Research Catalogue

Supplement to the presentation proposal 'Anatomy of a (Musical) Ethics Lab'

Documentation of preliminary steps and collection of musical material and related reflections during the first Term of the Master's Program in Improvisation and World Music. December 2022

We live in an age of Symbolic Misery (Stiegler, 2014). In this era, we listen to the same music, scroll through the same Instagram feeds, and we immerse ourselves in daily lives that are the same as others, gradually losing the 'singularity (Stiegler, 2014)' of individual difference. This homogenized structure of perception continuously reshapes our subjectivity (Simondon, 1958; Hui, 2016), making individual desires no longer emerge from unique experiences or internal generative processes, but are increasingly induced and regulated by external technological and symbolic systems (Stiegler, 2015). In this context, the question is no longer 'What do we produce?' but rather, 'Do our desires still belong to ourselves?'. As Stiegler (2014) pointed out, in order to enter the market more effectively, marketing technologies have developed an industrial aesthetic system centered on audiovisual media. This industrial aesthetic re-functionalizes individual sensory experiences following industrial interests, aiming to produce a replicable and controllable unified taste through the standardized pleasure. This huge 'desire project (libidinal management)' manipulates human drives for externalization through a diversity of apparatus (Agamben, 2009; Foucault, 1977), generating a sense of 'participation' via formalized interaction, restricting the level of perception and expression (Stiegler, 2015). Through daily repetition, this process gradually weakens the individual’s ability for subjectivation, trapping them within a passive structure of desire (Stiegler, 2014). This exposition is based on an artistic research project titled 'I Don’t Know Who I Am', an installation game. It invites players to watch a five-minute monologue, the story of a cow (inspired by, for example, Lacan et al., 2001), to explore the secrets hidden within this cow’s desire. After watching the video, the player will face a plate of real grass with soya sauce, and be invited to make a choice: whether or not to eat the grass. This installation game encourages players to reflect on a critical question: At a time when industrial aesthetics and subjective experience standardize individual desire, is increasingly hollowed out, where do our desires truly come from? Do they still emerge from internal generative processes, or have they long been preconditioned and disciplined by technological objects and symbolic systems?

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2025. BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design Summary (8968 words)

This thesis explores the interwoven relationships between women, the textile arts, and its heritage, through a personal familial lens. Beginning with the question of the importance textile-making has held in our lives, I investigate whether engaging in crafting practices can reconnect us with tradition and allow us to re-root ourselves in the lives of our ancestors. Drawing from both historical context and intimate family stories, I trace the lineage of textile practices among the women in my family - my Mothers. These include my mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, whose experiences with sewing, knitting, crocheting, and weaving shaped their identities and daily lives. For many of them, textile-making was an act born of necessity, a survival skill often dismissed as “women’s work” within a patriarchal framework. For me, it is a conscious act and a choice - an exploration, a reclamation, and a form of personal and cultural healing. Through self-taught practice and reflection, I came to realise how textile traditions carry knowledge, strength, and connection across generations. My research, grounded in both historical analysis and storytelling, shows how making can become a language of remembrance and resistance, a way to bridge fragmented identity and reclaim belonging. In honouring the textile legacies of the women who came before me, I have tied myself into their story, not by romanticising their struggles, but to acknowledge their creativity and resilience. With each thread, I reconnect to a maternal lineage that continues to live through my hands.

This appendix is comprised of a small collection of photos that can be examined alongside the thesis 'my Mothers'.