The Research Catalogue (RC) is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research provided by the Society for Artistic Research. The RC is free to use for artists and researchers. It serves also as a backbone for teaching purposes, student assessment, peer review workflows and research funding administration. It strives to be an open space for experimentation and exchange.

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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). (2026) 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).
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Debris (Enlightenment Panel no 2) (2026) Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Sculpted and painted wood, combined with treated rusty objects. Duct tape with boat paint models for metal sheet sculptures, 2020. Digital drawings, 2021, 2023. Dutch steel sailing boat part-restoration and renovation, Amsterdam (with Sean A. Hladkyj), 2019 until summer 2020. I exposed relief and improvised sculptures made with industrial paints, as well as found objects, to weather conditions, including heavy rain and wind, over a few months on a floating timber raft. Working with the changes the weather was causing to the ad hoc studio, I made changes until the painting was finished, photographed, then dumped. Someone collected the relief. I applied the colours from those available in a symbolic manner, abstracting the view of a ghetto in a large city. The objects stand for the landmarks. The pieces would comprise of the scenography for a theatre performance, informed by my conversations with a theatre lighting technician. The performance would also include a donation event of the art objects. See external link for the theatre play, based on the tradition of the philosophical dialogue and employing the idea of performing philosophy to make it accessible to a wider audience. Political asylum has been traditionally offered to people who flee from their countries of origin and citizenship, because of violations of their dignity, which is a human right, and other basic human rights, such as safety and liberty, due to their political beliefs and related activities, if any. Currently, seven human rights of mine, five basic, have been infringed in the United Kingdom, where I have been a citizen since 2011; the origin is my native Greece. Political asylum is only offered to people, who are non-citizens of the country where asylum is sought from. At the same time, political asylum has become harder to offer, due to the global nature of persecution of whoever is perceived as a dissident by authoritarians. Since 2020, Forza Nuova, the Italian affiliate of the Greek Golden Dawn, with contacts in the Middle East, specifically Hezbollah, has participated in the organised international criminal case, of which I have been the target, originating from my native Greece, "accelerating" in the Netherlands and the UK in 2020, Covid-19. This happened with the theft of my personal details, specifically my Greek driver's license number, by Italians, in Amsterdam, in the winter of 2020. My number was used on four fake Italian driver's licenses,in my name known as (aka), for criminal activity in the UK. My name known as (aka) was also used on four fake Italian passports for fictitious female Albanian citizens, succeeding two fake Albanian and a fake Kosovo passports for three of the four Greek teenage users, with different details than the fake Italian ones, which three of the four teenagers had: the youngest one, also had another fake Albanian, preceding the fake Kosovo, again with different details than the other fakes she had. A deceased Belgian filmmaker's, Chantal Akerman's, life and health insurance was falsified by the use of the two fake Albanian passports in 2018 and extended with the fake Kosovo, for the youngest, in 2019. Forza Nuova is suspected of being connected to two abductions: one domestic of an Italian citizen circa 2020 and one in Holland of a Spanish citizen circa 2022. Notably, Roberto Fiore, Forza Nuova's neo-fascist leader, inherited briefly Alessandra Mussolini's post in the EU parliament. All the more so, after mediation with the Albanian government, the Italian government settled in the autumn of 2024 one remaining fake Italian passport for a fictitious Albanian citizen, probably in connection with Golden Dawn, who had their own three MPs in the EU parliament. Rumours have it that Fiore was once upon a time an MI6 agent. It is confirmed that he has ties with the British National Party (BNP), the British XRW component. Italian Jews, including Greco-Italian Jews, were persecuted by the Catholics and almost exterminated in the late nineteenth century. My great grandfather, from my father's side, with the first name Gianni, went to my native Greece, from the North of Italy, around that time, He became Hellenicised and adopted the Greek Orthodox religion. We don't know his surname. The Jews is the archetypical diasporic population historically speaking. The Holocaust and the Slavery past are the black marks of modern historical times. Drawing on the philosophical notion of impossible objects, the works attempted an indirect postcolonial critique: a suggestion for alternative, autonomous and communitarian lifestyles; and a performative metaphor for global refugees of all kinds. At the time, in autumn 2019, I had attended an environmental protest in Amsterdam that was generally peaceful. Investigatory research with artworks, some of it carried out in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I was a philosophy student, from 2017 until late 2019, and remained until the beginning of autumn 2020. I did not have student insurance, as it was obligatory, because I was covered by the NHS through EHIC (European Community coverage), while the UK was still in the EU. I didn't have travel insurance either. Dutch travel insurance, under the reference number E111, was opened by unknowns on my behalf in the summer of 2020, to cover the expenses of routine women's healthcare and family planning tests, but was closed as fraudulent after I reported to the Dutch fraud authority that I didn't open it myself; neither I had any knowledge about who might have done that. The exposition also showcases and juxtaposes a performative video, drawings and other visual art, by "Mohammed", aka 'Onzedouze', an investigator, who turned his hand to art, in order to record and communicate, in an improvised, codified , but still artistic manner, what was of interest to him with regards to a relevant investigation. The title "Enlightenment Panel" comes from Peter Sloterdijk's 'Critique of Cynical Reason', published in 1983, which critically discusses philosophical and popular cynicism. See exposition, also in connection with expositions under 'Art and Activism Exposed as Research Blog'.
