Research Catalogue

Digital overview of artistic works by musician Jordan Sand

In this autoethnographic arts-based research, I return to the gift of music in my life and use it as the ultimate form of expression. I explore the process of navigating my own transgenerational trauma through composing and working with musicians from different musical and cultural backgrounds. Something like home explores the effect of finding common ground of love and compassion between my family members, especially those who have been navigating the traumas of war. I collected stories, memories, and impressions from my family’s childhood, and composed music that is inspired by them. In the first sections I discuss some concepts related to the transmittion of war trauma , and Bowen’s family system theory. Moreover, I relate to reasearches and projects that have been concerned with trauma art therapy and dealing with cultural trauma through music. As well as showing examples of composers who have been working with similar processes. In this project, I unfold my compositional process, and I present some possibilities of dealing with harmonizing traditional Arabic music, using partials from the harmonic series. I also share my process of collaborating with a lyric writer and a videographer who have helped me to bring the stories to life. Throughout the process I discovered that engaging with the stories unlocked new artistic outcomes and some unexpected artistic practices, expressions and results. Another important outcome of this project was the need for coming up with approaches that were used for transcultural music making and engaging the musicians with the stories but making sure to leave space for their own artistic identities to come across and shine. In the near future, I am hoping to use this project as a basis of my doctoral research project which will focus on memory expression through music by working with the diverse citizines of the finnish community.

This exposition gathers all the essential information needed to get started with the Research Catalogue (RC) platform at the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA). It offers a clear overview of how to create a profile, start an exposition, and navigate the basic functions of the platform. The goal is to provide staff with a central reference point for working with RC in the context of artistic research and institutional use.

On Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River An Exhibition Reflection by Dorian Vale In this quiet exhibition review, Dorian Vale approaches Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River not as a landscape survey, but as a hydrological memory—a fluid archive of displacement, ritual, and the erosion of place. Guided by the ethics of Post-Interpretive Criticism, the exhibition is treated not as data or documentation, but as atmosphere. Witness is prioritized over commentary. Rather than interpreting the changing waters as metaphor or environmental activism, Vale walks the exhibition like one would walk a river—slowly, carefully, aware that every bend holds residue. What unfolds is not critique, but accompaniment. Presence without possession. The exhibition, like the Kok River itself, does not offer answers. It carries what has been left behind. Vale, Dorian. On Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16945917 Clouded Water exhibition, Kok River art, Dorian Vale, Chiang Rai river, Post-Interpretive Criticism, witnessing water in art, environmental art ethics, river as memory, non-interpretive art reflection, Thai contemporary art, art and ecology, hydrological memory, sacred geography, poetic exhibition review, art and displacement, witnessing natural change, contemplative art writing, moral proximity in curation, slow art, ritual and erosion in art 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)

Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue By Dorian Vale In this foundational essay, Dorian Vale situates Teresa Margolles within the Canon of Witnesses, a post-interpretive framework that honors artists whose works resist explanation and demand moral proximity. Focusing on Margolles’s use of bodily residue—blood, water from morgues, traces of violence—Vale examines how her practice subverts spectacle and refuses the comfort of metaphor. Rather than aestheticizing death, Margolles preserves its aftermath. Her works do not speak for the dead—they let the materials of death remain unaltered, undecorated, and unresolvable. Through her installations, Vale argues, Margolles becomes a custodian of consequence: holding space for what cannot be revived, only witnessed. Written through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism, this essay proposes that Margolles offers one of the most ethically alert practices in contemporary art. Her work is not political commentary—it is aftermath. And in that aftermath, she teaches the critic not to interpret, but to stand still. Vale, Dorian. Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17070909 Teresa Margolles, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Canon of Witnesses, contemporary Mexican artists, art and death, ethical art criticism, trauma in contemporary art, bodily residue in art, morgue water installations, art of aftermath, art and violence, mourning in installation art, witnessing through material, Teresa Margolles analysis, non-interpretive art writing, residue as aesthetic, ethics of witnessing, post-interpretive canon, slow art, sacred presence in contemporary art 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 Dogs Who Outlived Philosophy : On Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness (2005) By Dorian Vale In this quietly devastating reflection, Dorian Vale examines Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s 2005 video work Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism. Rather than analyzing the dogs, their dying, or the death they face, the piece invites the viewer to endure them—without commentary, without resolve. Vale argues that these dogs, abandoned yet alive, offer a kind of sacred presence that survives beyond theory. They do not symbolize death. They resist being used as metaphor. Instead, they remain—breathing, ailing, present—while the camera holds still and the world looks away. This essay is not an interpretation. It is a vigil. Vale, Dorian. On Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness (2005). Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16945906 Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, contemporary Thai art, Some Unexpected Events Sometimes Bring Momentary Happiness, art and death, ethics of witness, dying animals in art, aesthetic of silence, witnessing suffering, art of presence, slow video art, moral proximity, non-interpretive art writing, visual elegy, sacred presence, trauma in Southeast Asian art, art without metaphor, art and abandonment, ethics of stillness, dogs in contemporary art 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)