Current PhD research

What is the impact of social-artistic work or community art?  Community art is most of the time small-scale and less visible in the field of the arts. Working with sociallly vulnerable participants is very specific and the outcome is most of the time not an ordinary work of art that can be sold. It is not prestigious.  But this kind of art does have a big influence on the lives of the participants.

The final goal of my research is to give a view on the human impact of social-artistic projects at the level of the participants. As a researcher I want to show the world behind my own social-artistic practice and the projects of some of my colleagues. I film my research and through long interviews with the participants I try to reflect their own voice. Listening is the most important part of my work as a researcher. Sometimes social-artistic work can change people's life and I try to capture that process.

The last four/five years I have been working on two documentary films in the context of migration, identity and integration: ‘No Man Is An Island’ and ‘Passe-Partout’. The films have been released and shown around the world.

In my practice as a documentary maker I have always been struggling with the questions: what is reality? and what is the best possible way of representing reality?

In his manifesto, 'Lessons of Darkness', Werner Herzog expresses this as follows: "There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. We must ask of reality: how important is it, really? And: how important, really, is the factual? Of course, we cannot disregard the factual; it has normative power. But it can never give us the kind of illumination, the ecstatic flash, from all which Truth emerges. If only the factual, upon all which the so-called cinema vérité fixates, were of significance, then one could argue that the vérité-the truth-at its most concentrated must reside in the telephone book, in its hundreds of thousands of entries that are all factually correct and, so, correspond to reality.”

There has always been a relationship between reality itself and the manner in which it is interpreted by the maker. Merely by an editing process you get caught in the interpretation of reality.

“Objectivity can only be the author's and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel.” Andrey Tarkovsky

My work refers more to what photographer Jeff Wall has described as 'Near Documentary’ - a construction that hopes to be experienced as something truthful, and at the same time expects to be revealed as artifice.

The central question in my research was therefore as complex as straightforward: what is the best possible way of portraying the refugee?

I have chosen not to limit myself to the mere recording or observing of reality. Instead, I’ve used techniques from the broader film medium to express my vision of reality in a creative way. This involves the filming itself, the editing process and the sound design. My way of working is in this way influenced by both fiction and experimental film.

As an author, I interpret reality because I believe that all creative expression owes its importance and historical interest to a certain autonomy- a freedom of interpretation and a wilfullness. There is no right or wrong, there is only your own voice. I saw films where refugees were being filmed not closer then a medium shot or behind a closed door or in the dark, for all that matters. There is not one Truth, there are only ethical and esthetical choices.

So I think it is better to speak about ‘realities’ instead of the reality.

As a filmmaker you are first perceiving the world, and then framing it in a certain way. Afterwards there is another layer of perception/interpretation that takes place within your spectators, where they also contribute to the production of meaning. But your position as a filmmaker will anyway influence which kind of meaning.

Through the process of making my two films, I choose EMPATHY. This resulted in films narrated out of the perspective of the refugee. And visually as close as I could get to them. I can imagine that this approach is maybe problematic in the eyes of a scientific researcher, for whom objectivity is the highest goal. But at the end of the day, I’m a filmmaker who takes a stand.

My intention to make a film about migration and identity comes largely from a deep dissatisfaction with the perception of migration. Because of the emergence of new media and journalism, a habituation occurred in the way we look at refugees. We are almost overrun with images of people in search of a better life, which only worked apathy in hand. There are too many generalizations, it is all too volatile and there is too little attention for to the ordinary, for how in the banality, reality itself most clearly emerges. That is also the reason why the focus of my two films lies on the everyday behaviour of my characters. It makes them human and it’s far away from the spectacle that is normally served to the audience.

The LUMINAL LAB explores the perception of coloured light. The phenomenology of colour remains an unconscious process, both for the designer during a creative process as for the spectators who perceive it during a performance. I am interested in how the audience perceives these atmospheres, as this topic remains fairly unexplored within both academic and artistic research. This research topic is investigated through an interactive environment in which the audience is immersed in different light atmospheres. It looks into how you create spaces that embrace you and care for you and what the influences of light on diverse sensorial perceptions are. For instance: do you perceive the same music differently surrounded by a certain light atmosphere? And what triggers this difference?

