Research Catalogue

This research delves into the enduring human desire for immortality, omnipresence, and boundless existence, contrasting with the finite nature of human life. Employing language tools like metaphor and analogy, the project explores the metaphysical realm embedded in everyday culture, investigating the in-between moment of teleportation and transformation. This moment, often overlooked, is a threshold of change and ambiguity, prompting questions about the body's presence-absence in time and space. The research methodology remains open, evolving organically through exploration, experimentation, and engagement with hypnosis, meditation, storytelling, and somatic practices. In a parallel exploration, the study draws inspiration from the historical origin of the term "Metaphysics," tracing its roots to Aristotle's works beyond the physical world. While acknowledging the dualisms inherent in metaphysics, the research embraces entanglement and recognizes the contemporary relevance of metaphysical inquiries in new materialism. Navigating the nostalgia for the past and the future, the study examines metaphysics as both a connection and a separation, akin to conjoined twins, contributing to ongoing philosophical conversations about existence, agency, and the interconnectedness of the material world.

Illustration as research from within the field is of relatively new practice. The illustrators discourse on representation (Yannicopoulou & Alaca, 2018 ), theory (Male, 2017), and critical writing on illustration practice was hardly found until The Journal of Illustration was first issued in 2014, followed by artistic research through illustration (Black, 2014; Rysjedal, 2019; Spicer, 2019). The History of Illustration was published recently (Doyle, Grove, & Sherman, 2018). The research topic developed as response to a rise in hate crime towards refugees and the targeting of European Jews in recent decade. A pilot project (This Is a Human Being 2016-2019) treated how narratives of the Holocaust may avoid contributing to overwriting of history or cultural appropriation. Asking how illustration in an expanded approach may communicate profound human issues typically considered unrepresentable, this new project hopes to explore representation and the narratives of “us” and “the others” in the contemporary world through illustration as starting-point for cross-disciplinary projects. The participants from different disciplines, will interact democratically on a common humanist themes in order to explore the transformative role of illustration in contemporary communication. Projects developed should afford contemplation of illustration as an enhanced, decelerated way of looking; and drawing as a process for understanding - a way of engaging in understanding the other, as much as expressing one’s own needs (McCartney, 2016). This AR project consists of three symposia and three work packages, and the artistic research unfolds in the symbiosis of these elements. The planned output is the investigation of illustration across media and materials.

What triggered me to start this research is the multiplicity of reality. How something is represented, how it actually is and then how we all perceive it in our very own way. In that sense reality doesn’t exist, only versions of it. The lack of awareness of this multiplicity affects a lot our lives; what we believe, what we take as granted and how he behave.Through this practice based research I am experimenting on how to create moments of surprise and realization for the spectator. I work with copies and representations, replicas as I like to call them. The Replicas can be made of different materials, can be virtual or very physical. Until now I used scale models, mirrors and projections but the list is endless; so are the different ways to use the replicas or the impact that they will have. The way that the replicas are introduced to the spectator and their interaction is also very crucial in my work and another field to research. The movement and the body play a significant role to this. The special relationship that we have with our body, the way that we perceive it and how the movement can reset these relations and affect how we experience things.

