Research Catalogue

(EN) "Imperial coffe breaks" is a transdisciplinary seminar format that deals with challenges of perception and possible transformations of academic time and space, using a ritual as example of shared identities and multiplicities. A Greek coffee is a Turkish coffee, a Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Bosnian, Armenian, Cypriot and more. Grinded a bit more finely or a bit more roughly, served in a cup with or without a handle, with cardamon or not, with sugar or without. During our meetings we prepare and serve this coffee with the multiple “originalities”, while we discuss written and oral histories and practices around the beverage. Starting from the Ethiopian berry that spread with the Ottoman Empire, the bean that still holds a strong presence in Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Balkans, the powder that comes to foam and its local variations, we will talk about other Empires, slavery, cargo boats, plantations, corporates and associations/meanings/roles/origins of coffee trade and consumption in our daily routines. As this kind of coffee is traditionally also served in memorials, we will inevitably discuss loss and grief. We will also talk about relations to the future through tasseography (cup reading divination) that is another strong tradition. We will look at epistemological effects, ways we construct truth and meaning and ways to work with random patterns. Finally, we will exercise cleaning up our mess after the gatherings. Through sharing and rotating the roles, we will practice rituals of togetherness and empathy, thinking with coffee and with each other, about the origins and futures of otherwise unremarkable things in our daily life. (DE) „Imperial coffe breaks“ ist ein transdisziplinäres Seminarformat, das sich mit den Herausforderungen der Wahrnehmung und möglichen Transformationen von akademischen Zeiten und Räumen befasst und dabei ein Ritual als Beispiel für gemeinsame Identitäten und Verschiedenheiten verwendet. Ein griechischer Kaffee ist ein türkischer Kaffee, ein palästinensischer, ägyptischer, libanesischer, bosnischer, armenischer, zyprischer, kurdischer. Etwas feiner oder etwas gröber gemahlen, in einer Tasse mit oder ohne Henkel, mit Kardamom oder ohne, mit Zucker oder ohne. Bei unseren Treffen bereiten wir diesen Kaffee mit den vielfältigen „Eigenheiten“ zu und servieren ihn, während wir über schriftliche und mündliche Überlieferungen und Praktiken rund um das Getränk diskutieren. Ausgehend von der äthiopischen Kaffeebeere, die sich mit dem Osmanischen Reich verbreitete, über die Bohne, die im östlichen Mittelmeerraum, in Nordafrika und auf dem Balkan nach wie vor stark vertreten ist, bis hin zum Pulver, das aufgeschäumt wird, und seinen lokalen Variationen, werden wir über andere Reiche, Sklaverei, Frachtschiffe, Plantagen, Unternehmen und Vereinigungen/Bedeutungen/Rollen/Ursprünge des Kaffeehandels und -konsums in unserem Alltag sprechen. Da diese Art von Kaffee traditionell auch bei Gedenkfeiern serviert wird, werden wir unweigerlich über Verlust und Trauer sprechen. Wir werden auch über die Beziehung zur Zukunft durch Tasseografie (Wahrsagen aus dem Kaffesatzlesen) sprechen, die eine weitere starke Tradition ist. Wir werden uns mit erkenntnistheoretischen Effekten befassen, mit der Art und Weise, wie wir Wahrheit und Bedeutung konstruieren, und mit der Art und Weise, wie wir mit zufälligen Mustern arbeiten. Schliesslich werden wir üben, nach den Versammlungen aufzuräumen. Durch das Teilen und das Rotieren der Rollen werden wir Rituale der Zusammengehörigkeit und Empathie praktizieren und mit Kaffee und miteinander über die Ursprünge und die Zukunft von ansonsten unauffälligen Dingen in unserem täglichen Leben nachdenken.

Heidi Hanninen, Academy of Fine Arts / Uniarts Helsinki, 5th year Doctoral student Artistic research: KAS! Kontula Art School – socially engaged public art Possibilities of the community art in culturally diverse contexts In this photo gallery you can take a look inside to KAS! Kontula Art School's socially engaged public art practice through the last artistic part of the artistic research by community artist-researcher Heidi Hänninen. "Kaupunki on meidän koti" ("City is our home") art work includes paintings from 36 KAS community members implemented for the renovated metro station in Kontula suburb. Both sides of the walls by the metro rails were covered by art: other side with the paintings by 18 adults from KAS collective and the other side by KAS Juniors (age 8-19 years). Juniors paintings include word HOME in 29 different languages locally spoken at homes and by friends and relatives of these kids and youngsters involved. Some of the languages are such that our juniors would like to know better or are already learning. In my artistic research initiated in 2021 I focuse on questions about ethically sensitive community art practice in the context of my ongoing project called KAS! Kontula Art School, socially engaged street art project, that I started in 2019 in suburban district Kontula in Eastern Helsinki. The aim of The Kontula Art School is to implement interesting public art but also to strengthen the community spirit and contribute to reducing potential conflicts in the region. Kontula is one of the most vivid, multilingual and culturally rich suburbs in Finland with the income level lower than the average. Kontula has been well known, especially among the media, for drugs used and sold around the shopping mall. The area is conflict sensitive and challenging but also a ground for experimenting new kinds of social / artistic realities and for the birth of communal practices far from the conventional borders and definitions. KAS! project has been cooperating with the local low threshold day center Symppis, where many of the customers have dual diagnosis (issues with both substance use and mental health). The participants of highly heterogeneous Kontula Art School consists of both adults and children. Participants represent various cultures, including substance use cultures. Some of the participants have educational background in arts but majority of them have been self taught. KAS! project has been involving artistically motivated people, regardless of their background, status or the life situation. Through the art making process I have had access to build ethically sensitive methodological toolkit for community art practices in culturally diverse contexts in a changing urban environment like Kontula, where understanding about good life varies greatly between its residents. Art creates possibilities for encountering and helps to break stigmas concerning certain groups of people. From the point of view of “Rebellious Research” (Ryynanen & Suoranta 2016) the world of art has crucial role in the process of fostering wellbeing of people and the justice in our shared society; art can reconstruct thinking and sometimes even the whole life of an individual. The key element in activist art is the act of participating, and questions like how people take part of the process and how does the act of process participates politically arise. (Suoranta & Ryynanen 2016, p. 235) In my study (street) art practice is the method of working and collecting research material (socially engaged art making practice and ready artworks in the public environment) but it is also an intervention for the (social) change. Through this research I suggest that socially engaged art interventions similar to KAS practice can empower both, the authors of the public art works and the whole surrounding community in a unique way, especially when used through the heterogeneous group context. KAS! practice is bringing up critical perspective concerning issues about public art and artistic experience of the urban environment by creating new directions to debate questions related to the community art, artistry, and the nature and possibilities of art itself in this changing world among those new realities that we share and shape together to be lived in. text: Heidi Hänninen (2025) photos: Tanguy Gérôme (2025)

