Research Catalogue

Cylinders and discs recorded

This artistic research exposition serves as a virtual presentation of the sound art installation, 'Welcome Children (Stay Small)', on view at 'The WaveCave: An Experimental Sound Space' at California Institute of the Arts within the Herb Alpert School of Music from September 14 - 20, 2025. Works: Welcome Children Color video with sound 14 minutes 19 seconds (loop) 2025 Stay Small Color video with sound 3 minutes (loop) 2025 Artist Statement: Welcome Children (Stay Small) is a multimedia installation exploring a series of manipulated Google Search images of diverse children, which are juxtaposed with moving images of a children’s night lamp. The images are concurrent with drones and reverberated audio samples, which sonically collide. Through the symbolism that sound and image provide, this installation highlights the inevitable reality of children losing their innocence in an imperfect world and the longing of so many of us to protect them from the harm of life and adulthood. Welcome Children (Stay Small) was inspired by the song “Stay Small” by former North American post-rock band, The Receiving End of Sirens, and the New Testament theological essay, “Jesus Loves the Little Children: A Theological Reading of Mark 9:14-29 for Children with Serious Illnesses or Disabilities and Their Caregivers”, written by Dr. Melanie Howard. It is important to note that from 2004 - 2018, I worked with children as a music teacher and Christian educator. I dedicate Welcome Children (Stay Small) to those who also work with children and seek to help them become resilient in the face of life’s pain and ambiguities.

Raschx is a series of mutational performances based upon two fundamental materials: Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op. 16 (1838), and Roland Barthes essays on the music of Schumann, particularly focusing on ‘Rasch’ (1979), a text exclusively dedicated to Schumann’s Kreisleriana. To these materials other components may be added for every single particular version: visual elements (pictures, videos), other texts, or further aural elements (recordings or live-electronics). The main goal is to generate an intricate network of aesthetic-epistemic cross-references, through which the listener has the freedom to focus on different layers of perception: be it on the music, on the texts being projected or read, on the images, or on the voices. Situated beyond ‘interpretation’, ‘hermeneutics’, and ‘aesthetics’ the series Raschx is part of a wider research on what might be labelled as experimental performance practices—practices that productively deviate from conventional (repetitive) performative strategies and that lend the audience to think during the performative moment, transforming familiar artistic objects into objects for thought.

A collection of research stories from the Beyond e-Textiles project 2021-2025. Editors: Jaana Vapaavuori, Aalto University Anne Louise Bang, VIA University College Delia Dumitrescu, University of Borås Ragna Bjarnadóttir, Iceland University of the Arts Kati Miettunen, University of Turku

This Exposition contains an archived version of the project website of the EU funded Erasmus+ Project 'Curating in Context’. Curating in Context addresses the challenges of curating contemporary art beyond curatorial approaches inherited from the visual arts. Tanzfabrik Berlin, Lokomotiva Skopje, Stockholm University of the Arts, and the University of Zagreb co-organised the two-year EU funded Erasmus+ project. It aims to enhance curatorial training focused on social impact by engaging local, regional, and international stakeholders, including cultural organisations. The project uses strategies from the performing arts to develop educational resources for universities and ongoing training for cultural workers and citizens. It fosters critical reflection on socio-political and economic contexts and promotes curatorial methods that connect performing arts with activism and social movements. The project's meetings, public events, and resources will emphasise collaborative learning between politics and art valorisation.

This artistic research project in Performing Arts SKH Stockholm University of Arts documents my transition from fine arts into a performative practice. I am focusing on developing a personal toolkit of methods that support this shift to a facilitator and a director/theatre-maker. The first part is my individual exploration that includes methods such as: creating character from image, writing with objects, and working with a real site in developing a semi-fictional space (exploring site-specificity through my observations and video documentation of Riga’s specific environment). The second part is a collaboration with two artists, Ģirts Dubults and Laine Luīze Freidenberga. We use a devised process concept,Sister Planets, to translate our embodied cultural experiences and identities into performative language. This method emphasises building shared poetics through methods of generating shared poems, visualisation, movement with objects, and integrating methods from the collaborators’ individual practices. Alongside methodological development, a strong interest in my identity as a maker emerged, deeply influencing my artistic inquiry. This stiltedness—as a young female artist from Latvia and Eastern Europe—shapes the themes of belonging and alienation in the Scandinavian cultural context and intersectionality in my work. I investigate how cultural, gendered, and geopolitical factors inform performance and dramaturgy. These personal reflections have evolved into shared thematic concerns within my collaborations, where individual histories and embodied memories merge into a collective exploration. Through this research, I seek new dramaturgical forms that channel socio-political narratives within primarily visual and poetic means of expression.