Research Catalogue

This thesis investigates how narrative agency can emerge collaboratively between human, technological, and more-than-human agents within artistic re- search. In response to the limitations of anthropocentric storytelling, it poses the central question: How does narrative agency emerge in co-creative processes involving human, technological, and more-than-human forces? The research adopts an experimental, site-specific methodology grounded in transduction-the translation of one form of data or energy into another-to enga- ge with the expressive capacities of more-than-human entities. Three iterations form the core of the investigation: a photogrammetric and sonic exploration of De Nieuwe Passage (The Hague), a real-time collaboration with storm Conall in a city forest, and a durational transduction of Tokyo's soundscape into photo- graphic form. In each case, technologies such as cameras, code, and sensors are treated not as neutral tools, but as hybrid agents participating in narrative formation. The results demonstrate that narrative meaning can emerge through intra-active, multisensory processes rather than through fixed representation. Each experi- ment reveals how environmental and technological agents shape the unfolding of story, whether through the rhythm of human flows, the shifting forces of weather, or the temporal layers of urban sound. This thesis concludes that artistic research can facilitate non-anthropocentric storytelling by creating conditions for narrative to arise through entangled rela- tions. It recommends a methodological shift toward collaborative, sensory-ba- sed practices that decenter the human artist and embrace the co-authorship of technological and environmental systems.

PERFORMING PROCESS is a research group within the Artistic Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University, co-led by Emma Cocker and Danica Maier, both Associate Professors in Fine Art. We ask: what is at stake in focusing on the process of practice — the embodied, experiential, relational and material dimensions of artistic making, thinking and knowing. What is the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity within artistic research? How might a process-focused exploration intervene in and offer new perspectives on artistic practice and research, perhaps even on the uncertain conditions of contemporary life? PERFORMING PROCESS has origins in a number of critical precedents: Summer and Winter Lodges originating within the fine art area (practice-research residencies or laboratories dedicated to providing space-time for making-thinking and for exploring the process of practice), collaborative artistic research projects such as No Telos, for exploring the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity; the DREAM seminar series with PhD researchers which focuses specifically on the ‘how-ness’ of practice research by asking - How do we do what we do?

Understanding the complexities of current European society is impossible, especially for the younger generations, without knowing and understanding the complex historical developments and narratives. In most EU member states teaching history in the system of formal education is predominantly focused on national, if not patriotic history narratives. The consequence of this approach is that young people have a lack of knowledge about a wider, transnational and shared European history.

Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Interactive Media Design

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.