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The Loot (2026) Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Islington studio flat 4, at 14 Barnsbury Road, London, 2022, privately rented. Interior design and styling, as art installation. Looted, 2024. Investigatory research with artworks, 2023-24. Interactive research blog. The exposition aims to highlight the role of women within an interwoven narrative about a complex and international criminal case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(magazine) My personal belongings were still at the property for two months, after I left on 27 March 2024 and was asked to collect them by 3 or 4 April from Woolwich. After I left, the landlords moved in two or three under aged, who I have never met, so that they pretend to be my daughters. Subsequently, they must have been 'removing' them one by one over the last few months and until October 2024. The company behind 14 Barnsbury Road was deemed illegal through the courts, on 22 April, 2024, shortly after I was forced to leave at the end of March. The maintenance employed many Polish citizens, all dressed in black with black caps, adopting the XRW supporters' fashion code. The household of tenants was mixed and multicultural, but mainly British natives, with the exception of a couple from Hong-Kong, an American citizen, and myself, a naturalised British citizen, originally from Greece. Twenty-two (22) and twenty-three (23) photographs, including two (2) plus one (1) of myself: NOT a missing person, from the 2022-2023 period in the eventually looted, in spring 2024, Islington studio. Twenty-five (25) missing persons for twenty-five (25) non-EU and EU fake passports with my family's Greek surname; plus one (1) that might also be connected with a missing Greek teenager, therefore twenty-six (26). Two (2) more missing persons for two (2) more fake passports without my family's surname: an Italian and a Romanian name. Two (2), plus one (1) targeted cultural producers: the anti-fascist Greek musician, Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P. (domestic); the Belgian filmmaker of Jewish origins, Chantal Akerman (global), who lived and worked in France, as well as the US, and whose personal details, specifically her life insurance policy and her medical file, got stolen in connection with the case, can be added to the toll of two (2) deceased. My personal details, name known as and artistic name, as well as numbers connected to my personal details, were stolen, too, while I (post-global) was targeted as a cultural producer, an artist and former academic. Was I going to be the third victim? Golden Dawn were originally pagans, drawing from the ancient Greek mythology and ritualistic practices, including human sacrifice. The visual imagery and the art included in the photographs is influenced by the marketing and advertising industry; I brushed shoulders briefly with students in the creative industries teaching at the Winchester School of Art. I used this an ironic commentary on Golden Dawn trying unsuccessfully to create a brand through propaganda, not political marketing. The art world has been traditionally male-dominated. This has not changed dramatically in contemporary art. Female artists have sometimes adopted male attitudes, or personas, to break into the art scene; see Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin from the YBA movement. I hold the view that art is not gendered, that there is no art for women or so-called women's art. Good art transcends such categories, tapping into more universal experiences. Saying this, I would like to quote Nancy Spero, who doesn't crudely distinguish between male and female art, as follows:"What if the default gender for 'artist' were female? What if, when we looked at a work by a woman, we said to ourselves, "That is art," and when we looked at a work by a man, we automatically identified it in our minds as 'men's art'?" In 1999, I wrote a long essay about the architectural uncanny, which I submitted as my graduation thesis for my first MA in architectural theory. I called it "Space as a 'Bad' Object: A criminal investigation on the notion of space". I got inspiration from detective novels and real-life crime stories. The long essay was about the role of architectural space in crime. It was unsupervised until submission: I received a distinction by a Bartlett staff member. I took the digital photographs in conceptual adherence with that essay. I was a postgraduate philosophy student 9/2017-11/2019 at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. In this exposition, I include new photographs from a series of digital photography called "Forensics", taken with my mobile phone, after I was forced to leave the Islington property I was renting, on 27 March 2024. I gave the photography series that name, because it has served the purpose of investigating, recording and tracking a crime, for which architectural space, such as private rentals, has been used. For Chris, my former neighbour, who was suddenly transferred by his employer, from London, where his daughter lives, to somewhere outside of London; and for Lawrence, a second generation immigrant from Nigeria, whose temporary post was prematurely terminated, though he was planning to return to his legal studies. And for Ali. And for Oliver, also my former neighbour. In memory of Howard, also a tenant at Bellview, and former neighbour. To all those who don't just "play" the cultural and racial diversity clause; they don't just rely on identitarian politics, because the class problem has not been resolved for them, either; but also because generalising on identity (for instance religion, race, gender) is an unsophisticated way of preventing strategic and/or tactical alliances, necessary for protecting the rights of minorities or other underprivileged groups and populations. Saying this, the UK must stand up against racism, especially against people of African descent. Special thanks to two white British men, who worked in France ("Fiennes") and Spain ("Clooney"). A Nigerian was among the Golden Dawn victims of assassination in Greece. I was listening frequently to Massive Attack, a British trip-hop band, when I was living in Islington. Sophie Calle is a French writer and photographer, working on themes of identity, intimacy and everyday existence. Her work is partly inspired by the detective fiction genre. She wrote an art book, to accompany some of her photography, called "Double Game", inspired by her written correspondence with the fiction writer Paul Auster.
