Why does she cry salty tears while he touches the sea
(2025)
author(s): Jenný Mikaelsdóttir
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Photography
Summary:
"Why does she cry salty tears while he touches the sea". Follows a search for understanding how being in cold water has a relationship with humans. More specifically if the sea is for people to be in or not - the upbringing stories from Iceland and a Nordic background is noticeable in how the author approaches the subject of the sea. From the perspective of being cautious towards it, yet fearful and therefore the quest is giving contrast on how the sea shapes people. On an emotional level yet spiritually as well. Questions regarding people’s place within the social context and, with others. The personal writings is intertwined with challenges people face and how it’s displayed in the art world. Research into how artist have dealt with overcoming bigger forces than themselves. The social element of a sea swimming community is discussed where recent acknowledgment in a modern society to be in cold water is ever present. This is done by interviewing people who have been tuned in with the sea, a former sailor and a sea swimmer.
The paper is divided into four chapters. Their titles serves the focus points. In Salt water, a look into the unknown, how artists deal with the sea as a natural force, admiration towards the sea with a connection to the emotional state. Community, is where the unknown offer a place to belong to, observing from a distance as well inside a sea swimming community. In Rituals, sea swim is investigated as a social act binding the community. Tales brings storytelling with focus on sailors and sea creatures.
Wear your shield : We are surrounded by intelligent eyes. We are being watched!
(2025)
author(s): Hossein Fardinfard
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Photography
My thesis discusses our privacy in the post-digital age where we are surrounded by surveillance
cameras that operate by advanced Artificial Intelligence technology and get command from that.
The paper begins with an introduction to the concept of "Digital identity" as a contemporary
phenomenon used by authorities for the authentication process of people in the virtual world.
The thesis clarifies how AI serves and empowers surveillance cameras and how this encounter puts
our privacy at stake. Nowadays, most rulers (if not all) misuse this advanced technology in lack of a
transparent law in order to monitor individuals in and out of their borders.
The discussion ends by demonstrating the role of art and photography in raising awareness, which
was one of my main goals for studying this subject in the last year. It also addresses some celebrated
contemporary artworks and photo series related to this issue.
Vessels of Home: A Search for Belonging
(2025)
author(s): Naomi Arabel Moonlion
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023 - BA Photography
'Vessels of Home' is a 'Search for Belonging.' As more and more people feel disconnected from the world around them, finding belonging is no longer only a question of physical place, but of creating moments in an imaginative space. These moments of belonging are short-lived, they are hard to grasp and contain in our ever individualizing world. Yet, I believe they can be found and nurtured through conscious acts and rituals.
Rowan Moonlion proposes various ways to cultivate moments of belonging, through stories contained in the vessels of Fire, Earth, Water and Air (Le Guin 2020). Firstly, in Fire, regarding human interactions: rejecting patriarchal and capitalist notions of group thinking, by letting go of identity definitions based on difference. Secondly, in Earth, considering nature: returning to our connection to the land, to understand the unifying power of interbeing. Thirdly, in Water, looking within our bodies: searching for sensorial experiences of belonging by making our bodies our homes. Finally, in Air, gazing in our minds and memories, imagining new worlds, holding stories together with our ancestors.
Witchcraft and Earth honoring rituals are used as a framework to explain and exemplify the four proposed layers. 'Vessels of Home' combines academic research grounded in queer and feminist theory, conversations with witches and other lived experience stories, poetic reflections taken from Moonlion’s artistic practice, and practical tools like rituals, recipes and affirmations. Together the four layers of belonging and the four types of writing form a unifying whole. Moonlion urges you to connect to your own personal form of belonging, and hopes you will learn to understand the value of trying to live in harmony with all else on this Earth.
The elements return again and again in a cyclical manner. The circle of life is ever present.
The Invisible Women & the myth of the photographic truth
(2025)
author(s): Henriëtte Maria Giovanna Siemons
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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.
The Bloom of Emotions
(2025)
author(s): Alejandra Conrado Carcasona
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Photography
With the recent cultural emphasis on the pursuit of happiness, the expression of negative emotions seems to be neglected. The impact of not valuing and integrating emotions that can be viewed as negative can be detrimental to one’s well-being. There seems to be a widespread denial or suppression of such emotions that, eventually, can lead to problems such as self-esteem problems, depression, anxiety, etc. This has led to the urge to better understand what this observation is based on.
How do you dress? What parts of your life do you share?
What version of yourself do you show? Do you show the socially acceptable version or the raw and authentic version of yourself?
There seems to be an unspoken rule that dictates how people should behave and portray themselves in front of others, showing only the positive aspects of their life. Taking this concept to a photographic level, I have encountered this scenario many times. You walk up to somebody and ask if you can take a picture of them. Their body tenses up, they rise tall and proud, and their smile stretches from ear to ear. They suddenly seem to be the happiest they have been all day, just for the picture.
This is also the reality of social media. Once you open the app you are sucked into a wonderland. Posts and stories of people seemingly living their best lives, travelling, smiling, flexing, and comparing themselves to a #FAKEBODY. This makes me question what power photography holds in this day and age. In what ways could photography be used as a tool used to suppress our emotions instead of allowing us to express our true feelings?
Through the use of chaptersation and personal stories, this thesis is presented by different emotions. By doing this, my aim is to create awareness and highlight the emphasis of emotions, making the reader question their own feelings and emotions, taking what resonates and helping them to tap into into their own body.
Sprouting-through: guarding the ambiguous nature of more-than-human experience
(2025)
author(s): Ieva Maslinskaitė
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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.
Spirit and the Machine, the Curious Case of Spider's Transformation into a Digital Ghost*
(2025)
author(s): Jeroen Zwaap
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
*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.
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
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.
Notes on how to be boringly surprised. Negativity, Affect, Intensity
(2025)
author(s): Carles Hidalgo
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Photography
The thesis seeks to analyze a type of negative reasoning that may arise during specific gay intimate encounters. It does so by relating it to absurdism, failure, rejection and the unimaginable. In order to get there, the paper focuses on the power of affects as incongruent impulses that can lead to unexpected situations. t also addresses the moments after this reasoning, when those intense impulses need a specific management. The research is also supported by an autofictional story that tries to question the inert and, in occasions, disappointing qualities of academic knowledge.
Mammal Mammilla Mamma
(2025)
author(s): Lotus Rosalina Hebbing
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023.
BA Photography.
Mammal, a vertebrate animal that was nourished with the milk from the mother when it were young.
Mammilla, nipple of the mammal.
Mamma, where are you.
At the age of twenty, Lotus Rosalina Hebbing had always lived in the city until an unannounced occasion occurred and her parents bought an old farm in the northern part of the Netherlands. There were gargantuan fields embosoming the house. On her visits, Lotus obtained a curiosity for witnessing the growth of crops, but also the demise of the beasts. It couldn’t be coincidental; the amount of times she encountered a dying critter. It fascinated her how she felt identically fallen out of control as the birds that smashed against the windows; an unwillingly lonesome surrender to the external. The carcasses became her comrades and if their bones were to defy the decay, she could find solace in the fecundity of the plains and revive from the objectifications that were pasted onto her by the hum of the city.
A few years later, a collection was made from the occurrences on these acres and contorted to the tale that is bound to fall out of tune. It follows a character known as ‘She’. It has been a long time since She tasted the comfort of her mama’s milk. Attempts of holding onto her childhood were only futile and so She decided to flee to a farm at the end of the world, with the persisting premonition to come near that same milk again. On her expedition to a substitute for alleviation, She encounters sweltering saps, suck stoppers and restless traps. Her observations enjoy fleshly connotations. The head does no longer bother to keep secrets, just like life isn’t hidden on these flatlands.
On her adventures, She invents lullabies that her disappearing mother could have sung to her. There is a suggestion of ambivalence in these songs. Their essence is to lull the awake to distant lands of sleep, but it interprets as a damaged dream. The traces lead back to scapes of sorrow where a melancholic melody alarms what was lost along the way and led to inevitable incompleteness.
A sweet sadness covers the blankets that await. The repeating rocking motion of the lullaby reminds of the tender arms that once were wrapped around her, now forever twisted out of shape.
Fantasized folklore, hysteric nostalgia and shriveled youth meet in the remnants of a music box. The work is making a plea to leave the modern cities, where objectification by surrounding eyes constantly influence the development of the teenage persona, and find consolation in remote lands to discover limitlessly the territories of the self.
Longing for the past: A research paper on how the lens-based depiction of the 1980s music industry shaped the collective memory of that decade
(2025)
author(s): Magali Sarah Roxane Speicher
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Photography
Longing for the past
A research paper on how the lens-based depiction of the 1980s music industry shaped the collective memory of that decade
By analysing how the camera captured the Western music industry of the 1980s, the research paper Longing for the past examines how that decade is collectively perceived nowadays. The goal is to understand what aspects of the ‘80s we remember and how these depictions are translated and read decades later. Along the way, this paper seeks to determine why the ‘80s are having a comeback in contemporary pop culture; therefore, it also inquires into trend cycles, the romanticisation of the past and how correctly it can be recreated.
Through historical research, especially on the music industry and photography of the ‘60s and the ‘70s, the musicians’ urgency and its visualisation in the 1980s are first put into context. Further, technological innovations, such as the rise of MTV (Music Television) and the music video, as well as the power of cover art and, ultimately, its fall, are dissected. By subsequently looking at political and sociocultural motivations of ‘80s music, this research paper investigates how far these can be translated accurately as this very art is brought back to the mainstream decades later. The findings within this research conclude that the modern image of the 1980s is a massive scam on our memory and, therewith, on contemporary mainstream culture.
What made a comeback is not the ‘80s style per se, but an illusion, initially genuinely crafted by nostalgic artists and, ultimately, cleverly tailored by companies to serve their products to the masses with an ‘old but desirable’-stamp. This retro-marketing, paired with the phenomenon of Retrieval- induced forgetting and social dilemmas, provides a lucrative platform for escapism and results in the meaning behind 1980s music being deducted. People tend to forget that the lens-based depiction of the ‘80s music industry was never meant to serve as pure documentation.
It’s a Pussy Power Kind of Story : Dedicated to Liberating Female Pleasure
(2025)
author(s): Emma Grima
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Photography
This is an academic opinionated feminist exploration, written from the point of view of a visual artist. I have investigated what has affected our female rights to pleasure, to then be able to conclude on how we can liberate female bodies and allow women to freely have power over their desires and pleasure, by understanding what their individual autonomies are.
This exploration is written to shake off society's constructs and stigmas that have conditioned us by going into detail about the effects of such constructs and then to look forward to a positive future. Let us be free, let us be agent, let us question and discover ourselves for who we are as individuals.
Hani Chladilová_And Suddenly, There Was Light
(2025)
author(s): Onyx Chladilová
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Photography
This thesis explores personal journey of the author’s healing
from sexual violence trauma through art making when conventional
therapy was not available. It is divided into two parts
where the first consists of descriptive-research-based writings,
while the second one provides the reader with personal writings
of the author.
The research-based part driven by a question How can
the process of art making help facilitate healing after experiencing
sexual violence firstly focuses on understanding trauma and
its causes and symptoms. Secondly, it provides understanding
of sexual violence, the barriers of reporting sexual violence, additionally,
it provides with understanding of how do survivors heal
from sexual violence induced trauma. Thirdly, it investigates releasing
and redirecting traumatic energy inspired by the writings
of therapist Peter A. Levine and outlines benefits of healing
through art making. Lastly, this part provides nine strategies
to avoid re-traumatization and to cope with potential triggers
when seeking to heal from trauma through art making.
The personal writings include thoughts, poems, notes
to self, and excerpts from a personal diary throughout author’s
endeavor to seek closure and become healed from sexual violence
induced trauma.
Overall, the thesis aims to inspire survivors of sexual violence
and other forms of trauma to include artmaking into their
journey of becoming healed.
echoes of a journey through eco
(2025)
author(s): Bødvar Hole
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023.
BA Photography.
The research paper Echoes of a Journey Through Eco is a record of several-yet-one-and-the-same journey(s). I departed guided by the two questions:
What can I learn from the forest?
How can I learn from the forest?
The first part of the journey I started as a humble, aimless observer in Haagse Bos, where I would sit and let my surroundings dictate what I would write. The symbolic, yet totally non-existent line between culture and nature became subject of my research.
I did not even know the history of the forest, or anything about trees from a more universally agreed upon perspective (science). I had to alter my approach to the research. Slowly the humble observer discovered a part of him inquisitively searching for questions and answers. I was approaching the field of ecology.
Some months into my journey I carved the fateful words “bark bark” in the bark of a tree. I questioned myself as an artist making a mark on nature. I started writing a text to underpin a few things I think an artist should think about when their practice takes place in and with nature involved. Some very critical, almost cynical part of me took stead of the humble observer. It seems I needed to vent some things.
The final paper holds fragments from all parts of the journey, from the humble observer to the cynical critic. As a journey it has barely begun, and as a text it is full of superficial reflections, very subjective opinions, and shortcomings. But, as the seed this text sprung from was planted only 6 months ago, it should be expected that it is still only a sapling about yay tall (20-30cm were I a Scots pine). If there is one thing I learned from trees, it’s patience.
the tenderness of silence
(2024)
author(s): Giulia Menicucci
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Research Paper of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2024. BA Photography.
This research paper began to investigate photographers and visual artists who use their practice as a coping mechanism to deal and understand family dynamics and events connected to it. Drawing inspiration from personal narratives and correspondence with my father, the research navigates through themes such as generational silence, family, and Italian patriarchal culture.Through a reflective process, I believe that artistic practice can become a way to delve into the traumas that affect the family environment. In this way, it is possible to approach places and people we do not know well, such as our parents. This process not only facilitates healing but has also given me the tools to further develop my practice by using knowledge gained from the practice of other photographers and exploring the combination of different methods of writing. The research paper was the starting point of my collaboration with my father as it gave me the possibility to open a conversation with him and discover the untold things that lay between us. In the process of writing, I’ve used the paper as a way to remember the stories of my childhood and take inspiration for my photography.