About Caroline: Caroline is active as a designer for theatre creations. Her role takes various forms: scenographer, light designer, performer and researcher. After a Master study in Product Design and a Master after Master in Theatre Studies, design and theatre came together in a Scenography course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

After her training, she started as an assistant lighting design for the performance "It' going to get worse and worse, my friend" by Voetvolk | Lisbeth Gruwez. Afterwards she worked as a light designer for Mercedes Dassy, Vera Tussing, Igor Shyshko & Tale Dolven and Alexander Vantournhout, among others.

She recently started a research project on the influence of light on perception in the context of a PhD in the arts via Brussels Arts Platform (VUB/RITCS).

The research of Saddie Choua is related to the prelude "How do I make images about minority groups?" Starting from her own practice as a visual artist, video artist, documentary maker, she wonders how art can work in a political emancipatory way within our current patriarchal, racist and capitalist society?

How do you make a film that is not only a transfer of information such as in a documentary, but that is also transforming? A film that not only provides knowledge about the world but also generates self-insight? A film that makes clear your own position within power structures? How to speak and depict in a different way from a sub- alternal position, or is it just the concept of "the other" that confines us in dominant images and narratives?

This project starts from problems, I experienced during my artistic work in the KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) in Brussels, where I was working as a dramaturge and a member of the artistic staff between 2001 and 2013. My colleagues and me asked ourselves the following question: how to counter the negative effects of neoliberalism in a city like Brussels? And what kind of role art and artists could play in such a project? We found an answer for now in the powerful vision on  the city and citizenship, as it is formulated by Boudry et all, 2003 and Eric Corijn. As a consequence of these insights, we searched for ways to contribute with our city-theater to the development of inclusive, hybrid communities and connections between forms of “urban culture” and the official accepted arts. Even when I learned a lot from this project, from my point of view it was not critical enough toward the system of capitalism and liberal democracy.

What was needed to develop an alternative? To answer that question, I started artistic research on Pantagleize of Michel de Ghelderode (1929). This theatre-text can be considered as a parody on the different political and artistic “avant-gardes” of the period between the two world-wars. Together with master-students and two professor-colleagues of the RITCS-theater-school and in collaboration with KVS, I started a “transit-zone”, an artistic laboratory in which the drive for experimenting of young theatre-makers is combined with the experience of older artists. The work in the frame of this transit-zone led to a profound transformation of the original piece into a new piece, that is better suited to deal with contemporary problems of artistic and political engagement.

My research contains, apart from this artistic aspect also an autobiographical/historical aspect: the (re)construction of my trajectory between 1983 and 2013; of the different phases of my critics on the KVS-project from 2008 untill now (inspired by BAVO, Decreus, De Dijn and Žižek); of the interpretation of the original text starting from frames, I borrow from the interbellum (the anarchistic movement, Bachtin, Benjamin, Simmel, Sombart, Tönnies): of the interpretation of the new Pantagleize-version from contemporary perspectives like Sloterdijks co-immunism, the communism of Negri and Hardt and Žižek, the “commons” in the work of Achterhuis and Bauwens. To conclude, there is also a dramaturgical aspect: the creation of a dialogical space wherein the diverse points of views that were occuring in al these (re)constructions, are brought into debate. I examine, if they can offer elements for the rough design of an alternative aesthetics and politics, based on dissensus and not on consensus.

All this is supposed to result in a relative new universe.  I’ts about a theory and practice of democracy as (revolutionary) resistance that is trespassing the limits of legalism. It is characterised by the selforganisation of the masses, that only from a point of view outside seem to be uniform, but from inside exist in a heterogeneity of groups in a constant state of interaction. Democracy as resistance as I see it, is not happening inside  the institutions of the city or the state, also not out there, in society, but morely between state/city and society. To conclude, I show how the methods of artistic research as we developed it in the transit-zone and certains aspects of  the horse dressage-scene in the performance, can be seen as a first move for an aesthetics, that is suitable with this way of political thinking.

