Research Catalogue

The PD Arts + Creative Symposium takes place at LocHal in Tilburg (NL) on 20 June 2025. This year’s symposium will highlight the programme’s multidisciplinary character by zooming in on the diverse fields of practice that its researchers operate in, connect to, and impact. It asks where, how, and with whom does the PD-research resonate? And what is the contribution of artistic and creative research to societal challenges?

Following on from my PhD research, Deeper Canine Topographies continues to explore human-canine cartographies, rhythms, repetitions,micro geographies and relational choreographies towards a proposal for future research.

This exposition investigates the potential of a/r/tography as a methodological framework within an artistic context characterized by improvisation in movement, dance, and theatre. Through a small-scale exploratory study, theory, practice, and reflection are integrated to examine how knowledge and understanding are generated within and through improvised artistic processes. The exposition includes documentation of practical components, reflective writings, and theoretical perspectives, and illustrates how a/r/tography can operate as a dynamic and responsive research methodology within the field of performative arts.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Fine Arts In this thesis insight from the discourse on metafiction, a mode of writing which breaks and exposes the conventional frames of literary fiction, is used to analyse works of visual art that show a similar criticism towards the conventions of their medium.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 BA Photography The high ecological demands in the age of mass extinction present a precarious position: wanting to change the state of the environment but feeling hopeless in being able to do so. Ecological thinking and paralyzing feelings of environmental doom are carving a gap between themselves. Through this research, I want to plant a seed in that gap. The research is focused on exploring how artistic practice can reshape the understanding of what it means to be ecological and the other way around. Whether it is human and non-human relations or the nature and culture dichotomy, in my artistic practice I am most intrigued by breaking binary thinking and blurring boundaries. I love frameworks and fixed things just because I can break them, bend them out of their form, from still to alive, from permanent to temporary, from fixed to fluid. I wonder how this mutability of art practice can reshape our understanding and approach toward the environment. If art is closely related to subjective experience, how can ecology be as well? How can the spreading of different perspectives help reshape our understanding of ecology? How can artistic practice contribute to the unlearning of monoculture, allowing space for ambiguity and fabulations for the current/future ecological practices? The method for this research is encapsulated in a seed. This seed is no different than a thought. The process of a seed is a fascinating one: the growth from a seed always transcends its body, mutates through the course, transforms but never ends. By comparing this research to a seed, I want to watch a thought grow and transform: from a seed to a sprout, to a fruit, and back into the soil. Shape-shifting as the growth from a seed does, the research text switches between styles of writing. When roots need to sink in and hold the body down standing against treacherous weather, text ranges between essayistic and semi-academic: to ground in theory, contextualize in a field and analyze with examples. Other times I cultivate a more experimental, descriptive, and personal way of writing, which flowers wild and acts as if it’s a contaminating weed: to bring subjective experience and ambiguity into the sunlight. These styles do cross-pollinate. The soil of this research is also nourished by dialogues with its study subjects (whether it is an artwork, project, person, or place) acknowledging the importance of being present, engaging in conversation, and activating senses when trying to understand the environment. Through my research, I will be addressing monocultural thinking and its consequences for the environment on a global scale as well as feelings and their expressions stemming from living on a damaged planet, such as eco-grief, doom-thinking, and guilt-tripping. Following through with the seed’s process of growth and transformation I wonder how mutable is the medium of photography in an ecological sense and whether ecological art can reject the Anthropocene at all. Through visual fragments of boundary-crossing unconventional art practices, I hope to enter dark wet spaces where a fallen fruit starts decaying, where ambiguity, subjectivity, and porosity are the root systems caving the path to a better understanding of the environment, acting through uncertainty and curiosity.


*Thesis is written in Dutch! "Spirit and the Machine, the Curious Case of Spider's Transformation into a Digital Ghost" is a research paper that explores themes of technology, voyeurism, and identity through the experiences of the characters Spider and Nachtdonker. Using a fictional story as its medium, the paper follows the journey of the voyeur Spider, who becomes trapped in their own desires and seeks the help of retired psychoanalyst Nachtdonker. Through a dialogue of monologues between the two, the paper explores the impact of technology on human consciousness and relations, the system of networked cameras as an extension of the Self, the power dynamics of voyeurism between observer / observed, and the desire to look without being seen in the 'face of ubiquitous surveillance and control. The paper's experimental structure employs fragmented timelines and various text types to convey Spider's and Nachtdonker's experiences and perspectives. The nonlinear stream of consciousness and poetic language invites readers to engage with the text on multiple levels, allowing a more nuanced exploration of the themes. Through its approach, "Spirit and Machine" challenges blurs the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. It offers a fresh perspective on the complex interconnectedness between desire, intimacy, technology, power dynamics between observer / observed, surveillance, and voyeurism. This adds a layer of depth and complexity to the exploration of the themes, highlighting the psychological and emotional aspects of technology use that are often overlooked in discussions of surveillance and voyeurism.