recent activities
The Language of Performance Art – A Dialogue of Matter, Duration, and Agency
(2026)
Leena Kela
In this artistic research I approach performance art as a language formed through the interplay of materiality, duration, and multiple forms of agency. I adopt a linguistic lens, not to reduce performance art only to language, but to use it as an analytical tool to render its characteristics, regularities, and modes of operation visible. A work of performance art emerges within relations between the performer’s corporeality, materials, space, and time. It weaves together visual, conceptual, and embodied thinking, privileging ephemerality and immediacy over permanence. The audience is integral to the work, as performance is an ephemeral art in which performer and audience share the experience in the same moment. Documentation, especially photography and video, enables the reshaping of temporal and spatial relations, as the camera frames, selects, and reconstructs the situation. My inquiry focuses on relations among human, more-than-human, and nonhuman agents. I situate my practice within the field of new materialist and posthumanist contemporary art, where works take shape through multilayered collaborative processes across diverse agents. Performance studies serves as one of the conceptual frameworks.
A somatic approach to filming
(2026)
Dominique Rivoal
This practice as research (PaR) investigates how somatic and dyadic methods can inform the act of filming within the field of screendance.Drawing on over six years of collaborative enquiry, the project introduces
the moving camera witness—a method that integrates somatic awareness, witnessing practices from Authentic Movement, and the enquiry process of the ‘relating dyad’ into a filming practice. Working closely with somatic
movers, this research repositions the camera as a somatic, relational, and perceptual tool that can work alongside and support a somatic movement practice, ultimately becoming a somatic filming practice in its own right.
The research contributes new audiovisual works, scores, interviews, and theoretical insights to screendance, while extending existing concepts such as camera-witnessing (Goldhahn 2015, 2021), the somatic camera (Salzer,
2020) and applies Ingold’s idea of correspondence Ingold (2017, 2018, 2021) within the field of screendance. The result is a participatory and reflexive filmmaking method that highlights the co-emergent nature of moving,
filming, and witnessing.
Creating Cultures of Care
(2026)
Debbie Straver, Marieke Folkers, Gjilke Wytske Keuning, Nina Goedegebure
Nine research groups from HKU, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Fontys, and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences are joining forces with UvH and UMCU to bring a new perspective on healthcare through the arts, supported by the SIA-SPRONG grant. Using a transdisciplinary approach, this research group and its partners are developing new methods, practices, and scenarios within healthcare and well-being contexts—not for, but with each other.
recent publications
how to strike roots into the void – a trapeze artists view on artistic processes as permacultural growing
(2026)
Carmen Raffaela Küster
This project researches body and object relationships through practical exploration (practice-led research) in suspension and on the ground. It illuminates connected thoughts linked to posthuman philosophy, permaculture, physical movement and contemporary circus.
Our perception of the world is getting more global and connected, but we have not realised yet the full complexity of all the interdependencies and interplays. In fact it is more than questionable whether this might be graspable for any human to its full extend at all…
The state of being ‘in suspension’ is taken as an analogy for the times we live in – life itself. In a world in which pop-stars sing ‘I have no roots’ (Merton, 2016), mass-migration makes people leave their homes involuntarily and others choose nomadic livestyles that leave them only loosely connected with a geographical place and a single culture. But at the same time, we are always tightly connected (digitally) with ‘the whole world’.
'How to strike roots into the void?' is the essential question of this interdisciplinary research, which has its roots deep 'down' in aerial acrobatic movement. How could this rooting be possible at all? And in which ways? – referring to the question of quality: 'HOW' can we in these times as human being strike out our own roots? Who and what can keep us grounded? To whom or what are we reaching out to search for connection? What nourishes us? And where to hold on to, if the substrate is emptiness – the Void – the uncertainty of life itself?
Teaching artists: acting locally, sharing globally
(2026)
Bob Selderslaghs
In this article, Bob Selderslaghs presents a research project by the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp and Fontys Academy of the Arts Tilburg on how teaching artists can strengthen their practice in an international, hybrid learning community. Through inspiring lectures, practical experiments and in-depth reflection, participants gained recognition for their practice, expanded their artistic-pedagogical repertoire and built valuable contacts. The project emphasises the power of flexible frameworks, embodied learning and sustainable networks for greater visibility and impact in this dynamic field.
Shared Resonance – A Participatory Electro-Acoustic Ritual
(2026)
Kaixiang Zhang
This exposition presents a practice-based research project that reimagines electronic music performance through the participatory and ritualistic ethos of Capoeira. Initially motivated by a critique of audience passivity in contemporary electronic performance, the project shifted from “translating” Capoeira into an electronic context toward constructing ritual-based frameworks that foster shared authorship, presence, and collective agency.
The research unfolded through iterative processes of design, testing, and reflection. Early on, ritual was established as a conceptual foundation, situating the work within debates on participation, spectacle, and cultural belonging. Subsequent phases explored instrument-making as both technical and symbolic practice, producing DIY electroacoustic objects (Lua and Mar) that embody accessibility, agency, and transparency. Attention then turned to orchestrating the ritual performance itself, experimenting with spatial, temporal, and sensory structures that redistribute power and unsettle the artist–audience divide. The process culminated in a public performance integrating instruments, structure, and reflection, while raising new questions around documentation, belonging, and the fragility of agency.
From these iterations emerged the framework of ritual as multi-dimensional architecture: a compositional and perceptual field where time, space, materials, and social dynamics interweave to sustain collective creativity. The exposition combines documentation of instruments and performances with reflective writing, offering both a record of process and a proposition for future development.