recent activities
ESPAÇO E O CORPO: ressignificações a partir do corpo sensível no Farol da Educação da cidade de São Bernardo - MA.
(2025)
DIRLENE DA CUNHA PEREIRA; JANAINA VIANA CORASSA; MAYCON DOUGLAS SILVA DOS SANTOS; ORLANILDO ROCHA CAVALCANTE e ROSANA RODRIGUES DOS SANTOS
Este trabalho, ainda em processo de construção, resulta de uma atividade da disciplina Epistemologia da Cultura, no âmbito do Mestrado Interdisciplinar do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Dinâmicas Sociais, Conexões Artísticas e Saberes Locais da Universidade Federal do Maranhão – UFMA. Emerge da experiência de vivenciar o Farol da Educação de São Bernardo - MA como patrimônio cultural e, simultaneamente, como espaço de criação, memória e reflexão. A investigação se inscreve no campo da pesquisa artística, entendendo que a arte não apenas representa o mundo, mas o interroga e o ressignifica. A proposta metodológica parte da experiência in loco, cujo primeiro momento consistiu na visita ao Farol, ocasião em que se delineou o patrimônio a ser submetido ao processo de ressignificação. Em seguida, elaborou-se um mapa mental que estruturou práticas a serem desenvolvidas no espaço, compreendendo as cartografias afetivas, a escuta performática, a equidade do olhar e a concepção do patrimônio como organismo vivo. Sob a perspectiva da pesquisa artística, entende-se que a produção de conhecimento emerge da experiência situada e da vivência estética, em que corpo, espaço e memória se entrelaçam em processos de criação e reflexão. Nesse horizonte, o estudo dialoga com Pierre Nora, ao tratar o patrimônio como “lugar de memória”; com Clifford Geertz, ao propor a descrição densa das práticas culturais; com Stuart Hall, ao compreender a identidade como processo em permanente reconstrução; e com Julieta Haidar, ao conceber a cultura como campo de significações em disputa. No âmbito da pesquisa artística, a reflexão ancora-se ainda em Henk Borgdorff, e Kathleen Coessens, ao reconhecer a criação como prática situada, ecológica e reflexiva. Dessa forma, a exposição apresenta os percursos de criação metodológica vividos no Farol da Educação, evidenciando como a prática artística possibilita a ressignificação do patrimônio, transformando-o em lugar de memória viva, criação coletiva e produção de conhecimento.
EXPERIÊNCIA SENSORIAL DIRECIONADA: Sons do Buriti, Escutar, Sentir e Criar
(2025)
Eunice Maria de Oliveira
Esta pesquisa propõe uma instalação com foco em aprofundar uma experiência sensorial, para despertar a sensibilidade das pessoas, em São Bernardo/MA, no Balneário Rio Buriti. São abordados elementos da escuta sensível e consciente, como forma de valorização dos sons naturais e culturais do local. Para a execução da prática, realizamos algumas etapas, como: determinar local, dia e o horário da atividade; elaboração de um mapa mental contendo todas as ideias; retomada da leitura do mapa mental com novas impressões individuais, pessoais, subjetivas, objetivas; decidir sobre a ação em si. Nos desdobramentos desta ação, que envolve escutar, sentir e criar, observamos que a paisagem sonora, termo criado por Schafer (2009), possui todos os componentes para a criação e sensibilização das pessoas em relação aos seus próprios territórios. O autor demonstra sua preocupação com a qualidade da escuta, que está cada vez mais ameaçada pelo problema da poluição sonora, por isso a necessidade de que a população tenha consciência dos sons que nos rodeiam.
