Research Catalogue

The overall purpose of this thesis is to perform and propose diffractive methodology as a means for exploring, reading, learning, and understanding systematic theological discourses beyond binary and oppositional thinking. This methodology is based on performative strategies and feminist new materialist theory, with a specific focus on Karen Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemological agential realism theory; it can also be considered an alternative to a more traditional academic reflexive methodological approach, thus allowing for an infinite number of explorative methods to be developed within its umbrella definition of diffractive methodology. The diffractive analysis in this study is shaped as an intra-active entangled reading of Graham Ward’s Engaged Theology, through Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Performance Aesthetics, and the method I call Voicing-as-Performative-Theology. This thesis is divided into three parts. Part I unfolds relevant terminology. Part II performs the actual diffractive reading analysis. Part III consists of a concluding essay summarizing the outcome of this study’s diffractive reading, as well as opening up suggestions for how diffractive methodology can be applied for developing more performative and diffractive methods as part of future theological research. The thesis will be presented at University College Stockholm (EHS), in January 8 2024.

In this work, I want to show some excerpts from my grandmother's patriarchal resistance. The narrative and the photographs will be at the center. They will clarify Esters Lindberg's attempt to negotiate and renegotiate her position within the usual norm. The narratives and photographs will hopefully give an expanded understanding of what it could be like to live as a woman with a desire for freedom in Sweden during the early 20th century.

With Operative Fiction, we introduce a practice of spatial storytelling driven by the dynamics of prepositions rather than verb-centric narratives. Here, the textual body becomes embedded in the medial spatiality of a printed book, digital interface, or performance space. The physical or virtual site of the text thus becomes integral to the storytelling process. Spatial production methods merge into the texture of the text itself; simultaneously, the text reshapes the unfolding of space, place, and site. The material and procedural qualities of the text actively engage and activate the digital interface as a site of narrative unfolding, intertwining textual and spatial experiences. We begin our first exercise in Operative Fiction with Thomas Ballhausen’s What the Probes Report, transposing the text from the printed page (FLORA, 2020) into the digital interface of a Research Catalogue exposition. The non-human protagonist – emerging through and evolving within the text – disrupts subject-centred narration. It becomes entangled in the linguistic and scenic fabric of its own development, thus, through its procedural logic and function, becoming an active agent in its own staging. A line, speculatively re-enacting the machine's operations, simultaneously traces the topographic texture of the digital landscape. Using a drawing technique typically applied in performance design drafts, we explore the friction between staging and spacing by deploying minimally visible images and textual cues of direction. The operational plasticity of these technical images enables dramaturgical intensities to gather (staging), while also allowing the story to disperse through the digital architecture of the exposition into hyperlinked virtual spaces (spacing). Alongside a linear reading mode, which follows the story’s original chronology, we propose a contingent reading mode activated via time codes. These time codes function both as compositional elements within the drawing and as hypertextual links. They suggest the duration and shape of a staged terrain, occasionally layering multiple time zones within a single topographic entity. In this way, the timelines act as more-than-texts, generating a multiplicity of positions and proximities, and intertwining temporal aspects of space with the speculative grammar of the story.

'Southern Outfall Works' consists of the collected partworks developed through extensive period as field artist at Crossness, a historic sewage pumping station on the banks of the Thames, leading towards a large-scale, site-specific installation, Southern Outfall, in May 2025. The evolving works form part of submission for practice based Phd, alongside a co-evolved paper 'Southern Outfall: sensible ways in evolving installation'. The works and paper encompass a spectrum of thought from multiple knowledge bases, brought together through an underpinning in process philosophy. The part-works and text support the generation of immersive, multi-modal event-installation which will be sensitively situated across the site, engaging a range of sensory encounters while exploring the nature of the voluntary organisation that keeps the place in existence. Through a layered relationship to science, technologies and redundancy and with a touch of common sense, mingled encounters emerge...

This research investigates the visual narrative built within artworks that deal with colonial memory in Sapmi, and the heavy layers of history in the Baltics, particularly Lithuania during the Soviet era. The research question is: How can themes of Gulag, colonial history and traumatic transgenerational memory be addressed by the artists and by curators in large-scale exhibitions and art venues? The aim of this study is to examine how visual expression is aesthetically communicated by the artists, how their artworks are presented in exhibitions and media channels, and how they are received by audiences. The study examines four cases: artworks and projects by two Sami artists and two Lithuanian artists. The research is conducted as artistic research, where the author acts as the artist, curator, and spectator of the artworks being analyzed. The author has been actively involved in the creative curatorial processes, including designing the curatorial setup of the Sami artists' artworks for their audience. The comparative analysis of the visual expression is done through the reflexive tools of the author. The study's findings provide an outline of the tools that artists use within their artworks, as well as the curatorial strategies applied when presenting those artworks to audiences.

Exploring how artistic experience can be influenced by mimetic recognition of human motion patterns in non-representative kinetic figures. This project investigates imbuing non-representational kinetic figures with human-like movement patterns and examines how these characteristics can modulate the expe rience of such figure(s). The investigation explores whether these motion patterns may facilitate mimetic recognition of human movement patterns and whether such recognition can intensify onlooker engagement with the figure(s) by eliciting affective and emotional responses. Of particular interest is evoking experiences of kinship and relation between humans and non-humans and proposing that the figures’ actions be experienced as an expression of intent on the part of the figures. These topics are approached as artistic motivation and guiding principles for artistic creation and experimentation.