Research Catalogue

This artistic research project explores how Afro-Emirati slavery memory can be engaged through the body as a parallel archive in the Arabian Peninsula. In the region, history has largely been shaped through written narratives connected to institutional authority and nation-building. Within this framework, histories related to Indian Ocean slavery, are not fully articulated in public discourse. The project examines how embodied practices have carried memory across generations, instead of attempting to correct the known written history. It asks: What happens when ritual, movement, and inter-generational gestures are recognized as parallel forms of historical process ? Through video installation, recorded performances, and oral documentation, I examine Afro-Emirati practices such as Liwa dance and domestic ceremonial rituals as embodied archives. These forms transmit history through rhythm, repetition, and gesture, operating alongside textual historiography rather than in opposition to it. While grounded in Afro-Emirati experience, the project reflects more broadly on how history might be approached beyond event-based narration. It proposes a shift from understanding history solely as recorded information toward recognizing it as lived and transmitted knowledge. Artistic research becomes a space for acknowledging the endurance of embodied memory within complex social and political contexts.

This exposition documents my explorations of pondering with pine trees. Tämä ekspositio dokumentoi yritykseni miettiä mäntyjen kanssa. Den här ekspositionen dokumenterar mina försök att fundera med furor.

Armstrong's practice based PhD is a cyborg-feminist study of the forms of knowledge which operate within technoscientific research ecosystems. Adopting an agential realist framework, it observes the ways in which forms of knowledge come into being through the collective imaginaries they are informed by. Situated in CONNECT, Taighde Éireann’s Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications, this project takes a hybrid, transdisciplinary approach, blending creative practice with critical theory from the field of science and technology studies. Sheila Jasanoff’s analytical concept of the sociotechnical imaginary refers to visions of the future moulded by technological trajectories. Via auto-ethnographic engagement with researchers working in the field of Quantum Communications, Armstrong accesses the sociotechnical imaginaries in operation in CONNECT’s quantum-based research network. Using Jasanoff’s co-productionist framework, the project is rooted in an understanding of the entangled and mutually constitutive ordering of scientific knowledge and social order. Through an interview process that draws upon technopaganism, a movement that binds esoteric practices to the digital means, Armstrong taps into her research subjects’ visions and sensibilities towards the world of quantum physics. The practice based aspect of this PhD harnesses para-fictioning, world-building and speculative fiction to build a hybrid multimedia installation that pursues the quantum imaginary. Parafictioning is a process through which fact and fiction are set against each other, their boundaries blurred, both foregrounded as knowledge. This project reinstates othered forms of knowledge that classically operate outside of the technoscientific paradigm; forms of knowledge that rely on instinct, intuition, feeling, belief, imagination and a sense of immanence.

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.

Below in English Ekspositio pyrkii vastaamaan tarpeeseen uudistavan kasvatuksen (regenerative education) tavoitteissa taiteilijapedagogisesta lähtökohdasta. Ekspositio pohjautuu paikkasidonnaiseen interventioon ja kuvailee taiteilijapedagogisen oppimisprosessin. Ekspositio tunnustelee taiteilijapedagogiikan suhdetta ekologisiin kysymyksiin kestävyysajatteluun sitoutuneen taiteilijapraktiikan ja taidepedagogian solmukohdassa. Kirjoittaja arvioi vahvan kestävyyden käsitteen avulla, millaisia ristiriitoja kestävyysajattelun ja oman praktiikan välille ilmaantuu interventioprosessin aikana, ja millaiset olosuhteet johtavat konflikteihin. Ekspositio tarkastelee aihetta ”myötäsyntyisen” metodin avulla yhdistäen taiteellista, agroekologista ja posthumanistista tutkimusta poikkitieteisesti. Päälöydöksenä on, että uudistavan kasvatuksen tavoitteet sotkeutuvat yhteiskunnan odotuksiin, päämääriin ja moraalikäsityksiin. Tämä johtaa neuvotteluun kestävyysajatteluun sitoutuneen taiteilijapraktiikan arvoissa suhteessa taiteilijapedagogiseen toimintaan. Kirjoittaja väittää, että taiteellisessa työssä ei ole erivapautta toimia ekologisesti kestämättömällä tavalla, koska taide on yhtä riippuvaista ekologisista suhteista kuin muukin elo. Hän väittää, että vahvan kestävyyden käsitteeseen sitoutumalla on mahdollista perustaa uusia arvostamisen paikkoja ja kehittää uudistavaa pedagogiikkaa. The exposition aims to meet the need for the aspiration of regenerative education from an artist pedagogical practice. The exposition is based on a place-specific intervention and outlines the artist pedagogical learning process. The exposition explores the relationship of artist pedagogy to ecological issues. Exploration happens at the intersection of artist practice committed to sustainability thinking and art pedagogy. Reflecting the concept of strong sustainability, the author assesses what kind of contradictions between sustainability thinking and one’s own practice emerge, and what kind of circumstances lead to conflicts. The exposition takes place with “innate” method, combining artistic, agroecological and posthumanist research in an interdisciplinary manner. The main finding is that the goals of regenerative education are entangled with the expectations, goals and moral concepts of society. This accompanies a negotiation of the values of artist practice committed to sustainability thinking. Negotiation takes place in relation to artist pedagogical activity. The author argues that there is no waiver to act in an ecologically unsustainable manner in art practice, because art is as dependent on ecological relationships as any other concept of life. She argues that by committing to a concept of strong sustainability, it is possible to establish new places of appreciation and develop innovative pedagogies.

Duodji refers to Sámi handicrafts and design. I reflect on the knowledge base of duodji thinking, how duodji is learned within the community, and how I have developed the teaching and research of duodji according to the principles of duodji and art. I also contemplate the essence and presentation of duodji in public spaces through the pedagogical-artistic practice, LaavuStudio."