Research Catalogue

Professional Doctorate in Arts + Creative is an educational pilot program in The Netherlands for an advanced degree in universities of applied sciences. The PD program at an university of applied sciences is developed to train an investigative professional. This portal is a platform for publishing artistic research generated by the PD candidates. Within the Professional Doctorate program, this portal will also be used as an internal tool for documentation.

neither fish nor fowl is an act of refusal, witnessing the growth of a NO toward Western industrial design from the point of view of a graduating student. By claiming, “I don’t want to design and produce anymore”, the discipline - known for being a problem-solving and sense-making practice - is called into question. This decision stems from the urgency to pause the relentless capitalist cycle of production and consumption of which design is a part. Consequently, a paradox arises to provoke thought: can we stand still in the midst of constant hyperactivity? The research highlights the process of this growth as the main focus of the project - the negative space normally overlooked in favor of an alluring outcome. It branches out through theoretical studies and an exercise-based practice of unlearning. Concepts such as nothingness, stillness, unproductiveness, un-functionality and no-senseness are explored in a space of co-creation and ongoingness.

'Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation: Toward non-local collaborative art practices' investigates the resonances of concepts from quantum theory in the realm of transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research. Throughout a series of protocols using diffractive methodologies, we intend to translate and embody concepts such as spacetime, entanglement, non-locality, uncertainty, indeterminacy, and superpositionality, and embed them as tools for our artistic practices. These concepts were chosen for their singularity in physics, but also for the ways in which they confront ontoepistemic pillars of ‘Modernity’, such as sequentiality, determinacy and separability. The research is carried out by a transdisciplinary non-local core ensemble formed by Søren Kjærgaard, Amilcar Packer, and Carla Zaccagnini. The cities we inhabit – Copenhagen, Sao Paulo and Malmö – have been our laboratories. Departing from tools and methods learned from each-other's disciplines, we have been creating scores that guide our simultaneous actions while walking on the street –interacting with public spaces and their characteristics– or while lying asleep –in the most private of spheres. On the one hand, in a practice we call ‘non-local walking’, scores conduct our collective experiencing of our cities, involving a diffractive methodology of reading and listening, and the entangled collecting of objects, words and other affections found in the urban terrain. On the other hand, the ‘entangling dream practice’ experiment is an attempt without aiming at success of meeting each other in our dreams. Both investigations are conceived as boundary-crossing transdisciplinary methodologies through which we create a relational, critical consciousness and sensing that stimulates unexpected outcomes, embracing failure. These scored performances have resulted in cartographies, drawings, moving sculptures, audio works and writings. Across these various materializations, unexpected connections, constellations, and coincidences e/merge, unveiling yet unheard polyphonies that give resonance to the urban and mental spaces, as potentized terrains awaiting (re)circuitry, and, as fields of forces that await to be (re)experienced.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 - BA Photography 'Vessels of Home' is a 'Search for Belonging.' As more and more people feel disconnected from the world around them, finding belonging is no longer only a question of physical place, but of creating moments in an imaginative space. These moments of belonging are short-lived, they are hard to grasp and contain in our ever individualizing world. Yet, I believe they can be found and nurtured through conscious acts and rituals. Rowan Moonlion proposes various ways to cultivate moments of belonging, through stories contained in the vessels of Fire, Earth, Water and Air (Le Guin 2020). Firstly, in Fire, regarding human interactions: rejecting patriarchal and capitalist notions of group thinking, by letting go of identity definitions based on difference. Secondly, in Earth, considering nature: returning to our connection to the land, to understand the unifying power of interbeing. Thirdly, in Water, looking within our bodies: searching for sensorial experiences of belonging by making our bodies our homes. Finally, in Air, gazing in our minds and memories, imagining new worlds, holding stories together with our ancestors. Witchcraft and Earth honoring rituals are used as a framework to explain and exemplify the four proposed layers. 'Vessels of Home' combines academic research grounded in queer and feminist theory, conversations with witches and other lived experience stories, poetic reflections taken from Moonlion’s artistic practice, and practical tools like rituals, recipes and affirmations. Together the four layers of belonging and the four types of writing form a unifying whole. Moonlion urges you to connect to your own personal form of belonging, and hopes you will learn to understand the value of trying to live in harmony with all else on this Earth. The elements return again and again in a cyclical manner. The circle of life is ever present.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE) Today, one percent of humanity is displaced and there are twice as many forcibly displaced people than in 2011 when the total was just under 40 million.  Many possible solutions are being given to the extent of providing shelters for migrants in precariousness. Many of these solutions seem to attempt to normalise precarity. But so little attention has been given to the perception the migrants have of that precariousness.   Then how can my response to such phenomena go beyond merely providing shelter to understanding the relationship between displacement and belonging? This research explores new processes towards knowing and claiming territory; it speculates on the domestic environment that may emerge through processes of listening, tracing and drawing together with those living on the front line of precariousness inside refugee camps.   To this extent this research will draw a new way of looking at hospitality as a tool for refugees to gain empowerment in the camps. How would that be for a refugee, to be a host in a hosting country?   

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Photography & Society This thesis is an exploration of escapism, of clashes between the everyday and the sublime, of the concept of stargazing, human connection with stars, escapism and fiction. It is a thinking process behind creating a body of visual photographic work while also an individual set of reflections and arguments around the themes of stargazing, astronomy, photographic representations, darkness, and personal experiences. Through the photographic encounters and meetings with creators of hand-crafted planetariums, planetarium guides, star gazing passionates, amateur and professional astronomers and astrophotographers I follow the theme of stargazing, and through that fascination – the concept of positive escapism. With the use of photographic processes I document, I stage, I manipulate the images. This thesis results from my desire to challenge prominent binary narratives and welcome an act of speculation, of poetry, of reimagining andreclaiming realities.