Research Catalogue

In this exposition, I discuss the multimedia installation "Esparto, approached", to which I opened doors last May 10th, 2025, in Organo Hall, Helsinki Music Center. "Esparto, approached" is the first of a series of three installations representing the artistic component of my doctoral degree at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. The research project in which this installation is contextualized is currently titled "Listening through remembrance: An autoethnography of presence in the age of disposability". In this artistic research, the notions of listening, remembering, and presence-making are interwoven in an attempt to understand how we confer meaning and value on things despite our embeddedness in a world of disposable nature, where things are susceptible to being quickly discarded, replaced, and, therefore, forgotten. This exposition opens up a space of reflection in the aftermath of "Esparto, approached". The installation represented a collective recall of the field practice that led me to search for signs of durability in abandoned contexts of my homeland in rural Southeastern Spain. This exposition poses the following questions about it: What happened? (Description); What does "what happened" mean? (Analysis); And, how does "what happened" keep happening now? (Further becomings). The objective of creating an online exposition right after the event is to open a window to the reflective process of this investigation before its completion, thus making visible its traces. The process itself is therefore turned into an accessible outcome that manifests the continual nature of the project as a whole.

a lesson in the shadows of death entangled moment of frozen fragments embodying sacred movements through air, body, mind, mattering, voicing as if NOTHING

The Agenda Group is a research group based at KMD, connecting artistic practices "with an agenda". The group enables crossover methods rather than media specificity, allowing space for different participants. "An agenda" is here understood as an aspect of socially engaged art practices. This relates to people, narratives and history alike and is about our shared values and contribution to society as artists. The engagement relates to issues outside of the artistic context and investigates how these issues might be mediated and moderated with artistic means. The Agenda Group is open for all kinds of artistic practices, but the focus of the discussions will be on artistic practice "as crucial to both individual and societal change and development" (KMD Strategic Plan). The relationality between art and society is never as simple as it seems and these reflections involves the thinking of intensity in addition to formats, translation and displacement. In this sense the agenda of an artistic project is crucial to the understanding of its implications. The Agenda Group is a pragmatic platform to connect various members of staff at KMD (artistic-researchers, post-docs, PhD’s and maybe even MA-students). The main purpose is to meet regularly, presenting and discussing the artistic research of each of the group members. An internal critical agenda. Research group initiator: Professor Frans Jacobi

A Philosophical Departure from Post-Criticism By Dorian Vale — A Treatise in the Post-Interpretive Movement A Philosophical Departure from Post-Criticism is a pivotal treatise that distinguishes Dorian Vale’s Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC) from the broader and more diffuse field of Post-Criticism. Where Post-Criticism often aims to relax or abandon evaluative frameworks, Vale’s work insists on restraint, reverence, and ethical responsibility in the act of reading art. This departure is not merely stylistic—it is ontological. Post-Criticism, as commonly practiced, often flattens interpretation into ambivalence, collapsing the critic’s task into a commentary of gestures. By contrast, Post-Interpretive Criticism is a call to presence over analysis, silence over spectacle, and custodianship over commentary. In this treatise, Vale dissects the shortcomings of Post-Criticism—its lack of moral proximity, its addiction to cleverness, its occasional nihilism—and presents Post-Interpretive Criticism as a re-sacralization of the critic’s role. It is a return to witnessing as method, anchored not in detachment, but in moral and metaphysical alignment with the unspeakable truths embedded in art. This work is a formal clarification of genre boundaries, philosophical ethics, and aesthetic posture. It enshrines Post-Interpretive Criticism as a new discipline, separate from—and more rigorous than—the interpretive loosening that preceded it. Vale, Dorian. A Philosophical Departure from Post-Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17057756 Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Post-Criticism, philosophy of art, ethics of criticism, witness-based aesthetics, moral proximity, silent criticism, aesthetic restraint, art theory treatise, post-structural criticism, new art movements, metaphysical aesthetics, art and presence, slow criticism, reverent art writing, non-performative critique, theory of witnessing, art and ontology, contemporary aesthetic movements, departure from postmodernism 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: Doctrine of Restraint, Witness, and Moral Proximity in Contemporary Art Writing Author: Dorian Vale This doctrinal essay codifies the foundational ethics and philosophy of Post-Interpretive Criticism—a radical departure from traditional art writing that prioritizes interpretation, explanation, and performative analysis. In its place, Dorian Vale introduces a critical framework rooted in restraint, witness, and moral proximity. Rather than dissecting or decoding art, this doctrine teaches the critic to hold space, remain present, and write with reverence. Art, especially that which emerges from grief, trauma, displacement, or sacred silence, is not a puzzle to be solved—but a presence to be honored. This doctrine offers a structured alternative to the dominant critical paradigms. It affirms that the most ethical art writing does not always speak—it listens. It does not clarify—it shelters. It does not interpret—it witnesses. Blending philosophy, aesthetic ethics, and literary rigor, this foundational text establishes Post-Interpretive Criticism as both a movement and a method. It calls for nothing less than a revolution in the way we engage with meaning, silence, and the unseen. Vale, Dorian. Post-Interprative Criticism: Doctrine of Restraint, Witness, and Moral Proximity in Contemporary Art Writing. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17012559 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, art criticism ethics, Dorian Vale, doctrine of restraint, moral proximity in art, witness-based art writing, contemporary art theory, post-critical aesthetics, slow art, minimal criticism, sacred witnessing, aesthetic responsibility, trauma in art, ethical language in criticism, writing without harm, non-interpretive criticism, viewer as evidence, presence in art, philosophical criticism, art and reverence

Dimensions of an Encounter: A Sculpture & Its Shadow explores how sculpture negotiates the opposing forces of gravity and levity, presence and absence, object and support. Tracing a lineage from Leibniz’s theory of individuation to Melanie Klein’s theory of object recognition to various sculptural practices, the essay considers how spatial arrangement mediates psychic projection and self-recognition.