The thesis “Sexy Rooms: Spaces That Seduce - Depictions of Sexual Identity through Spatial Design” explores the visual language of spaces of sexual encounter and the underlying conditioning behind how they depict sexual identity. Beginning with an examination of the webcam modeling industry as a catalyst, the research delves into the realm of digital sex work and the voyeuristic tendencies that define contemporary society. It investigates the role of the backdrop space while touching upon the tension between intimate and exposed, performance and authenticity. The study extends beyond the digital sphere, tracing connections with the origins of reality TV, representations of gendered spaces in film and photography, and the historical example of the boudoir.

This exposition presents a practice-based research project that reimagines electronic music performance through the participatory and ritualistic ethos of Capoeira. Initially motivated by a critique of audience passivity in contemporary electronic performance, the project shifted from “translating” Capoeira into an electronic context toward constructing ritual-based frameworks that foster shared authorship, presence, and collective agency. The research unfolded through iterative processes of design, testing, and reflection. Early on, ritual was established as a conceptual foundation, situating the work within debates on participation, spectacle, and cultural belonging. Subsequent phases explored instrument-making as both technical and symbolic practice, producing DIY electroacoustic objects (Lua and Mar) that embody accessibility, agency, and transparency. Attention then turned to orchestrating the ritual performance itself, experimenting with spatial, temporal, and sensory structures that redistribute power and unsettle the artist–audience divide. The process culminated in a public performance integrating instruments, structure, and reflection, while raising new questions around documentation, belonging, and the fragility of agency. From these iterations emerged the framework of ritual as multi-dimensional architecture: a compositional and perceptual field where time, space, materials, and social dynamics interweave to sustain collective creativity. The exposition combines documentation of instruments and performances with reflective writing, offering both a record of process and a proposition for future development.

Home page of the Journal of Sonic Studies

A Museum of Breath: Designing Spaces for Attention, Not Spectacle proposes an alternative architectural and curatorial ethic for contemporary museums in an era increasingly governed by speed, spectacle, and attention economies. Departing from the dominant model of the museum as a site of circulation, visual consumption, and algorithmic visibility, the essay advances the concept of the Museum of Breath—an institution designed not to display objects efficiently, but to protect and cultivate human attention as an ethical resource. Drawing on architectural phenomenology, aesthetic philosophy, and sacred spatial traditions, the essay argues that attention is not merely perceptual but moral: to attend fully is to suspend ego, resist extraction, and honor presence. Museums, once spaces of reverence and contemplation, have gradually adopted architectures optimized for movement, accumulation, and self-documentation. This shift, the essay contends, is not accidental but infrastructural, embedded in circulation patterns, lighting regimes, material choices, and curatorial metrics that privilege velocity over duration. The Museum of Breath is proposed as a counter-model. Its design principles emphasize subtraction, stillness, and respiratory rhythm. Architecture is treated as a living system—one that expands and contracts, modulates light and air, and guides the visitor’s pace through compression and release. Influenced by the work of architects such as Tadao Ando, Peter Zumthor, and Louis Kahn, as well as artists including Agnes Martin, Marina Abramović, and Eija-Liisa Ahtila, the essay situates breathing as both a physiological and aesthetic organizing principle. Curation within this framework becomes an ethics of restraint. The curator is reimagined as a custodian of attention rather than a manager of content, responsible for creating conditions of duration, silence, and perceptual humility. The essay further critiques the market logic that renders spectacle measurable and stillness invisible, proposing alternative evaluative values grounded in slowness, absence, and unrecordable experience. Rather than offering a finalized architectural blueprint, A Museum of Breath presents a speculative yet rigorous proposal for rethinking museum design, curatorial practice, and institutional purpose. It invites architects, curators, and theorists to reconsider the museum not as a theatre of objects, but as a sanctuary for presence—one that restores the human pulse in spaces increasingly designed to exhaust it. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and _Art as Truth: A Treatise_ (Q136329071), _Aesthetic Recursion Theory_ (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881),Interpretive Load Index (ILI) (Q137709526), Viewer Displacement Ratio (VDR) (Q137709583) , Ethical Proximity Score (EPS) (Q137709600) , Institutional Alignment Indicator (IAI) (Q137709608), Post-Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Q137711946) Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen.