Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

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  TiO2: The Materiality of White Research Project (2025) author(s): Marte Johnslien published in: Research Catalogue
  The artistic research project TiO₂: The Materiality of White (MoW) is led by Associate Professor Marte Johnslien, Department of Art and Craft, Oslo National Academy of the Arts. The project builds on her PhD project White to Earth, completed at the same department in 2020. MoW is funded by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) through the Programme for Artistic Research for the period 2022–2026.
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  Foot Baths for All (2025) author(s): Julia Weber, Mayumi Arai published in: Research Catalogue
  The artistic intervention "Foot Baths for All" (2024) emerged from an ethnographic exploration of collective forms of life on wastelands in Switzerland. Ethnographic insights regarding self-organized care, occupation, informal infrastructure, gift economies, and the shared use of water and electricity were fictionalized and recontextualized in the inner city of Zurich, in order to explore new forms of appropriation and participation in urban life. This exposition aims to share the results and experiences of this research through multiple formats: a video documentation, a how-to guide, and a text that offers insights into the ethnographic research and its translation into an artistic intervention, conceptualizing "Foot Bath Urbanism" as an artistic method for city-making from below. This project is situated in the field of artistic urban research. It is based on an expanded notion of art that moves beyond institutional contexts to intervene directly in public urban spaces through installations and performative practices, following approaches such as “New Genre Public Art”. The how-to guide is connected to instruction-based art, challenging conventional notions of authorship while emphasizing accessibility, participation, and interactivity, rooted in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Fluxus movement.
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• TEXT FORMAT The Hijacked Dream in Arts-Based Research: A Work of Surrealist Criticism (2025) author(s): Fey (Faith) Harkey, Cassie Fielding published in: Research Catalogue
  Mention of a surrealist form of criticism comes to us through Breton and Polizzotti, but we have little in the way of criteria or techniques for developing and identifying such critiques. This article, then, begins with the inquiry, what is surrealist criticism—or what might it be? The authors then introduce the focus of their own surrealist critique, the research methodology known as arts-based research (ABR). Over the course of their examination, Fielding and Harkey suggest that an egoic, or will-driven, approach to arts-based research must ultimately fail, in that it both denies the spirit of artmaking and disregards autonomy of figures in psyche. Blending academic and surrealist prose, fiction and poetry, the authors explore ways the ABR methodology can fail to serve either art or research. Still, Jungian thought, as well as the surrealist approach, may offer tools to inform an ABR that supports art, psyche, and research. In exploring the personal complex and the collective unconscious, particularly, Harkey and Fielding offer a window on all that can be lost—or gained—when the life of psyche is considered in an arts-based methodology.
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  Soittaa omaa mahtia - An Experimental Approach to the ‘Inner Power’ Improvisation in 19th‑Century Karelian Kantele Tradition (2025) author(s): Arja Anneli Kastinen published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition introduces an experimental framework for acquiring the “inner power” improvisation associated with 19th‑century non-literate Karelian kantele players. While their precise thought processes remain unknowable, it is clear they did not focus on finger control. The method emphasizes internalizing traditional plucking patterns without sheet music, allowing subconscious decision‑making to guide improvisation. Stepwise learning of increasingly complex patterns enables musicians to combine and vary them freely, creating a continuous flow of tones in which the player becomes part of the sound field. Contemporary practice thus reconnects with what kantele players once described as “playing their inner power” (“soitan omaa mahtia”), a style later termed “Quiet Exaltation” by folk music researcher Armas Otto Väisänen.
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• Emergent Patterns in Cultural Entrepreneurship: Navigating Tensions, Building Networks, and Cultivating Care (2025) author(s): Christer Windeløv-Lidzelius published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition explores emergent patterns in cultural entrepreneurship, grounded in empirical reflections from a cohort of early-career cultural practitioners. Drawing on anonymized theses and defense feedback from the Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship master’s programme at Stockholm University of the Arts, the article identifies three core themes: tensions between artistic practice and entrepreneurial imperatives; the role of networks in sustaining practice; and the emergence of care as both method and ethic. Situated within the fields of artistic research, pedagogy, and cultural theory, the exposition offers a multi-layered reflection on what it means to navigate uncertainty and create meaning in contemporary cultural work. The piece integrates theoretical perspectives on effectuation, narrative and embodied knowledge, slow design, and behavioral insights to illuminate how cultural entrepreneurs build viable, sustainable practices in volatile environments.
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  Reflections on Reflecting (2025) author(s): lisa hester published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition traces the development of a reflective arts and health practice during 2025. It brings together short written episodes, visual documentation, audio notes, and process materials to examine how artists make sense of the emotional, relational, and practical demands of working in care-based and community settings. The work sits alongside a written PDF and expands on it by presenting the reflections in a non-linear, multimodal format suited to artistic research.
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