The elements that I’ve touched appon the stories came back later in the process of making allowing me to have a clearest idea of my further steps into the project. To understand this, I looked in someone else’s houses, experiencing the tradition of mourning on the Greek island through the photography of Ioanna Sakellaraki and the tenderness of a mother in understanding her children with the project of Sian Davey. I moved to different places, to different generations, entering the house of Larry Sultan, full of kitschy design and colorful wallpaper that sets the scene for a story of discovery.
The driveway of Deanne Dikerman has seen many days and many goodbyes and the loving words and confession of Chantal Akerman who could not give more for her mother. I discovered the work of Tami Aftab in the little post-its stuck in the corners of a house and now part of the outside world. And then between laughter and tears, I entered the complicated house of Richard Billingham, between one glass of wine and another.
Each of these artists showed their intimate space, in which we discover stories that do not belong to us but that can guide us to understanding where we are, what we feel, and what we suffer. There is a lot of vulnerability in being behind the camera while a parent is in front. To ask questions and start seeing them as people and not just as parents. To reveal the stories of pain that lie in the past and are hidden by the passing of time. We hide in the home to escape from what frightens us and then we are called to talk about what is hidden. Photography is a way in which we can reshape what has happened, a way in which we can understand the succession of events and build a home that hides nothing. In doing this research I opened up a conversation and brought the house outside. I broke a silence that had lasted too many years and found a passionate father who wanted to discard the past. And so, in staying in silence while you are willing to say things but don’t know where to start there is some tenderness and there is some strength. In unfolding the memories and breaking the silence I know I have found empathy instead of trauma, creating a common ground where climbing trees is a moment of rest somewhere in the past.
We All Eat From Each Other: The act of feeding in more-than-human entanglements
(2024)
author(s): Nesie Wang
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
This thesis is an attempt to unfold multifaceted discussions in multispecies entanglements, focusing on the fundamental act of feeding—a process that extends beyond mere sustenance to become a critical interaction within the web of life. It interlaces a rich array of perspectives, combining academic research, artistic inquiry, and personal reflections to illuminate the diverse implications of feeding.
On Angry Gamers - How Representation shapes Male Entitlement to First Person Shooters
(2024)
author(s): Ben Christ
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
This paper delves into how representation affects men’s entitlement to First-person shooters (FPS). Starting with a quick look at the history of computing and representation, I‘ll explore how FPS games have been marketed to men over time.
I‘ll also research how e-sports and streaming contribute to shaping the image of a „hardcore“ gamer. Using Gamergate in 2014 and 2015 as a case study, we‘ll see how the „hardcore“ white male gaming community reacts when it feels like it is being attacked.
The gaming industry has been targeting their games towards men for a long time, creating a space where they feel they can do whatever they want. Video games, for them, are a realm of endless possibilities. So, when it seems like someone is trying to impose on their (perceived) freedom (as seen in Gamergate), they‘re ready to fight back.
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Photography The thesis seeks to analyze a type of negative reasoning that may arise during specific gay intimate encounters. It does so by relating it to absurdism, failure, rejection and the unimaginable. In order to get there, the paper focuses on the power of affects as incongruent impulses that can lead to unexpected situations. t also addresses the moments after this reasoning, when those intense impulses need a specific management. The research is also supported by an autofictional story that tries to question the inert and, in occasions, disappointing qualities of academic knowledge.open exposition comments (0)
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Photography This is an academic opinionated feminist exploration, written from the point of view of a visual artist. I have investigated what has affected our female rights to pleasure, to then be able to conclude on how we can liberate female bodies and allow women to freely have power over their desires and pleasure, by understanding what their individual autonomies are. This exploration is written to shake off society's constructs and stigmas that have conditioned us by going into detail about the effects of such constructs and then to look forward to a positive future. Let us be free, let us be agent, let us question and discover ourselves for who we are as individuals.open exposition comments (0)
This thesis is an attempt to unfold multifaceted discussions in multispecies entanglements, focusing on the fundamental act of feeding—a process that extends beyond mere sustenance to become a critical interaction within the web of life. It interlaces a rich array of perspectives, combining academic research, artistic inquiry, and personal reflections to illuminate the diverse implications of feeding.open exposition comments (0)
This paper delves into how representation affects men’s entitlement to First-person shooters (FPS). Starting with a quick look at the history of computing and representation, I‘ll explore how FPS games have been marketed to men over time. I‘ll also research how e-sports and streaming contribute to shaping the image of a „hardcore“ gamer. Using Gamergate in 2014 and 2015 as a case study, we‘ll see how the „hardcore“ white male gaming community reacts when it feels like it is being attacked. The gaming industry has been targeting their games towards men for a long time, creating a space where they feel they can do whatever they want. Video games, for them, are a realm of endless possibilities. So, when it seems like someone is trying to impose on their (perceived) freedom (as seen in Gamergate), they‘re ready to fight back.open exposition comments (0)