Research Catalogue

Documentation of preliminary steps and collection of musical material and related reflections during the first Term of the Master's Program in Improvisation and World Music. December 2022

We live in an age of Symbolic Misery (Stiegler, 2014). In this era, we listen to the same music, scroll through the same Instagram feeds, and we immerse ourselves in daily lives that are the same as others, gradually losing the 'singularity (Stiegler, 2014)' of individual difference. This homogenized structure of perception continuously reshapes our subjectivity (Simondon, 1958; Hui, 2016), making individual desires no longer emerge from unique experiences or internal generative processes, but are increasingly induced and regulated by external technological and symbolic systems (Stiegler, 2015). In this context, the question is no longer 'What do we produce?' but rather, 'Do our desires still belong to ourselves?'. As Stiegler (2014) pointed out, in order to enter the market more effectively, marketing technologies have developed an industrial aesthetic system centered on audiovisual media. This industrial aesthetic re-functionalizes individual sensory experiences following industrial interests, aiming to produce a replicable and controllable unified taste through the standardized pleasure. This huge 'desire project (libidinal management)' manipulates human drives for externalization through a diversity of apparatus (Agamben, 2009; Foucault, 1977), generating a sense of 'participation' via formalized interaction, restricting the level of perception and expression (Stiegler, 2015). Through daily repetition, this process gradually weakens the individual’s ability for subjectivation, trapping them within a passive structure of desire (Stiegler, 2014). This exposition is based on an artistic research project titled 'I Don’t Know Who I Am', an installation game. It invites players to watch a five-minute monologue, the story of a cow (inspired by, for example, Lacan et al., 2001), to explore the secrets hidden within this cow’s desire. After watching the video, the player will face a plate of real grass with soya sauce, and be invited to make a choice: whether or not to eat the grass. This installation game encourages players to reflect on a critical question: At a time when industrial aesthetics and subjective experience standardize individual desire, is increasingly hollowed out, where do our desires truly come from? Do they still emerge from internal generative processes, or have they long been preconditioned and disciplined by technological objects and symbolic systems?

How can I, as a workshop facilitator, create inclusive, inviting and transformative spaces for sparking moments of joy around diversity? How does my training as an artist, researcher and teacher inform and enable my role as a workshop facilitator, such that I can support radical expressions of self-acceptance? What are the limitations to my role, and what possibilities may lie ahead through continued reflection and practice? I have worked through these questions by exploring the concept of vulnerability through a/r/tographic theories and practices, with the culmination of my research and reflections shared in this exposition. Though I have long hosted workshops in marginalised communities as a means for building resilience and kinship, only in the past year have I begun to analyse, from theoretical and methodological perspectives, how and why certain approaches work. Again and again, my reflective meanderings take me back to a single core concept, namely vulnerability. By being vulnerable, one becomes open and raw, which — in certain conditions — can lead to curiosity, risk-taking and remarkable creativity. With such an open and desiring mind, creative practices like crafting can evoke radical feelings of joy and appreciation around a topic that otherwise may tend to conjure conflicting or undesirable feelings. Vulnerability is particularly important in my work because the primary focus of my workshops has been bodily joy. Largely, I have hosted workshops wherein we have explored positive feelings of one’s gender diverse experiences, expressions or identity through paper crafting. Recently, I have also begun hosting crafting workshops, in which we forest bathe (friluftsliv) then craft on the joy one has felt in communion with nature. Crafting becomes an extension of the self, a temporary reincarnation of our own materiality in which we bring to life an alternative understanding of our own potential. In this exposition, I address the questions above by drawing on two example workshops, Crafting Gender Diverse Joy, and Crafting Joy in Nature -- hosted in April and May 2025, respectively. The organisation of this exposition is inspired by L. Balzi’s ice cracks metaphor (2023), Irwin's rhizomatic walking method (2013), and LeBlanc's The Wake (2019). The workshop process as a whole is a reverberation of impulses rippling outwards without end. I navigate these reverberations through a visual mapping of a rhizomatic system of roots sprawling from a tree in Bymarka. The roots are vast web of connections, largely hidden beneath the ground as points of potential. With our imaginations, we can appreciate the complexity of this web, just as we can trace the multiple invisible processes that lead us to our eventual a/r/tographic choices. I invite you to wander across these knots and walls, encountering the various descriptive concepts, or 'centres of vibration', to borrow from Deleuze and Guattari (1994; in Irwin & Springgay, 2008). The layout is roughly guided by the three stages of the workshop process (planning, workshop, aftercare), sprinkled with key concepts, theories, and practices. I also include documentation from the workshops, such as photos and crafts (with permission granted). Enjoy your own wandering. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

