Research Catalogue

Art activism is powerful. Also known as activist art, protest art, visual activism, artivism and creative activism, it changes lives, situations and is and has been a powerful weapon across a whole spectrum of struggles for justice. Teresa Sanz & Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos(2021) relay that art activism has the unique ability to bring cohesion and diverse peoples together and it can, as Zeynep Tufekci notes, change the participants (2017). As Steve Duncombe & Steve Lambert (2021) posit, traditional protesting such as marches or squats are no longer as important as they once were. As a result of my own lived experience in activist activities, I very much agree with Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell (2012) that the reason people use art activism is that it works, by enriching and improving protest. In the past, when I lived in a metropolis and was not a parent, I used to be an activist. Now I no longer have immediate access to international headquarters at which to protest and I have to be concerned with being arrested, I am hindered from protesting. This project is an attempt to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism. By devising methods which include at least one of the following: that do not require on-site participation, that can take place outside the public gaze, that reduce the risk of arrest, that open up protest sites that are not “big targets”, that include remote locations, that involve irregular timing, my thesis aims to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism to those who are underserved by more mainstream methods of conducting art activism. Textiles have unique properties that enable them to engage in subterfuge and speak loudly through care and thought(Bryan-Wilson, 2017). They have strong connotations of domesticity, the body and comfort that can be subverted within art activism to reference lack of this domestic warmth and protection(O’Neill, 2022). Being a slow form of art-making, they show care and thought, attention in the making, so that the messaging is reinforced through this intentionality in slow making.

WAP/Walking As Practice Program takes place where the forest meets the sea in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden. It is a program for self-identifying walking artists. Exploring and sharing strategies for proximity through artistic expressions in the field of walking practices, creating a transformative, dynamic space for art that engages with life and nature. This involves critical and poetic explorations influenced by the immediate surroundings. We participate in each other’s walkshops or interventions, and we also host Share Sessions to familiarize ourselves with each other’s practices. Additionally, we introduce the Research Catalogue for final dissemination, where each artist create their individual exposition.

A moving image essay in three parts.

Amazing Patterns presents a practice-based investigation into pattern formation using ASCII and Unicode character systems as generative material. Developed within the broader research context of the ASCII Digital Design Museum (ADDM), founded in 2010, the project operates exclusively in live digital text environments under minimal computational constraints. Treating text not as language but as material, the exposition examines how repetition, variation, and rule-based operations generate complex visual structures from simple symbolic elements. Through sustained, character-by-character construction, the works demonstrate scalability and structural coherence across graphic, textile, and architectural references. Developed through human-authored, rule-based visual systems prior to contemporary AI image-generation tools, the project positions symbolic computing as a methodological precedent and sustainable exhibition model, emphasizing accessibility, durability, and long-term cultural preservation within web-native systems.

This exposition presents a practice-based research investigation into pattern formation using ASCII and Unicode character systems as primary visual material. Working exclusively within live text environments, the project explores how complex visual and architectural structures emerge from rule-based constraints, repetition, and minimal computational resources. Treating text not as language but as material, the work examines generative logic, duration, and modularity as foundations for sustainable, post-material visual research.

Topographies of the Obsolete is an artistic research project conceived in 2012 by
 University of Bergen Professors Neil Brownsword and Anne Helen Mydland,
in collaboration with six European HEI’s and the British Ceramics Biennial.
Emerging through two phases (2012-15; 2015-2020) it has to date engaged
ninety-seven interdisciplinary artists, scholars, cultural commentators and
students from thirteen countries. It has transformed participants’ practices, with
works originating out of the initial research being celebrated on an international
platform. Topographies of the Obsolete has received funding from a variety of
institutions, alongside its core support from the Norwegian Artistic Research
Programme (2013-15 & 2015-17), whose peer review system (2015) rated it
as ‘exemplary… strengthening artistic research and its scope beyond potential
communities of practitioners/researchers’. The project explores the landscape and associated histories of post-industry, with an initial emphasis on Stoke-on-Trent, a world-renowned ceramics capital that bears evidence of fluctuations in global fortunes.