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

ARTikulationen 2024 is an artistic research event conceived and organised by the Doctoral School for Artistic Research (KWDS) | Center for Artistic Research of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). It takes place at Theater im Palais and AULA KUG, Graz, between 02–05 October 2024. ARTikulationen interweaves in-depth artistic research presentations, a festival character (intermezzi-performances), and a mini-symposium on the topic of research journeys between artistic and scholarly or scientific practices. Topics range from current acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer composition, historically informed and contemporary performance, to improvisation and theatre.

In this exposition I’m showing you my journey for these past two years of investigating my artistic practice through the meeting of identity and aesthetics. Due to my Iranian background, I have felt a need and curiosity to bring together my Iranian and European identities. This project is a dialogue between myself and music, encompassing sounds, arrangements, physical presence, materiality, technology, context, and politics. By politics I mean; history, cultural appropriation, diversity, colonisation, beliefs, and the current needs of the western culture. A project involving confrontations with habits, default parameters, and elements within digital audio workspaces, thereby incorporating scales.

This practice-led research exposition by architect-researcher Elina Koivisto explores how conducting architectural practice through the framework of feminist spatial practice can provide possibilities for un-learning harmful habits and reaching towards uncertain speculative futures. The case study project Kudos – Library for Material Relations realized in Espoo, Finland as a co-creative process between human and non-human participants, provided a lens through which the current material and social relations in architecture-making were challenged, applying the conceptual thinking of posthuman feminist thoughts on care and interconnectivity. Reflecting on the project, architecture is seen as a tool for feminist becomings rather than as a producer of mere artefacts, and meaning and significance are found in the process of its making.

“No one knows what the experiment is worth, but I imagine it’s better than sitting on your own hands.” Possible and barely possible moves is inspired by the kung-fu film Drunken Master, where simulated intoxication is used as a way to confuse the opponent. 
In the project, I used sketches of the movements in the film as a starting point for physical improvisations and looped GIF animations. Imbalance and loss of control have been used as a consistent method – both to generate material and as a way to surprise myself.
 Failing at something you've set out to do can sometimes generate new ideas.

What if failure is not collapse but recalibration? This research reconsiders seismic activity as a speculative site of vibratory instability, adjustment, and relational tension, rather than disaster. Drawing on seismic data from the most significant Romanian earthquakes between 1977 and 2023, the project translates magnitudes into an immersive sound installation that renders the inaudible perceptible through algorithmic processing and low-frequency vibration. The resulting sonic environment invites discomfort and disorientation as productive states, reframing failure as a mode through which we may interpret stability itself differently. The work draws from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Jung’s archetypal theory, Bohm’s field theory, Deleuze’s pataphysics, Priest’s aesthetics of failure, and Eshun’s sonic fiction to position seismic resonance as a speculative and unstable threshold between sensing and knowing. Rather than presuming to represent the Earth’s voice, the installation critically engages with the ethical implications of translating geophysical data into sound, acknowledging the gaps, distortions, and interpretive acts involved. Instead of breakdown, failure becomes a condition of listening – one that resists mastery and opens a dialogue between human and more-than-human temporalities through sonic practice.