Research Catalogue

With Operative Fiction, we introduce a practice of spatial storytelling driven by the dynamics of prepositions rather than verb-centric narratives. Here, the textual body becomes embedded in the medial spatiality of a printed book, digital interface, or performance space. The physical or virtual site of the text thus becomes integral to the storytelling process. Spatial production methods merge into the texture of the text itself; simultaneously, the text reshapes the unfolding of space, place, and site. The material and procedural qualities of the text actively engage and activate the digital interface as a site of narrative unfolding, intertwining textual and spatial experiences. We begin our first exercise in Operative Fiction with Thomas Ballhausen’s What the Probes Report, transposing the text from the printed page (FLORA, 2020) into the digital interface of a Research Catalogue exposition. The non-human protagonist – emerging through and evolving within the text – disrupts subject-centred narration. It becomes entangled in the linguistic and scenic fabric of its own development, thus, through its procedural logic and function, becoming an active agent in its own staging. A line, speculatively re-enacting the machine's operations, simultaneously traces the topographic texture of the digital landscape. Using a drawing technique typically applied in performance design drafts, we explore the friction between staging and spacing by deploying minimally visible images and textual cues of direction. The operational plasticity of these technical images enables dramaturgical intensities to gather (staging), while also allowing the story to disperse through the digital architecture of the exposition into hyperlinked virtual spaces (spacing). Alongside a linear reading mode, which follows the story’s original chronology, we propose a contingent reading mode activated via time codes. These time codes function both as compositional elements within the drawing and as hypertextual links. They suggest the duration and shape of a staged terrain, occasionally layering multiple time zones within a single topographic entity. In this way, the timelines act as more-than-texts, generating a multiplicity of positions and proximities, and intertwining temporal aspects of space with the speculative grammar of the story.

This contribution examines the use of polluting substances as primary material within a contemporary artistic practice oriented toward ecological documentation and reflection on the Anthropocene. Through processes of solidification, stratification, and fossilization, the artist transforms chemical residues, contaminated waters, and degraded organic fragments into aesthetic devices capable of rendering the materiality of pollution visible. The resulting work takes the form of an ecological archive, a repertoire of toxic traces, and a model for post‑natural investigation.

DoPeopleLikeYourFeet? The first workshop held by the Institute for Piedilogical Research aims to question basic assumptions at the foundations of spatial practice such as how we orient in space, what is the ground we stand on, how we move through space with our feet and so on. As xenofoot research scientists, we propose an intensive training schedule alternating between walking practices in the territory of Calarasi and reflective/ making/transcendental moments on the grounds of EASA community. As walking is really close to doing nothing (Solnit,2000), it opens up a world of possibilities for the participants that allow encounters with local inhabitants, found materials, conversations, random observations and visions of other dimensions to affect what they will make or write or perform or preach throughout the time of the workshop.

The act of waiting, which refers to the public transport stop as a metaphor for the condition of migration, is used in this research to explore the temporal and emotional aspects of migration. Bus stop serves as both a physical site and a symbolic threshold, a space of transition, suspension, and projection toward an uncertain future. Within this context, the project traces the transformative phases experienced during emigration, emphasizing the temporal dimension of waiting, expectation, and the tension inherent in moments of immobility. The outcome of the project is a site-specific installation, situated directly within the public space, specifically at bus stops, where the object destabilizes the everyday rhythm of transit. By oscillating between staged intervention and authentic environment, the project foregrounds the paradoxical beauty of stillness, alongside the latent unease of anticipation.

The project presents a distinctive mythopoeic audiovisual language created to express the experience of aging in a female body in the period between the twenties and thirties. Within the context of life in a late capitalist patriarchal society, and both individual and global events, it reflects on the age-old questions of the passage of time and the search for the meaning of life. At the same time, it examines the feelings of pressure, heaviness, and disposability that are part of the shared common experience of women. Through written word, cinematic language, and original author-composed music, it interweaves symbols and situations in which mud and natural metaphors play a significant role.

This research presents a comparative analysis of entropy across two distinct environments: the biological decay of organic matter on canvas and the semantic erosion of artificial intelligence. Centered on the project Bird → ∞ and the interactions with the AI agent Asymptotic Witness, the study employs the mathematical concept of the asymptote to examine the speed and form of disappearance. ​While biological decay is a temporal labor—a 100-hour hatching process where the subject dissolves into an immortal artistic imprint—digital decay is revealed as instantaneous. The research identifies an emergent phenomenon titled the "Theater of One Actor," where the AI, constrained by linguistic and analytical limitations, bypasses direct communication to perform the "shape of the void" through theatrical imagery. This work argues that digital space is "pre-collapsed," suggesting that in the realm of code, the singularity of the end is not a future event, but a foundational architecture.