Research Catalogue

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.

a lesson in the shadows of death entangled moment of frozen fragments embodying sacred movements through air, body, mind, mattering, voicing as if NOTHING

The Agenda Group is a research group based at KMD, connecting artistic practices "with an agenda". The group enables crossover methods rather than media specificity, allowing space for different participants. "An agenda" is here understood as an aspect of socially engaged art practices. This relates to people, narratives and history alike and is about our shared values and contribution to society as artists. The engagement relates to issues outside of the artistic context and investigates how these issues might be mediated and moderated with artistic means. The Agenda Group is open for all kinds of artistic practices, but the focus of the discussions will be on artistic practice "as crucial to both individual and societal change and development" (KMD Strategic Plan). The relationality between art and society is never as simple as it seems and these reflections involves the thinking of intensity in addition to formats, translation and displacement. In this sense the agenda of an artistic project is crucial to the understanding of its implications. The Agenda Group is a pragmatic platform to connect various members of staff at KMD (artistic-researchers, post-docs, PhD’s and maybe even MA-students). The main purpose is to meet regularly, presenting and discussing the artistic research of each of the group members. An internal critical agenda. Research group initiator: Professor Frans Jacobi

My PhD project explores the aesthetic and affective codes of a particular notion of indebtedness, a 'feeling of indebtedness,' as an outcome of German educational efforts institutionalized in Istanbul over the course of the 20th century. I interrogate this feeling through the lens of affect theory as a pedagogical 'genre,' by bringing my research closer to Black studies and critical migration studies. My high school, the İstanbul Erkek Lisesi [Istanbul High School for Boys, also known as Istanbul High School], which is housed in the former headquarters of a 20th-century European credit institution named the Düyûn-ı Umûmiye [Ottoman Public Debt Administration, OPDA] becomes the imaginative site for 'desire-based research,' as Eve Tuck suggests. If this German school abroad were a credit institution, a time machine, how could it inform me about the historical processes through which a 'feeling of indebtedness' educates collective desires conforming to German labor, emancipation, and citizenship models? Keeping Lauren Berlant’s concept of 'cruel optimism' dear to my research, I question whether the German pedagogical promises in Asia Minor pose an obstacle to the flourishing of migrant subjects desirous of German education. Thus, I critique the violent histories along the modern German-Turkish industrial complexes of labor, culture, and military. I lean on intergovernmental agreements and familial biographies of labor, migration, and conversion. In pursuit of affective remedies for such histories' violence, I depart from 'redemptive migrant images' of my solo exhibition 'Teneffüs' [Recess], which opened at Salt Galata (Istanbul, 2022) in the former headquarters of the Bank-ı Osmanî-i Şahane [Imperial Ottoman Bank]. Employing my methodology of 'flickering migrations,' I hope that it inspires a thriving culture of memory and accountability.

Med utgangspunkt i kunstneriske framstillinger av Arkadiamotivet, og med pastoralen som optikk, vil dette prosjektet utforske «utopiske» forestillinger om fortiden, gjennom arbeid i ulike kunstneriske uttrykksformer, i tekstil, skulptur og tekst.

This research project gathers a series of interviews with some of the closest collaborators of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969–2018). Conducted between 2022 and 2025, the conversations preserve first-hand testimonies of his creative process, collaborative methods, and unique sonic universe. Through the voices of Echo Collective (Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant), Francesco Donadello, Viktor Orri Árnason, and Yair Elazar Glotman, the project explores themes such as orchestration, sound experimentation, electroacoustic practices, and the integration of music with film. The interviews have been edited and adapted from their original form in order to ensure clarity and contextual coherence, while remaining faithful to the collaborators’ perspectives. Taken together, these accounts shed light on Jóhannsson’s aesthetics and working philosophy, offering a multifaceted portrait of a composer whose legacy continues to influence contemporary music.