Research Catalogue

Interviews about where artistic research is heading The work Paths of artistic research is a collection of interviews with artistic researchers - Andrea Buršová, assistant professor at the Nika Brettschneiderová Dramatic Acting Department, Faculty of Drama, JAMU, Jiří Honzírek, director, manager of the Feste Theatre and PhD student at the Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Barbora Klímová, head of the Studio of Environmental Design at the FFA BUT, Lenka Klodová, head of the Studio of Body Design at the FFA BUT, Lucia Repašská, researcher at the Cabinet for Theatre and Drama Research, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Hana Slavíková, head of the Studio of Radio and Television Dramaturgy and Scriptwriting, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Pavel Sterec, artist and former head of the Intermedia Studio at the FFA, BUT, and Lenka Veselová, researcher at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the FFA, BUT and PhD student at the FFA, BUT. These are artists who have been associated with art colleges in Brno, specifically with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the BUT and the Theatre Faculty of the JAMU. Through interviews with the artists, the reader will learn under what circumstances they began to engage in artistic research, how they perceive it, what meanings they attribute to it and the purpose it serves for them. The selected group of artists is very diverse and their creative and research strategies are different, as are the purposes for which they use artistic research. The work does not aim to provide an exhaustive overview of the methods used in artistic research, but it does aim to show that there are many approaches to artistic research and to present the paths that have brought particular artists to artistic research.

This thesis explores how late-diagnosed autistic individuals and their close circle can redesign their relationship after their diagnosis through communication that aligns with autistic ways of being. Grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm, the social model of disability, and the double empathy problem, the research combines interviews, co-creation sessions, and visual storytelling to uncover emotional and relational dynamics during post-diagnosis identity shifts. Through a neurodivergent lens—rooted in sensory awareness, pattern recognition, and visual thinking—this work challenges deficit-based narratives and proposes a compassionate, co-created communication framework. The goal is not assimilation but mutual understanding: enabling autistic individuals to embrace their authentic selves while guiding loved ones to meet them with compassion and openness. Ultimately, the project reimagines design as a tool for creating connection, not correction—honouring difference, restoring balance, and building inclusive systems where all ways of being are valid, visible, and valued.

In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology. In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE) From my own experience, I use electricity every day. Energy prices are rising and the need for more sustainable electricity is rising. As an architect, I'm questioning, how is it possible that I as a user of electricity can't sense further than a switch. The usage of electricity in architectural space is lacking sensation and understanding. In my research I'm taking a journey through the history of electricity, trying to understand the principles of electric power. With this, I'm recreating multiple simple models demonstrating the presence of electricity. These models would eventually help me in designing architectural interventions I've placed at Maasvlakte as a location for electricity generation and innovation.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 BA Fine Arts This Thesis is comprised of a series of chapters, which combine personal observations and analysis of existing theory and literature regarding the concept of trauma within the artistic context. Throughout the text, I explore the choices and intuitive origins of the artistic practice with reference to my own experiences and connect them to my interest in the traumatic. Using Griselda Pollock’s writings on Trauma and art as a foundation, I explore the theoretical sides of trauma and how it operates, specifically that of psychoanalytical, scientific and philosophical texts. I aim to weave connections between the act of observation inherent to the artistic practice and the same spectacle associated with violent subject matter. This becomes the basis for the development of what I call, the ‘traumatic method’, which involves my ongoing research into this relationship. Questions of affect and embodiment become key components of this thesis in regards to the function of using trauma as a conceptual starting point during the artistic process. Specifically the importance of re-enactment and treating the traumatic as a medium within itself rather than simply subject matter.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023; BA Photography Research is the ground for exploring the world. My research paper serves as a guide in the sensorial and caring experience of the world around us as. Written in stages in which patients enter and experience the sensory room, the transition from history to the future opens space for discussion and implementation of observed practices in individual realities. The beginning chapters introduce radical movements in psychiatry while outlining the historical formation of disability as a social issue. Discussion around illness and disability is observed trough political and philosophical frame. Historical examples provide insight into how the space of the institution itself can re-shape into a progressing form, how the discussion about institutionalised people is de-stigmatised once the closed system of a hospital or an asylum opens to its surrounding environment, and how this can affect the position of healthcare, psychiatry specifically, on the level of a state. The chapters bring forward current knowledge around body memory and studies around sensory treatments in institutionalized settings. In this chapters, the body is not solely observed in the setting of a hospital or asylum, but brought in the context of perceiving the body as a social and cultural object. Short poetic digressions are moments of personal reflection, automatic writing that reminds me of moments when I saw the necessity to provide alternative models of care. The paper contains interviews and transcriptions of conversations I had with my commissioners. Through conversations with medical workers and artists, I reflected upon the current state of care provisions, ranging from institutional care to self-care. The dialogues show sensibility and understanding that a shift in healthcare towards the re-humanization of the ill is needed. Written in-between moments of working with materials in the workshop settings, research has acted as