Being is hearing and being heard. I embrace the idea that sound is a phenomenon that we both influence and are influenced by.

How can we use a form of conscious listening, discovering our (unconscious) filters  to break open our own listening into a listening that becomes more receptive to the strange and the unfamiliar, that which frightens us, which we subconsciously filter out as noise?

Through the method of feedback loops, Social Recordings wants to search for the meanings that are generated in an ongoing process of relational listening. In the process of sending and receiving, a dialogical network of places and people who listen to each other and respond to each other is created.

Will the project contribute to transcending one’s own identity  and cause a shared "sonic" space? A listening community? Where all sound can manifest itself, where there is a form of "open listening" without discrimination?

“In India, the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF “reforms” middle class— the market—live side by side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 2,50,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than twenty rupees (0.25 Euro) a day” - Arundhati roy.

The farmer suicide isn’t the issue, it is only the manifestation of the bigger problem. The idea of development is so skewed in India, that all of the health, education, economic policies are focussed on ‘development’ of cities which only constitutes 30% of population. While the rest 70% living in villages suffer absolute abuse and apathy. High input costs in farming with little or no returns, burgeoning interest rates ( as high as 12% per month) from banks and private moneylender’s greed have pushed farmers into debts of astronomical figures. Humiliated by banks and private moneylenders, what must a farmer should do if not commit suicide? As an example, 17,368 farmer suicide were observed in 2009 and it has been only increasing since then. Now the state has devised new mechanisms to hide the numbers.

(though committing suicide does not absolve the farmer’s family from debt)

The middle class’s absolute apathy is reflected as national media refers farmers suicides as numbers or figures, like objects. And film or popular literature hardly bothers to look at them emotionally/intimately/realistically. Although if a Bollywood figure even had a minor flu, it does become national news. At present, there are no major voices of resistance in media or art.For the first two years, through my research and film, I aim to examine the issue from different points of view to draw a portrait of the systemic exploitation.

What does an 8 year old orphan feel like growing up in a village where death looms. If yesterday his father poisoned himself with pesticide, a few days before his uncle had hung up himself by a tree, and he knows someone else might be forced to do the same tomorrow. How does it shape him?

How does a bank manager who has been given ‘targets’ to fulfill, disbursing and recovering loans at any cost, deals with his conscience when he belongs to the same village where farmers are committing suicide ? How does a farmer’s son become a loan recovery agent himself and uses tactics to humiliate and bully farmers?

How does a woman farmer, perhaps a widow, prove that she is also a farmer despite being a woman and be eligible for state sponsored compensation? What hopes a city holds for her son who doesn’t want to be a farmer anymore? How are they pushed to become labourers or modern slaves of cities? Isn’t loss of dignity even worse than loss of life?

My second query is to see the utmost impact of a documentary film in India, since hardly any documentary film gets a theatrical release here. What alternate distribution channels, and platforms I can find to reach the furthest corners and therefore if my film can have a tangible impact on grass-root levels.

Does an animated inanimate object have the power to move us in an emotional, intellectual and literal sense? Laura Vandewynckel investigates the impact of puppets and automata on the unsuspecting spectator. Can these beings, that are active and passive, subject and object, everyone and no one at the same time, be used to visualize social mechanisms? The puppet-thing triggers our critical reflection, the puppet-being compels us to engage emotionally. In the hybrid documentary project Pharmakoi a scapegoat puppet is introduced to a community of islanders and confronts them with their own role as culprit and victim in the scapegoat mechanism.

Science and technology have become an essential part of our cultural identity. With this PhD research, I aim to delve into the implications that this fact has on our ancestral search for meaning. And in particular, I want to focus on listening to female voices.

Through film, I intend to reflect on dominant scientific narratives, and their possible connections with prevailing social and gender norms. In this pursue to question and look at women and science from different angles and points of view, I will study alternative film forms that can bring meaning to this process.

This exploration of non-conventional forms in film will itself be an essential part of my doctoral work. In doing so, I will use essayistic resources, drawing connections between seemingly divergent themes and thoughts. I am also interested in analyzing the use of fiction elements within non-fiction film (and vice versa), the connection between film and theater, and the sensory potential of elements that are not purely narrative.

