Standing on the Stage of Convention : Critical attitudes in visual art seen through metafiction
(2025)
author(s): Iver Uhre Dahl
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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.
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.
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