Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 3. Publications 2025 Published expositions 2025
• 2. Publications 2024 published in 2024
• 1. Publications 2023 Maybe a description for yourself
• 0. Publications 2022 Publications 2022

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  My father, the inmate? (2025) author(s): Benedikte Bergh Iversen published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
  Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 Master Photography & Society In this thesis I will share experiences and memories as a daughter of an inmate combined with substance abuse and mental health problems. This person is my father. Through my own experiences and images, I want to see if there is a possibility for images to make it easier to talk about taboo in society, and personal traumatic memory. I hope for my project to open up this conversation. To let others in this situation know that they’re not alone with their feelings, and that they didn’t do anything wrong. This thesis consists mostly of in-the-moment writing spurs, with reflections from my own experiences, memories and thoughts.
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  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.
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  Love : a gateway drug (2025) author(s): Lui MacRae Wolstencroft published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
  Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Fine Arts This thesis explores the theory that love can act as ‘a gateway drug’ and if so, a ‘gateway’ to what exactly? ‘Being in love’ is a complex condition which induces a number of psychoactive responses in the brain these affect all parts of the body, including the DNA. These chemical reactions within the brain are comparable to those involved in drug addiction, as both stimulate the reward pathways in the brain. This thesis reviews the chemical processes which mirror the responses of other pleasure stimuli and mimic the brain chemistry patterns of drug addiction. The study also explores how developing technologies can influence ‘love’ and how these are affecting human evolution and the reproductive drive. I conducted this research in order to inform my artistic practice. The process of writing here has given me a foundation of knowledge which can be transmuted into my artistic process.
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  Lost in Translation: Navigating through Individual and Cultural Differences of Communication & Building Mutual Understanding beyond Language (2025) author(s): Xiaoyao Ma published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
  Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Interactive Media Design We express ourselves primarily through language. Somehow for me, these precious moments like sharing a box of chicken nuggets convey more than saying, “I’d like to spend some time with you.” I always feel understood in those situations. There are so many qualities that embed into senses rather than words. Through the course of the thesis, I took examples from my experiences to explore the contrasting worldviews generated by speaking different languages. I then looked into numerous literary and philosophical texts to investigate the reasons behind the differences, including discussing variations in translating poems and expressing emotions in Chinese and English languages. Extracts from fictional literature about language are also listed to help expand the panel to the nature of communication and variation of individual perceptions. An experiment with my friend to have a conversation in our different mother tongues also gave me the insight that the first step of understanding is the desire to understand. I choose to present these examples because they are all tied together by experiencing loss, contradiction, and transformation. By threading these pieces together, I finally gathered the floating pixels in my brain and curated them into a tangible image to make myself understood to others.
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  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.
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  Like, So Totally (Arche)Typical : A Look Into Malaysia’s (Unfair)ytales (2025) author(s): Isabelle Nair-Lacheta published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
  Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Interactive Media Design This paper examines the question: What impact have archetypes in Malaysian folklore had on the idealisation of women and their socio-cultural expectations of gender and sexuality? To answer this question, I conducted a systematic review of common Malaysian folktales, folk comics, folk epics and mythology, examining their use of female characters and language to ascertain what common archetypes emerge from these forms of storytelling. From this systematic review, it is clear that archetypes in Malaysian folklore attempt to subjugate, stigmatise and objectify Malaysian women. While it is impossible to quantify the exact effect this has had on Malaysian society; I submit that there is a causal sequence in place in which we see the same lessons being propagated by the archetypes in Malaysian folklore being mirrored at every level of Malaysian society, ranging from the beauty industry to the political sphere.
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