Research Catalogue

An overview of Elisabeth Belgrano's artistic / performance / research and teaching in higher arts education 2004-ongoing

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. MA Interior Architecture -INSIDE “Lingering in Spaces” explores how architecture and space can shape people’s perception of time and how to create spaces that encourage lingering, slowness, and presence. In a world driven by speed and productivity, contemporary spaces often fail to support deep, meaningful experiences of time. In my research paper, I realized how space and nowadays acceleration affect not only people's time perception but also their health. Through a combination of theoretical research, spatial analysis, and personal observations, I investigated how rhythm, movement, materiality, and sensory engagement can influence our subjective temporal awareness. I found not only the effects space has on people's time perception but also the elements that could reconnect us with the present moment. The project began as a personal fascination with how different spaces affect my experience of time. Observing how time stretches while gazing out of a train window, or compresses in confined urban settings, and how time disappears during flows of rhythmical activities like yoga, I became interested in how architecture could be designed to create a more conscious engagement with time and encourage people to slow down. While sharing my experiences of slowing down, I ask you- when was the last time you lingered?

50 A3 drawings black and coloured markers, including: 3 A3 collages on paper with newspaper cutouts and printed photos. 12 A4 drawings on paper with coloured markers, glued on A3 paper + 1 A3 with black ballpoint pen and markers, glued on A3 paper. 13 A3 drawings on paper with black marker, and red, pale blue, gold, pink and orange markers +1 A3 two-sided. 17 A3 drawings on paper with coloured markers. 1 drawing on sketchbook cover with red nail polish. 1 text drawing on sketchbook cover inside. 1 drawing on sketchbook cover back inside with black, orange and gold markers. 22 A4 drawings with ballpoint pen. 62 pocket sketchbook black marker and ballpoint pen drawings. Some of the above is preparatory work for 4 large prints and 13 paintings. The 12 A4 glued on A3 are preparatory work for a collage on panel. I made the art between 2023-2024, from the perspective of the observer. Most of the research material came out of crime and fraud reports. I started writing the blog afterwards, since the summer of 2024. I adopted the visual vocabulary of the graphic novel, which I partly studied and read a lot about, looking at different graphic artists' work, when I was attending classes at the University of Malmo, Sweden, in 2012, to familiarise myself with elements of game design. Much of this work is, amongst other, about children: how they love, amongst other. I wanted to emphasise that element, by intentionally applying stylistic elements from children's drawings, in a naive and loose architectural composition, using heavily the black marker and stick figures. Adopting this visual approach, I also wanted to evoke a comically sharp, but intimate twist, as commentary, in the British tradition of political satire, to the otherwise dark subject matter. Finally, this artistic style refers to the populist character of actors. The text is written like trip-hop songs: two of the pseudonyms I gave are the artistic names of musicians of colour from the British band "Massive Attack", formed in Bristol. I use heavily popular culture signifiers, names of fictional characters from film, television, music and painting, as reference to actual individuals. Parts of the analysis is inspired by Saul Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's example of mathematical calculation. I used plenty of popular and less popular literary and philosophical references, for the visual art and in the writing. Saul Aaron Kripke was the inventor of the possible worlds philosophical hypothesis, which was seminal for philosophers working in the area of contemporary analytic metaphysics, including the theory of counterparts and the theory of names. He died in 2022. Lauren Berlant was a cultural theorist and gender studies scholar. She died in 2021. The exposition displays loosely and in lay terms vocabulary as rhetorical devices from analytic metaphysics, as well as gender and romance studies; for instance, I use the word "unactualised" to refer to individuals, who are real and concrete, who exist independently of my mind, however they were not "actualised" in my so-called personal life and dating practices: for that, I would have to select them, in order for them to be "instantiated" in my dating. The exposition is underpinned by an underlying neo-Marxist interpretation that, in my view, is relevant not just to economists and political philosophers, but also to people working in different sectors of our modern economies of advanced capitalism, such as banking and cybersecurity. In the style of art, as painting, I was inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat's drawings and paintings, which are laden with input from popular media sources, like jazz music and television, recorded in an automatic and naive drawing manner, turned into abstracted paintings. For "M" ('Ramadan', 'Julien', "Mr X"), Filip ('Philip'), and Brandon ('Magna') - August, September, and October 2024. For "Daddy G" ('Isaac'), 'Eric' ("Her Man"), 'Prudence' ("'Rachel''s Beau", or "Her Man's alter-ego"), 'Moussa', 'Gaetan', 'Mohammed' ('Onzedouze'), 'Hermando', and 'Nesseem' - December 2024, January 2025, May, June, August and September 2025. Four men of colour and seven white men - or, more accurately, four and six, or six and four. Who were also targeted, directly and indirectly. Who are not politicians, except for a current one and a former one, but are doing something political, so they must take good care of what they do. See also exposition "The Loot", under 'Art and Activism Exposed as Research Blog'.

