Sensing Electricity: Electricity in architectural space
(2025)
author(s): Tom Šebestíková
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE)
From my own experience, I use electricity every day. Energy prices are rising and the need for more sustainable electricity is rising. As an architect, I'm questioning, how is it possible that I as a user of electricity can't sense further than a switch. The usage of electricity in architectural space is lacking sensation and understanding.
In my research I'm taking a journey through the history of electricity, trying to understand the principles of electric power. With this, I'm recreating multiple simple models demonstrating the presence of electricity. These models would eventually help me in designing architectural interventions I've placed at Maasvlakte as a location for electricity generation and innovation.
Rubberneckers
(2025)
author(s): Joana Dos Santos Almeida
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Fine Arts
This Thesis is comprised of a series of chapters, which combine personal observations and analysis of existing theory and literature regarding the concept of trauma within the artistic context.
Throughout the text, I explore the choices and intuitive origins of the artistic practice with reference to my own experiences and connect them to my interest in the
traumatic.
Using Griselda Pollock’s writings on Trauma and art as a foundation, I explore the theoretical sides of trauma and how it operates, specifically that of psychoanalytical, scientific and philosophical texts. I aim to weave connections between the act of observation inherent to the artistic practice and the same spectacle associated with violent subject matter. This becomes the basis for the development of what I call, the ‘traumatic method’, which involves my ongoing research into this relationship.
Questions of affect and embodiment become key components of this thesis in regards to the function of using trauma as a conceptual starting point during the artistic process. Specifically the importance of re-enactment and treating the traumatic as a medium within itself rather than simply
subject matter.
Rethinking urban movement through the frame of radical psychiatry
(2025)
author(s): Dora Ramljak
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023; BA Photography
Research is the ground for exploring the world. My research paper serves as a guide in the sensorial and caring experience of the world around us as. Written in stages in which patients enter and experience the sensory room, the transition from history to the future opens space for discussion and implementation of observed practices in individual realities.
The beginning chapters introduce radical movements in psychiatry while outlining the historical formation of disability as a social issue. Discussion around illness and disability is observed trough political and philosophical frame. Historical examples provide insight into how the space of the institution itself can re-shape into a progressing form, how the discussion about institutionalised people is de-stigmatised once the closed system of a hospital or an asylum opens to its surrounding environment, and how this can affect the position of healthcare, psychiatry specifically, on the level of a state.
The chapters bring forward current knowledge around body memory and studies around sensory treatments in institutionalized settings. In this chapters, the body is not solely observed in the setting of a hospital or asylum, but brought in the context of perceiving the body as a social and cultural object.
Short poetic digressions are moments of personal reflection, automatic writing that reminds me of moments when I saw the necessity to provide alternative models of care.
The paper contains interviews and transcriptions of conversations I had with my commissioners. Through conversations with medical workers and artists, I reflected upon the current state of care provisions, ranging from institutional care to self-care. The dialogues show sensibility and understanding that a shift in healthcare towards the re-humanization of the ill is needed.
Written in-between moments of working with materials in the workshop settings, research has acted as
Player versus Industry; Gaming, women and storytelling
(2025)
author(s): Melisa Hadimoglu
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Interactive Media Design
After four years of studying art and technology in The Netherlands and having my own experience in search of an internship within the gaming industry, I came to realize problems that I saw in my earlier years with my mother were not limited to Turkey, and that it is a much bigger problem which spans worldwide. In this light of realizations, I decided to put together this thesis which will explore women’s role in the gaming industry with a focus on my own passion in story driven games.
Over de Kloof die bestaat tussen jou en mij. en de verantwoordelijkheid die ik als fotograaf draag in de beeldvorming van de persoon voor de camera
(2025)
author(s): Tobias Reinbrandt Haan
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
Photography
In this research paper I aim to verbalize methods of working when portraying other people in order to find out how I want to tell the stories of people living in different social contexts than my own, through the realm of documentary making, in an honest and ethically justifiable way. My research consists of analyzing relevant aspects of the history of documentary photography over the last century. Through the work of artists like Dorothea Lange, Robert Capa, Nan Goldin & Susan Meiselas, a timeline is mapped out in which I recognize the role of the Western perspective and the changing dynamics within the domain of visual representation. Secondly, I make comparisons with the use of two case studies from the Netherlands. I describe elements of and reflect on the work of photographers Jan Hoek and Jan Dirk van der Burg, with both of whom I share an arguably similar background. By doing so, I counter their practices while verbalizing a way of working for myself. Lastly, the research done for the paper contains the tracing of my past, and the path that I have walked to come to this point. With the recognition of the privileges in my background, I have been able to better position myself as a photographer.
One day you shall only speak to the bees
(2025)
author(s): Matthew Seán Mc Carty
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
This work focuses on the position of the blow-in, or outsider in Irish society. From this, the text discusses Irish, queer and white guilt in isolated community dynamics. Questioning the acts of group assimilation, ascension and self-annihilation all through poetics.
