recent activities
PHILOSOPHY IN THE ARTS : ARTS IN PHILOSOPHY CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEART IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH (AR) AND PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY (PP). PEEK-Project(FWF: AR822).
(2025)
Arno Boehler
Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public.
Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact.
The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).
New Ecology of the Book
(2025)
Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology.
In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.
"Esparto, embodied"; Hand insights on resisting disposability
(2025)
Pilar Miralles
"Esparto, embodied" is the second of a series of three installations representing the artistic component of my doctoral degree at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. In this exposition, I aim to unpack the research process leading to this event and its outcomes after I opened doors to it on October 18th, 2025, in Organo Hall of the Helsinki Music Center.
The research project in which this series of installations is contextualized aims at understanding listening as a catalyst of remembrance in the context of a world in which things are susceptible to being quickly discarded, replaced, and, therefore, forgotten. The project has been developing through the documentation of my field trips – re-encountering certain places, objects, and voices in my homeland in rural Southeastern Spain –, the re-engagement with the documented material back in Finland, and its re-assemblage at the installations, so that this re-engagement can be further extended to an audience.
The first installation, "Esparto, approached", discussed in an earlier exposition on Research Catalogue , represented a first attempt at verbalizing some of the ideas derived from working in the field and working with the materials from the field. On the other hand, the second installation, "Esparto, embodied", created many frictions emanating from a deeper questioning of those preliminary ideas. This exposition subsequently represents a space where those discomforts can cohabitate with an imaginal supposition of what the third and last installation, "Esparto, revisited", could help reveal.
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3779770/3779771
Previous exposition
recent publications
Touring Electroacoustic Musicians
(2025)
Mathieu Lacroix
Touring occupies a unique and often underexplored role in the careers of electroacoustic musicians, where the intersection of artistic, technical, and logistical challenges becomes especially pronounced. This article examines the practical realities of touring within the context of multichannel electroacoustic music, using Electric Audio Unit’s (EAU) performance in Tallinn as a case study. The article highlights the challenges of preparing for and executing a multichannel concert in an unfamiliar venue, including issues of spatialization, equipment compatibility, and time constraints. Additionally, it reflects on the broader demands placed on electroacoustic musicians, who must often juggle multiple roles to ensure the success of their performances.
Visual Overeating: Pop Culture and the Chronically Online
(2025)
Denisa Ponomarevová, Daniela Ponomarevová
This exposition examines the intersection of drawing, installation, and handmade objects informed by popular culture, spectacle, and visual symbolism. Central to the practice is the duality between physical materiality and virtual environments, a framework through which fictional realities are constructed and analyzed—often reflecting states of exhaustion, overload, and alienation characteristic of hyperactive contemporary culture. The use of low-budget materials and do-it-yourself methods introduces a deliberate tension between meticulous craftsmanship and intentional “amateurism,” while simultaneously subverting the capitalist logics of mass culture through the reuse and recontextualization of its visual language. Connecting introspective and social dimensions, the exposition offers not only an aesthetic experience but also a critical lens on everyday consumer routines, media-shaped reality, and processes of personal self-reflection.
Hidden Stone
(2025)
Marte Johnslien
The exhibition is deeply rooted in local history—the artist group explores the story of the white pigment titanium dioxide's industrial origin in Sandbekk, and how this world sensation from 1910 has influenced our world today. Titanium dioxide white pigment is a global color phenomenon. Ilmenite is transported from Titania to its sister company Kronos Titan in Fredrikstad, where it is refined into titanium dioxide. From there, the pigment circulates seemingly invisibly in a global network of systems. It is used in paint, plastics, paper, ink, cosmetics, medicine, sunscreen, and millions of products we use daily. This history is the starting point for the development project TiO2: The Materiality of White.
Over the past two years, the artist group has visited Titania's mines and deposits, gathering materials from the local history. Just as geologists examined the areas in Sokndal over 150 years ago in search of valuable minerals, the group has wandered through the landscape, picking stones and collecting sand, clay, and rust-colored earth. These findings have been brought back to the ceramic laboratory at KhiO, where they have been processed through ceramic methods.