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Before Meaning, Measure - Pythagoras, Proportion, and the Ethics of Post-Interpretive Witness (2025) Dorian Vale
This essay situates Post-Interpretive Criticism within the philosophical lineage of Pythagorean thought, arguing that both traditions uphold alignment, not interpretation, as the rightful posture toward truth. Drawing from the procedural structure of the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium), the essay proposes a framework wherein aesthetic experience is not produced by commentary but preserved through restraint, ratio, and spatial ethics. The critic, like the Pythagorean listener, is not a performer of insight but a tuning instrument for fidelity. Geometry here is not symbolic but disciplinary. Harmony is not decoration but evidence of structural truth. Against the inflation of language in contemporary criticism, the essay defends the doctrine of restraint, articulated in the Post-Interpretive Lexicon as the ethical refusal to speak first, to dominate with explanation, or to distort the interval between viewer and work . By reanimating ancient principles of proportion, breath, and silent recognition, it positions criticism not as a pursuit of meaning but as a form of fidelity to what already holds its law. Using examples from art, music, architecture, and mathematics, the essay formalizes the alignment-based criteria for valid aesthetic response. These include grammatical clarity, logical coherence, rhetorical proportion, and quadrivial discipline, culminating in a methodologically grounded alternative to contemporary interpretive excess. Where most criticism seeks to explain the work, Post-Interpretive Criticism seeks to stand before it correctly. The work is not a message to decode, but a geometry to hold. The critic’s task is not verbal performance but spatial obedience. Truth, in this essay, is redefined not as insight delivered, but as harmony preserved. 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)
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Accompanying Public Amateurs and Ignorant Generalists: Propositions for (Experimental) Pedagogical Approaches to PhD in Art and Scientific-Artistic Projects (2025) Ruth Anderwald, Leonhard Grond
Based on our experience conducting our own independent artistic-scientific and practice-based research projects and the experiences made over the last years leading the Doctoral Programme for Artistic Research at the University of Applied Arts and now working at ARC Artistic Research Center and their Doctor Artium programme, at mdw University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, we propose new and unconventional approaches to supervising and supporting doctoral artistic research work, whether their focus is more practice-based, theory-oriented or artistic-scientific. Design approaches, such as the pooling of supervision and strategically introducing moments of epistemic decompression, can support projects as well as candidates in a more sustainable and pluri-vocal manner, ultimately leading to the artist-researchers’ long-term independence, transcultural versatility and well-being. Reflexivity, methodology, and (somatic) learning theory are key points, as well as defining and conceptualising possibilities for supporting and supervising a line of work, which is directed into the unknown, unknowable, and uncertain, or located within limit-experiences.
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You, Me, the Lakes and the Storm Water Drain (2025) Naomi Zouwer, Affrica Taylor
This exposition charts a creative collaboration between two humans, two lakes and a stormwater drain. By thinking with water as archive and unknowability, making art with the water-bodies of significance to them, and drawing upon the thoughts of key scholars and Indigenous artists, the authors explore questions of ancestry, memory, belonging, and ecological recuperation. Throughout this process, they reflect upon and dialogue about the pedagogical implications of their creative collaboration, undertaken at the intersection of new-materialist arts and common worlds environmental education.
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