Abstract: (in Finnish below) THE THIRD WORLD ECOLOGY TRILOGY: Postcoloniality, Embodiment and Ecology By Rania Lee Khalil, University of Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy The Third World Ecology Trilogy is a moving image performance and artistic research project by Rania Lee Khalil which investigates the harms of colonialism across interspecies habitats in Palestine, Egypt and the continent of Africa more broadly, at a time of widespread anticolonial revolutions in the mid 20th century. This doctoral thesis uses the artists' video and familial archives to remember third world feminist and indigenous movements instructive to ecological thought and artistic research in the present. It outlines the development of the artists' embodied image making methodology central to this research. The Third World Ecology Trilogy is accompanied by three published articles which discuss each section individually. The trilogy consists of Palestinian Wildlife Series: an experimental video performance centering images of African animals shot from a television set in Palestine, to reflect on parallel themes of mediation, displacement and extinction. Its 2016 article in The Journal of Artistic Research chronicles the artist’s research into the plants and people of Palestine via experimental film theory, posthuman and postcolonial thought. The Pan African Asian Women’s Organization, Cairo to Conakry, 1960-1965 chronicles the cofounding of an organization of the same name, by Khalil’s maternal grandmother, Aida Hamdi. Its 2018 article in the journal Performance and Otherness, reflects on the use of personal and political images in performance, recalling obscured histories through her grandmothers’ images and comrades, who included Djamilla Bourhired and Zohra Drif, heroines of the 1962 Algerian revolution. The final piece in this trilogy, Sinai, a story i tell my daughter, is a video essay which considers a parallel dimension to earth where all of its tragedies never happened. Created within the underwater landscape of Sinai, Egypt’s Bedouin ancestral lands, its 2021 article in The Journal of Embodied Research considers endangered marine life in relation to tourism, within the framework of colonial and neocolonial development. Revisiting original outtakes, this video article reflects on disappearing interspecies life and cultures, through the artist’s extensive embodied research. Index: (keywords) Postcolonial; Palestine; Movement; Moving Image; Ecology THE THIRD WORLD ECOLOGY TRILOGY: 
Postcoloniality, Embodiment and Ecology Rania Lee Khalil, Taideyliopisto, Teatterikorkeakoulu Third World Ecology Trilogy on Rania Lee Khalilin liikkuvaa kuvaa käyttävä esityskokonaisuus ja taiteellinen tutkimushanke, jossa tutkitaan kolonialismin aiheuttamia haittoja lajien välisissä elinympäristöissä Palestiinassa, Egyptissä ja Afrikan mantereella 1900-luvun puolivälissä tapahtuneiden laajamittaisten antikoloniaalisten vallankumousten aikana. Työssä hyödynnetään taiteilijan video- ja perhearkistoja kolmannen maailman feminististen ja alkuperäiskansaliikkeiden muistamisessa. Nämä liikkeet ovat nykypäivänäkin merkityksellisiä sekä ekologiselle ajattelulle että taiteelliselle tutkimukselle. Työssä kehitetään myös tutkimuksen kannalta keskeistä kehollista kuvantekomenetelmää.  Trilogiaan liittyy kolme erillistä julkaistua artikkelia. Trilogia koostuu Palestinian Wildlife Series -sarjasta, joka on kokeellinen videoperformanssi, jossa keskitytään palestiinalaisesta televisiolähetyksestä poimittuihin kuviin afrikkalaisista eläimistä, ja pohditaan yhtäaikaisia välittymisen, syrjäyttämisen ja sukupuuttoon kuolemisen teemoja. Siihen liittyvässä, vuonna 2016 Journal of Artistic Research -julkaisussa ilmestyneessä artikkelissa tutkimuksen kohteina olivat palestiinalaiset kasvit ja ihmiset kokeellisen elokuvateorian sekä jälkihumanistisen ja postkolonialistisen ajattelun kautta. The Pan African Asian Women’s Organization, Cairo to Conakry, 1960–1965 kertoo Khalilin äidinpuoleisen isoäidin, Aida Hamdin, perustamasta samannimisestä järjestöstä. Vuonna 2018 Näyttämö & tutkimus -julkaisussa ilmestyneessä artikkelissa pohditaan henkilökohtaisten ja poliittisten kuvien käyttöä esityksessä ja palautetaan mieliin hämärtyneitä tarinoita tutkijan isoäidin kuvien ja ystävien kautta, joihin kuuluivat Algerian vuoden 1962 vallankumouksen sankarit Djamilla Bourhired ja Zohra Drif. Trilogian viimeinen osa, Sinai, a story i tell my daughter, on videoessee, jossa tarkastellaan maapallon rinnakkaista ulottuvuutta, jossa mikään sen tragedioista ei koskaan toteutunut. Artikkeli ilmestyi vuonna 2021 The Journal of Embodied Research -julkaisussa. Sen tapahtumaympäristönä on Siinain, Egyptin beduiinien esi-isien maiden, vedenalainen maisema, ja siinä tarkastellaan matkailun vaikutusta uhanalaiseen merielämään kolonialistisen ja uuskolonialistisen kehityksen puitteissa. Tässä videoartikkelissa käytetään tutkijan kuvaamia videoaineistoja ja pohditaan katoavaa lajien välistä elämää ja kulttuureja laaja-alaisen kehollisen tutkimuksen kautta. Hakemisto: (avainsanat) postkoloniaalinen; Palestiina; liike; liikkuva kuva; ekologia 

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