Research Catalogue

The EcoSomatics Conversations Series invites sharing of engagement, practices and thinking around environmental awareness through embodiment activities, dance and art. It posits a definition of EcoSomatics as of the body-mind-ecology and takes the form of open public dialogues between two (or more) people: independent artists, practitioners, and academics. The project was conceived by Dr Polly Hudson, (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University), and the conversations are co-convened with Dr Karen Wood, (Birmingham Dance Network and C-DaRE). The conversations took place virtually with a large international audience, and the podcasts are audio recordings of the live events. It is supported by funding from ADM Faculty Research Investment Scheme, Birmingham City University. Image by Ming de Nasty.

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.

Tässä ekspositiossa (KAS-kuvagalleria) voit tutustua KAS! Kontula Art Schoolin aikuisten kollektiivin jäsenten elokuussa 2024 toteuttamaan Taking Some Space -seinämaalauskokonaisuuteen ja työskentelyprosessiin. Maalauspaikka (Emännänpolun alikulkutunneli) sijaitsee Kontulan ostarin välittömässä läheisyydessä. Ekspositio mukailee taiteellisen toimintani logiikkaa: toiminta sijoittuu konkreettiseen paikkaan, Itä-Helsinkiin ja Kontulaan, kartalle. Maalaamme kartalta tarkemmin rajattua paikkaa, jonka ympärille alkaa kokoontua toiminnan myötä joukko erilaisia ihmisiä, jotka tekevät erilaisia taideteoksia. Nämä ihmiset tekevät samalla myös paikan: ottavat sen haltuun ja määrittelevät sen käytöstä. Eri ihmisten kokemukset paikasta voivat vaihdella ja olla myös ristiriidassa keskenään, jolloin paikkaan kohdistuu erilaisia taiteellisia ja sosiaalisia neuvotteluja. Mitä syvemmälle paikkaan sukeltaa, löytyy sieltä myös kaikki se hiljainen tieto, joka näkyvien teosten pinnan takana on olemassa. Tätä hiljaista tietoa pyrin avaamaan (yhteisö)taiteellisen (toiminta)tutkimukseni avulla. KAS katutaidekartalla näet myös aiemmin Kontula Art School -hankkeen aikana (2019-2025) toteutettujen julkisten ja yhteisöllisten teosten sijainteja ja nimiä. Kuvagallerian prosessikuvien valinnassa olen käyttänyt (tutkimus)eettistä harkintaa. Olen myös halunnut nostaa esille erityisesti erään työparin teosta, joka kärsi maalausprosessin aikana sekä töhrimisestä että kriittisesti keskeneräisen teoksen päälle ennenaikaisesti levitetyn suoja-aineen ja sen poistamisen aiheuttamista vahingoista.

This project explores the cultural disappearance of Czech railway station pubs—once vibrant, affordable communal spaces where different layers of society met. As gentrification and modernization erase these places, the project treats them as social relics: through photography, objects, gestures, and staged re-enactments, it asks what is lost when shared public rituals fade. The research approaches the railway pub as a vanishing cultural microcosm. The aim is not only to document, but to interrogate the meaning of these spaces for both national identity and personal memory.

This exposition is part of the series The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, dedicated to exploring the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. Through a Q&A format, the project investigates how contemporary creators inhabit hybrid identities at the intersection of composition, performance, production, and technology. This interview features Rafiq Bhatia, American guitarist, composer, and producer, and member of the experimental trio Son Lux. Bhatia’s work dissolves the boundaries between jazz, electronic, and contemporary classical music, exploring sound as a sculptural and spatial material. His practice embodies a deep integration of composition, production, and performance—where the studio becomes an instrument, and the act of shaping sound is inseparable from the act of composing. In the conversation, Bhatia reflects on the interdependence between the roles of composer, performer, and producer, on the DAW as a generative and compositional environment, and on the emergence of sonic identity through timbre, space, and texture. He discusses collaboration within Son Lux, his process of scoring for film, and the relationship between abstraction and precision in communicating musical ideas to orchestras and ensembles. Bhatia’s reflections reveal an artistic vision in which technology and human expression coexist symbiotically: music as a living, evolving ecosystem of gestures, resonances, and spaces—an art of listening, translation, and transformation.

When does the singer become an artist? We ran an opera laboratory at the Department of Opera at Stockholm University of the Arts, during the years 2017-2020. With the searchlight focused on the creativity of the singer, we wanted to explore the borderland between the rehearsed and the spontaneous, in the art of performing opera. Our basic questions were: -when does the performance of the opera singer, which requires a high level of technical perfection, open up towards the unpredictable, creative moment? -Where is the border line between interpretation and improvisation, does it even exist? We commissioned a mini-opera to use as working material;Camilles irrfärder & äventyr, composed by Petter Ekman to a libretto by Tuvalisa Rangström. Windows for improvisation were included in the score, where the performers can play with text, rythm, melody or structure in different ways. In the work we alternated between artistic experiments and reflection. The ensemble reflected on how the different games and methods opened or closed the creative flow, and how the improvisations affected the performers' relationship to the material. A parallel focus was how the singers were inspired to change or expand their voices. We have found new methods in the work of developing the creative ability and force of the opera singer. We have applied the methods in different ways in higher education for Opera singers, developing new pedagogic approaches in the process.