trivium; Quadrivium; Art Criticism; Aesthetics; Methodology; Classical Education; Proportion; Interpretation; Rhetorical Ethics; Dialectic; Grammar; Geometry; Critical Theory; Museum Studies; Philosophy of Art; Intellectual History This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881)