Focusing on small places and individual events, a reflection on universal questions will be created, looking at the small to understand the larger. How do we women construct the vision and role of women? What is the scale of interdependence in which we live? What do science and technology contribute to our search for meaning? Are there other ways of practicing science? What is it that science cannot give us?

Vanessa del Campo is a Spanish filmmaker based in Belgium. She completed a Master in Audiovisual Arts at LUCA School of Arts, in Brussels. She had previously studied filmmaking in Spain and Cuba. Vanessa also holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

In the early 1970s, dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven founded political theatre company Het Trojaanse Paard. Specific to this group, and to related groups around them, was the conviction that art served a purpose beyond art: to bring about a process of social awareness and provide audiences with strategies to transform their everyday reality. The moment of performance was given an intention for the reality around it.

This form or technique was not new and was not unrelated to previous and parallel developments in theatre history, such as practices from the early-twentieth-century avant-garde or from contemporaries like Brazilian theatre-maker Augusto Boal. Boal conceived art as a 'rehearsal for reality', as a rehearsal space where the potentiality of possible future scenarios can be explored. This formative, speculative quality is re-emerging strongly in our arts landscape today.In her research, Esther Severi compares contemporary, socially engaged artistic practices she is involved in as a dramaturge with strategies of Het Trojaanse Paard and various transhistorical and transgeographical references. In doing so, she asks how we can connect engaged, pedagogical theatre practices throughout history in the search for a political theatre for the future.

ARTISTIC STUDY ON INTEGRATION, SOCIAL COMMONS AND TOGETHERNESS

Despite the fact that, due to political, social and economic migration, society evolves and changes for everyone, only one part of the population is expected – often forced – to actively react to that change and to undergo an integration course: migrants, the Others. This research is an attempt towards changing that perspective by suggesting a two-sided approach and by drawing on an adequate model for co-existence. It is assumed that migration can no longer be seen as an action taken by the Other but rather as a co- creation, concentrated around the social commons where all the actors (locals and non-locals) are having (taking?) an active role.Throughout the numerous participative art-processes, Sara Oklobdzija will be focusing on re-examination (diagnosing) and remodelling (correcting) of the relationship between local and non-local population, while equally relaying on actuality as on history.Usually written by the ‘winners’, history teaches us carefully chosen facts about the crimes committed and the heroism attained. In contrast, this research-project chooses to focus on a history that often disposes the criminal acts of ‘not acting’ in circumstances of smaller or larger socio-political hazards (eg.COVID, war etc.). Having lived in Belgium for ten years now, Sara Oklobdzija has observed how the local community, when it comes to questions of migration and integration, often takes a neutral stance with an almost childish sense of ease. On one side there is a naive believe in simply having the right to do so while on the other side there is an almost paralyzing fear of making a mistake or being seen as politically incorrect. How to perform a certain reset of this passive social condition, and how to engage those suffering from ‘indifferent citizen syndrome’? What does it mean to witness violence that is undeniably present but mostly represented through its own absence?As an artist, artivist and researcher, Sara is mostly interested in creating, but also generating and documenting that process of community-making through engaged artistic practice. Through hybrid and conceptual formats (installation, ad-hock performance, theatre play, video essay) she wishes to build very actual ‘social models’. By hijack the artwork Sara hopes to stimulate a process that could encourage gradual social change, leading us towards a functional host society.

How can the sovereign who determines our rights and obligations as members of society also ‘unmake’ us? Why are some people declared undesirable? Why are their lives devalued and pushed out of political structures?

Practices that forcibly take the personality and human dignity away from certain people aim to exclude the ‘undesirables’ from the body politic. However, exclusion also contains inclusion, as it aims to discipline and change individualities to incorporate them into the political body. Therefore, they are also discipline mechanisms.

How does the sovereign create an ‘unlawful’ space through its legal system and its institutions? If the main principle of the social contract is that sovereignty derives its legitimacy and power from the people, how can this relationship deteriorate and turn into a power mechanism that functions to oppress certain people? And how do the oppressed and their allies raise their voices in order to reclaim their rights? Can they participate in the structures that work against them and propose ‘real’ alternatives? Or will ‘real democracy’ remain a pipe dream?

