Research Catalogue

Interviews about where artistic research is heading The work Paths of artistic research is a collection of interviews with artistic researchers - Andrea Buršová, assistant professor at the Nika Brettschneiderová Dramatic Acting Department, Faculty of Drama, JAMU, Jiří Honzírek, director, manager of the Feste Theatre and PhD student at the Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Barbora Klímová, head of the Studio of Environmental Design at the FFA BUT, Lenka Klodová, head of the Studio of Body Design at the FFA BUT, Lucia Repašská, researcher at the Cabinet for Theatre and Drama Research, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Hana Slavíková, head of the Studio of Radio and Television Dramaturgy and Scriptwriting, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Pavel Sterec, artist and former head of the Intermedia Studio at the FFA, BUT, and Lenka Veselová, researcher at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the FFA, BUT and PhD student at the FFA, BUT. These are artists who have been associated with art colleges in Brno, specifically with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the BUT and the Theatre Faculty of the JAMU. Through interviews with the artists, the reader will learn under what circumstances they began to engage in artistic research, how they perceive it, what meanings they attribute to it and the purpose it serves for them. The selected group of artists is very diverse and their creative and research strategies are different, as are the purposes for which they use artistic research. The work does not aim to provide an exhaustive overview of the methods used in artistic research, but it does aim to show that there are many approaches to artistic research and to present the paths that have brought particular artists to artistic research.

This thesis explores how late-diagnosed autistic individuals and their close circle can redesign their relationship after their diagnosis through communication that aligns with autistic ways of being. Grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm, the social model of disability, and the double empathy problem, the research combines interviews, co-creation sessions, and visual storytelling to uncover emotional and relational dynamics during post-diagnosis identity shifts. Through a neurodivergent lens—rooted in sensory awareness, pattern recognition, and visual thinking—this work challenges deficit-based narratives and proposes a compassionate, co-created communication framework. The goal is not assimilation but mutual understanding: enabling autistic individuals to embrace their authentic selves while guiding loved ones to meet them with compassion and openness. Ultimately, the project reimagines design as a tool for creating connection, not correction—honouring difference, restoring balance, and building inclusive systems where all ways of being are valid, visible, and valued.

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 book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one 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 book’s "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 models—from 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 operators—figures 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.

VARIA, the fourth issue of HUB — Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society is a compilation of insightful views on different subjects that drive us through expositions where the true interests and concerns and research of those who enjoy sharing their points of view to build an understanding of the meanings of contemporary art on a global level are presented. This edition presents a constellation of voices, gestures, and research paths that intersect across diverse geographies, temporalities, and concerns.

The essays and expositions in this issue of HUB delve into the concept of Metabolic Media, exploring the interconnections between biological, technological, cultural, and ecological systems. Together, they offer a rich tapestry of perspectives, illuminating how processes of exchange, transformation, and interaction underpin the idea of media as metabolic and metabolising. Through this metabolic mosaic, this special issue of HUB presents a dynamic and interconnected view of metabolic media, celebrating how media processes reflect and influence the metabolic flows of life itself. Each contribution invites readers to rethink how artistic, scientific, and technological practices can illuminate the entangled systems that sustain and shape our shared existence. Against a background of shifting, strained or even pathological metabolic relations across scales, forms, zones and bodies, these reflections and interventions intersect with media techniques and technologies as traditionally conceived and emergent, immanent and immediate metabolic flows systems and processes.

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.