PD Arts + Creative at PD Day 2025
(2025)
PD Arts + Creative
The first edition of the Professional Doctorate (PD) Day took place on Tuesday 18 November at the Social Impact Factory in Utrecht. This event brought together PD candidates and their networks from all seven domains of the Professional Doctorate pilot to exchange ideas, explore crossovers, and strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration.
The theme of this first PD Day, '๐๐ฆ๐ช๐ฎ๐ข๐จ๐ช๐ฏ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐๐ณ๐ฃ๐ข๐ฏ ๐๐ถ๐ต๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด - ๐๐ฏ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ถ๐จ๐ฉ ๐๐ณ๐ข๐ค๐ต๐ช๐ค๐ฆ-๐ฃ๐ข๐ด๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ค๐ฉ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐๐ช๐ท๐ฆ๐ข๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ต๐ช๐ฆ๐ด,' focused on the future of urban life. This theme is grounded in the United Nations ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ข๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ 11: ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ข๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ต๐ช๐ฆ๐ด ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ช๐ต๐ช๐ฆ๐ด and during the PD day, the theme is structured around five subthemes. Within these subthemes, we reflected on how we can shape cities that are inclusive, safe, resilient, and ecologically sustainable.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE ARTS : ARTS IN PHILOSOPHY CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HEART IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH (AR) AND PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY (PP). PEEK-Project(FWF: AR822).
(2025)
Arno Boehler
Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public.
Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzscheโs Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindoโs poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in โcreating conceptsโ (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact.
The role of the HEART in respect to this process of โbodily matteringโ is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahแนdayaโโwhich literally means, โsomebody, with a HEARTโโโbecomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to oneโs manifest Nature, but has access to oneโs virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of โvirtual particlesโ and โquantum vacuum fluctuationsโ (Barad).
New Ecology of the Book
(2025)
Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the bookโs medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecologyโone unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the bookโs "new" ecology.
In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in modelsโfrom thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operatorsโfigures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.