This Ph.D. research is twofold. The first part of the research examines how a theoretical subject, a political issue, can be analyzed and creatively conveyed through visual form and cinema. If words can be organized to reflect certain ideas and express philosophical thought, how can philosophical and political subject conveyed through cinema? How can animation as a medium be instrumental in creating political cinema? The research aims to push the boundaries of political activist storytelling by searching for a visual form to represent the narrative. An animated documentary will examine state-induced violence against political activists through a specific case study. Özge Akarsu will use an innovative combination of theoretical perspectives and mixed socio-legal methods – including interviews and case law analysis – throughout the process.

The second part of the research explores the place of animation in contemporary art. It is questioned how its limit can be expanded to put a spotlight on the clash between individuals and those in power. Özge Akarsu will explore how handcrafted frame-by-frame animation can be paired with other art forms. She will also discover how to create a mutually nourishing work system that combines artistic, intuitive, and intellectual ideas. Finally, the quest for an experimental, political, and cinematic language that synthesizes animation with other mediums will allow her to explore animation’s place in contemporary art and theory.

This research explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and creative arts by developing a digital twin of an artist, capable of generating novel audiovisual performances. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset that includes historical performance data, personal communications, and social media feeds, the project aims to create an AI model that closely mimics the artist's style. The study investigates the boundaries between human creativity and computational innovation, addressing philosophical questions about the role of human agency in art and the potential for AI to reshape artistic practices. By engaging with cutting-edge technologies and interdisciplinary collaborations, this research seeks to advance the field of computational creativity and redefine the future of artistic expression.

This research explores the notion of ‘liveness’ in visual and performing arts in relation to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.

The title is borrowed partially from the late artist Ian White’s use of the term ‘liveness’ in his essay ‘Performer, Audience, Mirror: Cinema, Theatre and the Idea of the Live’ (2012): ‘thinking cinema and theatre together, they might be the means by which liveness could be further described … as the product of an extraordinary kind of negation.’ And partially from a line in the introduction of philosopher Joan Copjec’s book Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists (1994): ‘“The” pleb does not exist; but there is “plebness.”’ Namely, there is no concrete, actual pleb corresponding to a flesh-and-bones person but there is a phenomenon that shows the limit of a given system (corresponding, too, to the philosophical distinction between ‘to exist’ and ‘there is’ in logic).

White’s enigmatic essay asks what happens when chronology is cut, and cinema expands. This research brings the liveness of expanded cinema (by which I also refer to performance art, in line with White) into dialogue with psychoanalytic theory, whose encounter has so far been inexistent or superficial (Bishop, Mulvey, et al.). Questions: how does the present appear? How is consciousness of the present produced? How does desire mobilise the present? Not the present of commodities (always more), but the evanescent present. The first is the present of infinite duration, the insatiable doctrine of the superego, embodied by the promise of progress without end or by the executioner (one might think of entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die philosophy). The second kind of present relates to a temporality whose very limit opens the question of the subject (Che vuoi?) as an indeterminate end in itself (Copjec), conscious of death and not deadening (one might think of filmmaker Derek Jarman’s Blue [1993]).

Working closely with Copjec’s theorising of the present in her essay ‘Battle Fatigue: Kiarostami and Capitalism,’ (2019) and theories put forward in her edited volume Radical Evil (1996), we can ask: How does the effacement of the evanescent present by the endless present relate to the new totalitarianism? Artworks, whether plastic like sculpture or ephemeral like performance, are forms of reply to the question of the evanescent present and they must be deciphered, as in psychoanalysis; artworks suppose the social, what Copjec calls a common language, meaning it can be debated by others. Theatre is a stage for the present and at the same time the negation of the present, as are galleries, lecture halls and other framing apparatuses; in this way they can serve as models (like the psychoanalytic session) in which the immediacy (Kornbluh) of the present of commodities is suspended in order to think. What we see in the culture of the endless present is erosion of the ‘stage,’ which is the place of the subject.

