Research Catalogue

DESENHO E PERFORMATIVIDADE (WORKSHOP#3)

In progress Dorsal Practices — Murky Back Thinking is a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker, for exploring the notion of dorsality in relation to how we as moving bodies orientate to self, others, world. How does cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our experience of being-in-the-world? The dorsal orientation foregrounds active letting go, releasing, even de-privileging, of predominant social habits of uprightness and frontality — the head-oriented, sight-oriented, forward-facing, future-leaning tendencies of a culture intent on grasping a sense of the world through naming and control. Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a backwards-leaning orientation support an open and receptive ethics of relation? How are experiences of listening, voicing, thinking, shaped differently through this tilt of awareness and attention towards the back?

"New ideas might be conceived and developed more rapidly in disciplines that are more abstract. The inductive methods of experimental innovators in painting makes their enterprise resemble the more empirical disciplines considered by psychologists, while the deductive approach of the conceptual innovators makes theirs resemble the more abstract disciplines." David W. Galenson, "The Life Cycles of Modern Artists", NBER Working Paper Series, 2003. My use of the diagram and the image aims to convey the simple message that art strives for evolution; meaning to strengthen the mind, to research capabilities, to communicate a disinterested, though not necessarily apolitical, view of social changes, to overcome banality and offer an alternative way of looking at the world.

Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Thesis / Research document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2024 MA Artistic Research A search for the special through oil electric and sentimental.

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024 Interactive/Media/Design (I/M/D) As a child, moving from India to Germany changed the way I looked at and was perceived by society around me. Dancing between the extremes of complete integration and complete rejection of the culture, I found myself struggling with my sense of identity and belonging. By using TV and stories and other forms of media I was able to learn about my second culture and maintain my first culture. Looking through the lens of entertainment media I consumed throughout my childhood as well as the changes in narrative unfolding before my eyes as I grew up I started to wonder: How did the media I consumed shape my view of the world around me and the way that others perceived me? How much of that media had good/bad POC representation? How much of it was specifically South Indian? How much of it could I relate to?

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. BA Interactive / Media / Design on the inner climate of the body This study investigates the relationship between the inner experiences of the human body and the state of balance of earth’s climate. The current state of the earth is worsening and the current way of living is not sustainable, climate change wise but also health and mental health wise. Changes need to be made to the way humans live their lives, for (men- tal) health, environment and survival of all beings. There are three stages in which this research takes place: meeting, befriending and becoming. The meeting chapter looks at the human body experiences of breathing, emotions and (graceful) movement and what these mean in relation- ship with environmental awareness. During befriending we dive into the human body’s microbiome, neurodiversity, mental illness, burn out, education and war and how these influence the climate crisis. The last chapter called becoming, looks into the philosophy of time and space in relationship with environmentalism and viewing the earth as one’s own body. The three stages are designed to help us understand the rela- tionship to the disturbance of the climate and our role in it. The research looks into methods to become aware of one’s body. For instance, Just being—breathing—gives the body and its microbiome time to heal. Another method being zooming out and metaphorically seeing the human bodies as the microbiome of earth. .