Research Catalogue

Is there a method to die?

 In the spring of 2009, I attended a course in aesthetic-based qualitative research at Stockholm University. My mother was becoming very weak at the time. As I set out to write on method and methodology within the course, she had to go to hospital for some days during which I kept her company as much as I could. Tests didn't prove anything wrong with her though, and she was sent back home. When she was lifted from the stretcher and gently put her back in her own bed by the transport team, she looked around her and smiled. From the well-known paintings on her walls and the books in her bookshelves, she turned her attention to at me. Still smiling, she looked into my eyes, saying: "And now begins a new and exciting phase in our lives."

Less than a month later, she deceased. 

 The day after her death, I took one of her carpets on the back of my bike and went to the shore of a lake to clean it, the way she used to do it when I was a child. Out of this situation, the question emerged. Absurd though it seemed, it echoed through my further reading, listening and thinking.

This study sets out from an artistic workshop designed to investigate light, colour and spatiality. During the original event, a number of participants joined to collaborate by means of painting, dialogue and movement. From a presentation of the workshop (as determined in time and space), the text argues that the character of an artwork is essentially unfinished; an ongoing ”truth process”. Adopting lines of reasoning from philosophers Vilém Flusser and Theodor Adorno, I gain a first understanding of how the artwork could be reconstituted within the limits of a scientific essay. Once more turning to the workshop's course of events, I find experiences within the actual situation relating to abstract concepts such as ”spirit”, ”quality” and ”freedom”. Next, the text pays heed to Ludwig Wittgenstein's observation that human knowledge is gained and mediated by language-games of various kinds. The selected concepts are consequently tried out in expanded ”studio talks”, involving artists from different fields such as painter Matts Leiderstam, writer Robert Pirsig and sculptor Joseph Beuys. The operation allows me to single out some specific conditions pertaining to artistic dialogue, from which I seek transitions to philosophical discourse. The text briefly reviews three contemporary, art-based projects offering such discursive exchange: haptiska blickar, Thinking Through Painting and Freikörperkultur. Against this backdrop, I seek to articulate an understanding of knowledge-making which embraces artistically as well as philosophically grounded practises. I find support from philosophers John Dewey and Hans Larsson – Dewey characterizing the esthetic and intellectual faculties as complementary movements within the human mind, and Larsson propounding intuition as the unifying and superior form of thinking. Assenting to their views, I conclusively suggest methodical introspection as another field for discursive interchange between art and science.

Development of Curatorial Guidelines for the Transart Residency Exhibition at London's Borough Road Gallery in July 2025. The Anthologies Assembly, London 2025, extends a call for proposals for a vibrant, student-guided convergence of research inquiry and creative exploration. Building upon the inaugural assembly, participants are encouraged to embrace "research-based creative practice" as a means of knowledge generation where diverse disciplines intersect and boundaries blur. We welcome proposals that illuminate PhD research, including nascent "works-in-progress," emphasizing the value of ongoing inquiry. Guided by student feedback expressing both a desire for grounding in practice and community as well as exceptional moments that inspire, we aim to create spaces for genuine encounters and shared learning, where participants leave with lasting impressions on research and creative endeavors that continue to spark curiosity throughout the year. Our curatorial framework centers on the concept of investigation, as both a rigorous pursuit and an introspective exploration. Drawing from its etymological roots, we conceive of investigation as a tracing towards something no longer present—a turning-towards truths hidden or lost in time; and a nuanced examination of practices, be they social, political, or personal.

As part of the 'Borderline Physical' PHD Project and the "Spirits in Complexity" PEEK Project, this iteration investigates the auditory landscape of a specific fridge in a specific café in Vienna, Austria. The fridge is captured into a physically informed model, recreating its surprisingly complex sound emissions. This model is presented as an installation on-site, next to the fridge whose current working status is unknown (it was broken recently). At the SAR the model is treated as a musical instrument and freely used in complete disregard of physical constraints, leading up to a musical performance that explores a different form of artistic exploration of our sonic environment.

The theoretical wisdom of the Epic theater derives from the conceptual perspective of Bertolt Brecht toward communication and performing arts in "Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat" (1932). Brecht's version of the radio reminds the participatory politics in the internet, which he later theorizes for theatre-qua-critique of the aristotelian drama of binding the spectator to the fiction ideologically, in the vicious cycles of pre- learned codes, the traditional and phony wisdoms of clans and classes, where the mere potential for change is to turn into a "petit bourgeois".

Résumé: Cet article est un détour cognitif-psychanalytique autour des théories, hypothèses et des revendications cognitives, des idéologies, et des leurs conventions ou réfutations. Bien qu’il soit davantage rencontré dans les sciences humaines, la mode de structuration des événements, des happenings, est également un concept significatif dans les sciences cognitives. Les sciences cognitives conçoivent les fictions des realite faire des données du sens commun et postulats qui décident des problèmes dans leur conditionnement même. Sans doute apparaît-il d’emblée que les cadres dans lesquels les sciences humaines classent les phénomènes en sensations, perceptions, images, croyances, fonctions et travaillés logiques, jugements, etc., sont empruntés comme tels au travail de siècles de philosophie. Loin d’avoir été forgés pour une conception objective de la réalité humaine, ces cadres ne sont que les produits de la destruction abstraite où se tracent les vicissitudes d’un effort spécifique, qui pousse l’homme à chercher la confiance, la vérité, la conscience de soi et l’univers. Une confiance qui est transcendante dans sa position, et qui le reste donc dans la forme, même lorsque le philosophe en nie l'existence. Les tendances à une confiance absolue dans les explications naturalistes des phénomènes culturellement conditionnés exigent une un encadrer l'appropriation cognitive des concepts scientifiques. Dans les chapitres consécutives, ce livre critiques d'appropriations des concepts darwinienne dans les discours libérale détourne le darwinisme scientifique dans l’idée de s’appropriation moins avec ou aux technologies avancées que de les adapter aux valeurs idéologiques libérales croissantes qui elles- mêmes sont devenues plus autoritaires dans leurs règles non écrites d’entrepreneuriat, d’auto-évaluation et de développement individuel, particulièrement l’esprit humaine.