The Breath Art project of Maribeth Diggle will investigate how breath can be identified and studied as a primary actor in practices of dynamic performance expression, and how embodying conscious breath techniques can strengthen different performance output, which will help design a brand new breath art methodology to contribute to, and complement, already standing curriculum. Until now, the role of breath as a central part of the performative and interpretative act has been largely under analysed, treated more as utilitarian, and lacks definition as an essential form of communication and tool to discover and embody authentic expression. This project, therefore, will analyse and define breath's agency in performing bodies and performative practice, not exclusively from a therapeutic point of view, but from an expressive, performative, and creative perspective. It will do so by analysing what Maribeth Diggle calls “dynamic breath output” (the multiple characteristics which breath produces as forms of expression) through varied regular workshops, and by continuing her own professional work in breath art practice. Her goal will be to design a unique methodology which can update performance practice through the medium of breath.

I want to prove that living with Shakespeare, in this case with Macbeth, borders on madness.
One could approach this tendency towards madness in Shakespeare as an object for scientific research, but I do not want to do that. I want to use artistic means to explore Bloetwollefduivel (BWD) – and the madness that Shakespeare causes.
The unpredictable conclusions will reveal and demonstrate something about Shakespeare, about blood (Bloet), about madness, about myself and about all of us.
The result of the research will be a work of art.

In the first part, I provide an (inner and intimate) description of everything that surrounds the play. I have chosen to write this part in my own idiom, the “Jan”. It is sometimes referred to as “childlike”, but I myself find it more akin to the mystical work of Ruusbroec and Hadewych.
The second part is Bloetwollefduivel, the naked text.
In the third part, the text of Bloetwollefduivel is dissected and commented on, line by line, inside and out. The fourth part provides an overview of the moments when Macbeth appears in my work:
- Samain (part of the theatre text Kosmika from 1969)
- My thesis for RITCS, ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’, 1972.
- In 1987, Macbeth Party, with excerpts from Macbeth as messages on the walls.
- Body a.k.a. in 2019, in which I sought pure movement poetry, in order to exorcise the horror and transform it into an ecstatic trance.
The final part will be a performance, wild and unpredictable.
Shakespeare is Macbeth. Anyone who hates everything in the traditions that have obscured or sugar-coated the rawness of Shakespeare's oeuvre will find in Macbeth the ultimate motive for his revenge on the theatre.

This research is a kind of archaeology of the present moment - we preserve and explore reality at the same time as we experience it. The study focuses on the intersection of significant historical events with personal archival materials and the evolving perceptions of both viewers and authors, aiming to uncover how these events influence an author's interpretation. Central to the study is the exploration of the symbiotic relationship between form and content in storytelling. The researcher aspires to move beyond cinematic clichés to cultivate an authentic tone that reflects lived experiences. It seeks to elucidate the nuances of storytelling and the coexistence of diverse reality shaped by subjective perspectives, while examining the necessity of distance in observation. By creating a personal film-essay, analyzing the films of dozens of documentary filmmakers, conducting in-depth interviews with them and finding reference points based on the concept of career first introduced by the Chicago School of Sociology - the researcher plan to find the "language" in which history can speak in art today.

What are the possible keys to rediscover classical texts for theater in post-dramatic times?

The overall objective of the research of Oxana Sankova is to discover her own methods to work with classical texts in the practice of the theater and the rehearsal space, methods that allow a combination of classical textual approaches with the method of autofiction (that was used by Oxana Sankova in her bachelor and master's performances as well as in some workshops during her studies at RITCS School of Arts). What methods can be developed, on the rehearsal floor or at the table in a collective setting for this textual material to work theatrically? What are the ways to find your own method as an artist? How should an artist reflect, process, and comprehend his own experience?
The sense of ‘being lost’ in front of texts of the ‘great authors’ excites Oxana Sankoa.Her artistic research question is thus how to return to these texts with her recently acquired knowledge of working with devised theater: how to confront these texts with her own autobiographical texts, the texts of the actors and the search for non-linear (plot) movement in the play. With this research project, Oxana Sankova wants to turn her face to this exciting duality.