The artistic research project Creative (Mis)Understandings: Methodologies of Inspiration is a collaboration between sound makers / compoers / performers from an indigenous community in Taiwan (Tao on Lanyu/Orchid island) and from Europe. There is a high urgency to transform traditional songs into new artisttic forms, creating new ways of forwarding important traditional knowledge to the next generations. This collaboration also sheds a different light on the question, what it means to create something "new" in the eurpopean context.

Wixárika crafts are a testament to resilience and adaptability, they have been preserved since pre-Hispanic times. The evolution of some of these over the past century, influenced by global movements in the 1960s, has created a niche for Wixárika art and craft. Influenced by tourism, new styles, colors, and symbols have been introduced, serving as a form of resistance against the erasure of traditional knowledge and practices 500 years after the colonial period. Tsik+ri has gained global popularity as a method to create decorative geometric yarn pieces, but this craft not only provides insights about Indigenous cultures, experiences, and embodied knowledge, but also raises discussion about land and cultural appropriation by non-Indigenous individuals. In this exposition, I present a series of workshops held in the region of the Arctic Circle, where a development project is taking place to improve and enhance the use of sustainable wool by revitalizing craft heritage in a multicultural way. The method of this study is Art-Based Action Research. The study makes visible an essential feature of this textile artifact: its ability to transcend geopolitical and cultural borders, embodying a unique fusion of heritage and contemporary design. Indigenous craft practices from the Mesoamerican Wixárika culture, such as the Tsik+ri, are rooted in the multicultural identity of Mexico. The workshops served as platforms to communicate the culture and challenges of Wixaritari to Arctic and international contexts. This research sustains that implementing craft practices in the context of contemporary art requires profound knowledge and respect for its origins.

AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD oli Utsjoella vuonna 2021 toteutunut yhteisötaideprojekti osana Euroopan Union rahoittamaa Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture -tutkimushanketta (2020–2023). Euroopan reuna-alueiden vuorovaikutusta ja yhteistyötä lisäävä taideperustainen toimintatutkimus sisälsi yhteisötaiteen, sosiaalisesti sitoutuneen taiteen ja taidekasvatuksen kehittämistä paikallisyhteisöissä. AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD -toteutettiin Lapin yliopiston yhtenä vastuualueena ja osana delokolonisoivan arktisen taiteen viitekehystä, vaikkakin eurooppalaisessa hankejärjestelmässä, johon sisältyy Euroopan yhtenäisyyden taustatavoitteita. Tässä ekspositiossa tarkastelemme taidekäsityksen arktista dekolonisaatiota, yhteisötaidetta, kuvataidekasvatusta ja hankkeen tutkimusprosessia dekolonisaation näkökulmista. AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD vahvisti kulttuurisen moninaisuuden kunnioitusta ja tuki vuorovaikutusta saamelais- ja suomalaiskulttuurien sisällä ja niiden välillä. Jännitteitä ilmeni niin sanottuun tutkimusähkyyn, marginaalisuuden olettamaan sekä rahoitusinstrumenttiin liittyen. Johtopäätöksenä korostamme taiteen ja tutkimuksen kolonialististen rakenteiden ja eettisten periaatteiden kriittisen tarkastelun merkitystä kulttuurien dialogista kohtaamista tukevan ja yhteyksiä luovan toiminnan kehittämisessä.