Research Catalogue

Conceived and co-organised by Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, this Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group (SAR SIG) provides contexts for coming together via the exchange of language-based research. The intent is to support developments in the field of expanded language-based practices by inviting attention, time and space for enabling understanding of/and via these practices anew.

This research was conducted with a diverse group of dancers, varying in age, background, and dance experience, and was guided through somatic embodiment and artistic articulation. Through a somatic approach, the body was explored as both an archive of lived experience and an oracle for emergent knowledge, offering a strong gateway into authentic dance material. The creative process unfolded through four phases: somatic exploration and improvisation, composition, structuring, and refinement. Throughout, leadership shifted fluidly between an open, facilitative mode, amplifying the dancers’ voices, and a more directive mode, articulating the artistic vision. The methodology highlights how initial somatic explorations were gradually shaped into choreographic form, maintaining a dialogue between internal embodiment and external composition throughout the process. Key insights include that this process proved particularly effective within a diverse group context, demonstrating that, regardless of formal dance training, each individual, when guided somatically, can access embodied memory and, through compositional shaping, transform authentic movement into coherent choreographic structure. Both the research and the resulting performance, Equilibrium, do not seek to offer resolution, but rather to evoke recognition and the possibility of coexisting with tension.

The aim of this PD project is to bring artists and citizens together with each other and their environment, and collectively explore how the wordless voice can be a means of communication. Artists leading this project bring understanding from the multiple fields in which they are working – music, theatre, visual arts, and circus. In addition to the collective exploration of connection, the objective is to propose a methodology (which combines and develops from a range of existing methods and is provisionally termed “Resonant Cycles”) and investigate if it can have a transformative impact on the subjectivities of the individual participants. The project involves interventions in the field of performing arts with the goal of modeling less language-dependent and more inclusive, sensory-rich experiences of cross-disciplinary creation and performance. It invites a holistic and immersive experience of performing arts that brings the physical voice to the forefront and prompts reflection on the essence and meaning of vocal sound regardless of language, and the way that sound itself functions as a means of communication.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 MA Photography and Society This study examines what roles images can play in the disclosure of discipline within the Dutch political settlement known as the polder model. On November 24, 1982, the Accord of Wassenaar formalised the contemporary Dutch socio-economic and political character by adopting a method of corporatist consensus seeking and decision making between capital, the state, and labour called the ‘polder model’. The polder model has its origin in the creation of a key feature of the rationalised Dutch landscape, reclaimed sections of formerly submerged land known as ‘polders’. This study draws a connection between the signing of the Accord of Wassenaar and the historically rooted labour discipline of residents of the artificial landscape of the Netherlands. Incorporating archival material, visual experiments, case studies and descriptions of field visits, this study reflects on the role of the praxis of the image maker through artistic research, and emphasizes the disciplined character of the Dutch landscape. These concerns are examined through discussions of the artificiality of nature in the landscape, the grid, the signing of the Accord of Wassenaar, and invisible labour. Through visual interventions in the materiality of cartographic and national archival material, this study argues for a more broadly-encompassing praxis of the representation of power mechanisms in the artificial Dutch landscape. Through the juxtaposition of different visual interventions in the Dutch landscape, an alternative situational understanding of the position of the viewer in relation to the polder is proposed.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023-BA Photography This is the search for what is left of the myth of the Witte Wieven, in the landscapes of the Netherlands. Historically there are theories about who the witte wieven were, and still are. One of them is that they once were wise female herbalists and healers. It was said they had the gift for looking into the future. Another theory is that they stem from forest spirits and goddesses, something our neighbouring countries still believe. In the Netherlands the collective memory of the women is based on the image of scary ghosts, witches or mist figures. History tells us something different. I use the folktales as a guide and travel to the places mentioned. Strongly intertwined with the history of the Dutch landscapes, ancient nature and the east of the Netherlands, the witte wieven show the magical side of this ‘rational’ country. As the search continues, some themes keep recurring: the memory of the landscapes, the importance of female voices in storytelling and their structural silencing throughout history. Clues, maps and the original folktales guide me to fairy tale- like encounters and push me to reflect on fact, fiction and the space in between. Using the camera to document the remnants of this myth, another world is created where the borders of what is ‘real’ fade. A new narrative where they are being remembered in a way they still have their magic. To keep the witte wieven close, I started to collect materials from the places where the witte wieven live: pebbles, twigs and water. Trying to conserve and protect the memories they have in them. The spirits of the women are still there to be found in flowers, trees and rocks. It is important for us to remember, for the women and their story will not fade away over time.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Interactive Media Design Absorbed by squares and straight lines, I am separated from my nature. By producing and consuming, we waste natural sources, till the point that the Earth can’t keep up any longer. What can we learn from the billion-year-old underground network of nature? Fungi might be mostly invisible but ever-present to feed, defend and break down all we ever are and will be. In the house as an ecosystem, I image a space for harmonious orchestrated chaos, connecting life and mediating resources embracing all streams by collaborating with fungi to understand that we are more than one.