877 Beaivvi (lohket) / 877 Days (count them) -- in progress
(2025)
Svea Vikander
877 Beaivvi (lohket) / 877 Days (Count them) er en kunstnerisk videoeksponering om samenes rettigheter, tid, dokumentasjon og repetisjon. Gjennom 360°-opptak fra Ginalvárri (Guovdageaidnu fjellet), protester (Oslo), språklæring (Guovdageaidnu) og kreftbehandling (Oslo sykkehuser) undersøker prosjektet forholdet mellom evidens, traume og kolonial makt.
recent publications
Canon of Witnesses: On Zarina Hashmi's Home Is a Foreign Place
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Canon of Witnesses: On Zarina Hashmi’s Home Is a Foreign Place
By Dorian Vale
In this elegiac and piercing reflection, Dorian Vale inducts Zarina Hashmi into the Canon of Witnesses through her seminal work Home Is a Foreign Place. Rather than interpreting the piece, Vale engages it as a ritual of moral proximity—where each word etched on handmade paper becomes a relic of memory, exile, and untranslatable grief.
Zarina’s restrained use of language, the materiality of her paper, and her refusal to perform trauma are treated here not as minimalist strategies, but as ethical gestures. The essay resists biographical reduction or historical summary and instead approaches the work as a sacred geography of loss—one that cannot be decoded without doing harm.
Drawing from the principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism, Vale positions Zarina not as an artist of silence, but as a custodian of what language can no longer hold. What remains is not narrative. What remains is presence.
Vale, Dorian. Canon of Witnesses: On Zarina Hashmi’s Home Is a Foreign Place. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17072625
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)
Zarina Hashmi, Home Is a Foreign Place, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Dorian Vale, art and exile, Urdu in art, trauma and memory in art, minimalism vs restraint, sacred aesthetics, witness-based art criticism, moral proximity, non-interpretive art writing, handmade paper in art, ethics of language in art, feminist art critique, contemporary South Asian art
Collected Works as Cognitive Trace
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Collected Works as Cognitive Trace
By Dorian Vale
In Collected Works as Cognitive Trace, Dorian Vale reframes the act of collecting not as possession, but as psychological imprint. Drawing from the principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism, this essay explores how personal archives—particularly collections of art, objects, and texts—can reveal unconscious maps of memory, loss, longing, and identity.
Vale argues that every collected item leaves a residue of the self: a cognitive scar, a symbolic placeholder, or a momentary alignment between inner and outer worlds. These collections become autobiographies of the unspoken—not narratives, but traces. What we keep is not always what we value most, but what we could not leave behind.
This piece expands the Post-Interpretive lexicon by introducing the concept of cognitive residue and emotional indexing, urging readers to view their shelves and storage boxes not as aesthetic decisions, but as quiet cartographies of becoming.
Vale, Dorian. Collected Works as Cognitive Trace. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17070885
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)
Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, art collecting, cognitive trace, personal archives, art as memory, symbolic possession, collection psychology, memory and art, autobiographical collecting, object curation, emotional indexing, art and identity, private archives, post-interpretive lexicon, collecting as residue, slow criticism, aesthetic psychology, witnessing through objects, non-interpretive art theory
Moral Proximity: Ethics as Method in Post-Interpretive Criticism
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Moral Proximity: Ethics as Method in Post-Interpretive Criticism
By Dorian Vale
n this defining essay, Dorian Vale articulates moral proximity as the central method of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC). Departing from frameworks that prioritize interpretation, context, or theoretical discourse, this piece reframes criticism itself as an ethical position, not an intellectual act.
Moral proximity is the discipline of standing near a work—especially works born of trauma, exile, or silence—without consuming it. It demands neither resolution nor analysis, but a custodial presence rooted in humility, restraint, and witness. The critic is not a translator but a steward of what cannot be said without distortion.
Drawing upon Vale’s broader doctrines—including the Viewer as Evidence, Absential Aesthetics, and Hauntmark Theory—this essay positions moral nearness as the irreducible truth in art writing. It becomes the difference between exploitation and reverence, between performance and presence.
Vale, Dorian. Moral Proximity: Ethics as Method in Post-Interpretive Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17076247
Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN.
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)
Post-Interpretive Criticism, Dorian Vale, moral proximity, ethics in art criticism, witnessing art, aesthetic ethics, viewer presence, non-extractive criticism, trauma-informed aesthetics, silent art, ethical presence, affective encounter, restraint in criticism