Research Catalogue

CITY AS SPACE OF RULES AND DREAMING promotes emancipation and democratisation in urban space by cross-examination through artistic research, empirical urban research, political theory and legal theory. The study strengthens polyphony of urban space and thereby develops a more just city It asks: How is urban space formed and shared, and who has access to it? What normative and de facto instruments regulate, control and inhabit this space? What kinds of processes, structures and spaces of inclusion and marginalisation, as well as disagreement and controversy are there in the city? What kind of fractures, escape lines and dreams are hidden in the normativity of urban space? What kinds of spaces of shadow, noise, potentialities and dreams are there and how do they actualise? The study reaches beyond established art-science boundaries by bringing new and more inclusive means of “soft law” to urban decision-making and inviting different neighborhoods to dream of their own dwelling-regions through imaginary urban archaeology and fictionalising democracy combining different artistic mediums. The project is coordinated by the Academy of Fine Arts (Doctoral programme) at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Other partners are Helsinki University Faculty of Law, Helsinki University Faculty of Arts/ Aesthetics and Aalto University Department of Built Environment. In Memoriam Ari Hirvonen (1960–2021) The responsible leader (PI) of the project is Maiju Loukola at the Academy of Fine Arts / KuvA, Uniarts Helsinki. The other research group members and co-initiators are Aino Hirvola (Dept. of built environment, Aalto University), Tanja Tiekso (Faculty of Arts/Aesthetics, Helsinki University Faculty of Arts/ Aesthetics) and Paul Tiensuu (Helsinki University Faculty of Law). Since 2023 Jaakko Ruuska (KuvA, Uniarts Helsinki), Henna-Riikka Halonen (KuvA, Uniarts Helsinki) and Niran Baibulat (KuvA/Uniarts Helsinki) have contributed as postdoc artist-researchers for shorter periods. Other collaborators include Stefan Winter, Zen Marie, Brigitta Stone-Johnson, Anita Zsentesi, Chris Butler, Jan Schacher, Josue Moreno, Denise Ziegler, Simon Critchley, Antti Nyyssölä, Gabi Schillig and Kristina Sedlerova. Villanen We dedicate this project to Ari, and to Stargazing

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.

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.

Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil Research Pavilion #3, Venice, Italy 2019 The video documents the artistic research project Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil, that explores the relationship between humans and soil through a study of soil contamination in the Venice Lagoon area. In this research, ceramic artists collaborate with soil contamination experts focusing on the current state of the local soils and sediments, linking them with the anthropogenic impact in the area. The group of artists, researchers and MA students studied the soils and sediments of the Venice Lagoon using ceramic art and methods of soil contamination research. The video follows the artists on their sediment sampling fieldwork and documents the research environment, also recording the artists’ work at the Research Pavilion where they coiled large clay pots from local brick clay, and painted them with the contaminated soil. Working with Soil group: Maarit Mäkelä (PI), Riikka Latva-Somppi, Özgu Gündeşlioğlu and Catharina Kajander and students Tzuyu Chen, Pauliina Purhonen and Hanna Kutvonen. The project was led by Empirica research group of Aalto University’s Design Department and done in collaboration with the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE. The local brick factory Terreal SanMarco provided local brick clay for the artworks.

This project explores the theme of human fragility, examining its many dimensions through sculpture and painting. Fragility is not approached as weakness, but as a fundamental aspect of existence — a space of vulnerability, yet also of sensitivity, transformation, and creative potential. The works emerge from an intimate dialogue with the body, memory, and time: delicate or weathered materials — such as wax, plaster, paper, and fluid pigments — give shape to ephemeral figures, incomplete or transforming bodies, and marks that evoke the instability of identity and the constant interplay between resistance and collapse. Through this process, art becomes an act of listening and bearing witness — to what breaks, but also to what, in breaking, reveals a new possibility of presence.

'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...