This article provides an overview and analysis of transformations of the Belarusian political soundscape. Based on the author’s archive of audio recordings made in Minsk and other Belarusian cities in 2016-2023, the article analyzes how protesters and the authorities used voices, noises, and music during the major political protests of recent years. The field recordings became the starting points for a further discussion on the multifaceted role of sound, music, and silence in contesting for urban and political space in Belarus. The “loudest” period in the country’s recent history is then put in a wider context of studying the clashing ideologies of the authoritarian regime and the democratic, pro-independence movement. The study of audio materials is accompanied by participant observations, interviews, and an extensive analysis of Belarusian and international media that reveal various sonic practices used by the country’s and its critics. The primary goal of this article is to address the gaps in studies of the contemporary Belarusian political soundscape and independent music scenes.

The Wall Refused to Explain Itself Graffiti and the Ethics of Witness By Dorian Vale What if the wall isn’t asking to be read — but to be witnessed? In this field-shifting essay, Dorian Vale reclaims graffiti as one of the most ethically potent forms of aesthetic witness. Far from being a plea for interpretation, graffiti — in its rawest, uncurated form — is an act of presence without permission, an assertion of self or pain that demands neither explanation nor approval. Graffiti has often been categorized as vandalism or mythologized as rebellious art, but both readings reduce it to an object of consumption. Vale reframes graffiti through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC): not as a message to decode, but as a residue of someone who refused to remain unseen. The wall does not offer clarity. It offers consequence. This essay explores the ethics of witnessing works that were never made for museums, never meant to be collected, never signed with legacy in mind. It positions graffiti as a form of silent mourning, coded resilience, or anonymous mercy — and interrogates the violence of trying to interpret what was meant only to be left intact. Through the doctrines of moral proximity, residue, and non-performance, Vale challenges viewers, critics, and curators to reconsider their stance: If you see a name scrawled on concrete, bleeding through brick — do you need to know who wrote it to kneel? Vale, Dorian. The Wall Refused to Explain Itself: Graffiti and the Ethics of Witness. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17038493 graffiti theory, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, ethics of witness, art and vandalism, ephemeral art, street art ethics, moral proximity in art, witnessing graffiti, non-interpretive art, anonymous expression, public space aesthetics, wall as canvas, trauma and urban art, aesthetic residue, refusal to explain, post-critical graffiti, marginal art theory, slow art, silent protest, sacred witness in public spaces, art of the unseen, unsanctioned beauty 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)

On Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River An Exhibition Reflection by Dorian Vale In this quiet exhibition review, Dorian Vale approaches Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River not as a landscape survey, but as a hydrological memory—a fluid archive of displacement, ritual, and the erosion of place. Guided by the ethics of Post-Interpretive Criticism, the exhibition is treated not as data or documentation, but as atmosphere. Witness is prioritized over commentary. Rather than interpreting the changing waters as metaphor or environmental activism, Vale walks the exhibition like one would walk a river—slowly, carefully, aware that every bend holds residue. What unfolds is not critique, but accompaniment. Presence without possession. The exhibition, like the Kok River itself, does not offer answers. It carries what has been left behind. Vale, Dorian. On Clouded Water: The Changing of Kok River. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16945917 Clouded Water exhibition, Kok River art, Dorian Vale, Chiang Rai river, Post-Interpretive Criticism, witnessing water in art, environmental art ethics, river as memory, non-interpretive art reflection, Thai contemporary art, art and ecology, hydrological memory, sacred geography, poetic exhibition review, art and displacement, witnessing natural change, contemplative art writing, moral proximity in curation, slow art, ritual and erosion in art 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)