Research Catalogue

This exposition gathers a series of visual and linguistic investigations in which signs, form, and the space between them construct expressions that invite multiple interpretations. Here, propositions are understood as attempts, movements, and modes of thought. Between sign and form, a space emerges where meaning can be brought into play – where rhythm, structure, wonder and quietness may interact as an expanded practice of seeing, reading, and listening.

Exam Context as collaborator December 2025 - Makor

This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Research catalogue documents some of these findings. The team Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project. Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT. Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine. Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT. The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.

The term ‘Occupational Folklore’ refers to the social expressions of people, linked to the work that they do. This exposition explores the possibility of there being a common language of clay, a vernacular that can be used to story-tell, and how stories arise from the studio, from the intersection of making, thinking/talking and clay. Comprising three discrete projects, we move from a study of the materiality of voice to establishing a vocabulary of clay to a narrative collection of embodied experiences. Their combined knowledge leads to a fourth project, in the form of conversations held whilst making around a studio table. Passages from the exchange are filmed and analysed from the perspective of ‘small stories’, an oral history methodology that gives focus to the speculative, iterative and nuanced decisions often overlooked in a conventional account of a conversation. When applied to the making process, it begins to uncover a deeper understanding of the processual and implicit decisions that take place through the interaction of making, thinking and material properties. The passages allow us to witness the very emergence of storytelling taking place, the moment at which life experiences intersect with formations in clay. The aim of collecting all four projects together is not simply to document examples but, as with all modes of folklore, to use story to identify and share more resilient and connected ways of being in the world. Within these intersections lie the porous and mutable properties of clay practice, that are rapidly redefining the wider field of ceramics in terms of its social contribution. Contained within these social expressions of clay lies its ability to connect with and contribute to wider community and environmental issues. The term occupational folklore is used in recognition of the historic continuity of behaviours, actions and beliefs that arise from these interactions, if only we shift our focus from individual attainments to the collective knowledge and transferable learning these small stories contain.

Troubling the Ideal Landscape – A Visual Narrative critically examines possible intersections between imagination and physical landscape. Through a practice-based approach, this exposition explores the composition and decomposition of ideal landscapes, with a focus on Cannero Riviera, a small Italian village. Grounded in my doctoral research at PhDArts, a collaboration between ACPA, Leiden University, and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, the project employs spatial montage as both a methodological tool and an artistic outcome. By fragmenting the landscape into moving images, I seek to disrupt conventional visual regimes and reflect on the ideological forces shaping the village and its environment. This approach is informed by Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas, where fragmented images form unstable constellations that navigate multiple meanings, temporalities, and spaces. Engaging with Warburg’s method, I question crystallised, linear visualisations of the ideal, focusing on dynamic processes of spatial composition. The exposition aims to reframe landscape imagery not as a passive backdrop, but as an active force. It proposes a model of the ideal landscape that resists linearity, embracing a complex, shifting narrative that questions the visual regimes through which contemporary imaginaries of place are constructed.

In this paper I propose to re-visit the outcome of a research trip I made a few years ago to the island of Sardinia in order to capture stills and video of a dilapidated villa, La Cupola, once belonging to the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni. The research output took the form of an essay video using a film studies methodology to critically re-assess Antonioni’s classic 1960 film L’Avventura. The research took the form of what I would term an occularcentric-cognitive approach whereby my analysis was based primarily on my visual interpretation of the villa. My mental image of La Cupola on first hearing about it was replaced by the online image in my research process, which in turn was replaced by the real image when I arrived at the site, and ultimately by the mediated images of my audio-visual essay. But what wasn’t included in this original research was an unexpected opportunity to enter inside La Cupola, which I retrospectively realised offered an entirely new understanding of the space. With reference to both film and architectural theory, this paper will seek to understand my encounter with the villa according to a primarily sensory and embodied interpretation rather than a sighted one.