Research Catalogue

SWEAT - YoNoSudoBrillo Two weeks workshop held in Benidorm, Spain, in August 2024. In the context of EASA, European Architecture Students Assembly 2024 event. Tutored by Diana Ferro and Angelo Ciccaglione. 𝐼𝓉’𝓈 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑒𝓂𝒷𝓇𝒶𝒸𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓇𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓍𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃. 𝐿𝑒𝓉'𝓈 𝑒𝓂𝒷𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝑜𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒿𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓃𝑒𝓎 𝑜𝒻 𝓌𝑒𝓁𝓁𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝓉𝑜𝑔𝑒𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇. In a sauna, people meet strangers and exchange stories while absorbing heat being naked and sweaty. In this workshop we brought the sauna to a step further: we absorbed heat, stories, gestures, words, objects, skills, dreams and sweat them out to other people, re-enacting what we have learned. Also naked, why not. We learnt how to live, how to breathe, how to make a kebab, how to embody old wisdom, how to tie shoes the proper way. All you need is a fan, a towel and a body. A kebab stick, a drink, some snackies. Participants developed a deeper perspective on what it means to operate within a complex identity such as the city and gained skills to open their own kebab shop.

This exposition emerged from my participation in the second interval of the Simultaneous Arrivals (Simularr) Artistic Research Project—a research project inviting international artist-researchers to explore relational, situated, and process-based inquiries in dialogue with core researchers. Core researchers: Nayari Castillo, Hanns Holger Rutz, Franziska Hederer, and Daniele Pozzi. For the second interval, the visual artist and researcher Elena Radaelli and I were invited as visiting artist-researchers. (More information on Simultaneous Arrivals: https://simularr.net/about/) The exposition presents my process during the residency, i.e. my Traces and Paths Towards a Singularly-Plural Companionships. The eight-week residency (3 March-30 April 2024) took place across three sites: Graz (Austria); Lecce, San Cesario (Italy); and Klagenfurt (Austria). The exposition traces this journey through various mediums, including texts, graphics, video and audio material experiments, field encounters, and theoretical companions. My processes, are informed and shaped by my companion collaborators—human (research-creation companions), more-than-human, textual, and material—who co-inform and co-create the unfolding of the research.

Supplement to the presentation proposal 'Anatomy of a (Musical) Ethics Lab'

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.