An Impression of the Joint Research Day 2025

The KABK library and KABK tutors Anna Arov (BA Interactive Media Design (I/M/D)) and Ingrid Grootes (BA Photography) organized this year's edition of Bridging the Thesis, a conversation with recent KABK alumni Lucy Bink (BA Photography) and Nadia Abadjieva (BA I/M/D) about their thesis research, writing process, practice, and the connections between them. The conversation was moderated by fourth-year I/M/D student Braidon Hobzek. In addition, the library showcased a selection of theses by the 2025 KABK graduates.

KABK tutors Jasper Coppes, Carl Johan Högberg, Katrin Korfmann, and Victoria Meniakina joined KABK Design lector Alice Twemlow for a public reading and conversation around their new book A Fray of Messays. They shared selected passages as well as insights into the collaborative process behind the publication. During this special launch, attendees received a free copy of the book — designed by Bart de Baets — accompanied by a limited-edition insert created for the occasion by KABK Graphic Design alumna Angèle Jaspers.

The presentation and discussion were complemented by a soundscape composed by sound practitioner Femke Dekker, drawing on sonic material from the research projects featured in the book. The evening concluded with a drinks reception.

The second day of JRD25 opened in the Conservatoire Hall with Pavlos Kountouriotis’ lecture Notes on Practice-as-Research: Future Challenges and Haunted Pasts. Pavlos described practice-as-research as something that begins in address: when thought turns outward and enters into exchange. He spoke about how this way of working develops through encounters and is sustained by the movement of ideas as they circulate, shift, and return in transformed ways.

He invited the audience to consider practice-as-research as a mode that depends on contribution, shared rhythms, and the continuity between practices. His presentation set the tone for the day, emphasising relation, responsiveness, and the unfolding of research through ongoing dialogue.

Katrin Korfmann shared reflections on the relationship between her artistic practice, research, and teaching, offering insight into what it means to prepare for a PhD in and through art and design. Drawing from her photographic practice and her experience as a tutor, she discussed how her research explores the ways photographic technologies not only represent time but also shape and produce it—particularly in an era of virtual environments, machine learning, and AI.

Her session offered students and colleagues a grounded and generous look into how research can grow from, and feed back into, both artistic work and educational practice.

In the late morning session, members of the Deep Futures Research Group — Jasper Coppes, Victoria Meniakina, Katrin Korfmann, Carl Johan Högberg, and Alice Twemlow — reflected on messaying as a method-mode in creative practice research. Building on several years of shared inquiry within the group, they introduced their newly published book A Fray of Messays: Unraveling Research Toward the Deep Future, which brings together diverse artistic research practices across performance, filmmaking, photography, interactive media, fine art, architecture, and sound.

The group spoke about how the book gathers traces of their individual research processes alongside moments of collaborative reflection, brought together in the form of “messays”: experimental, provisional structures that combine making and essaying. By remaining intentionally open-ended and unfinished, these messays create space for multiple perspectives and invite readers into an ongoing process of thinking-with and making-with.

The session offered insight into how collective research can take shape over time, and how documentation itself can become an active, generative part of artistic inquiry.

Lectorate FILM presented two film projects, by Adele Dipasquale and artists duo Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan of the production house Vriza Productions, both having collaboration and collectivity at their heart. After each presentation and screening, the artists took part in a discussion and an audience Q&A, moderated by members of the FILM Student Research Group and PhD candidates of ACPA.

The concept Good Praxis celebrates successful models of collective resistance and creative revolution through a series of workshops, assemblies and club nights. In this session for the KABK Studium Generale, Juha van 't Zelfde organised a mutual aid workshop on collective creativity. As not everyone can participate in blockades, strikes or blowing up pipelines, mutual aid attempted to give agency to students to organise themselves to meet the needs that are not being met by people in power.

Artist duo Fabas explore food making and sharing as an artistic practice. For the JRD24 they made an edible installation that rejoice in moments of coming together, and follow a desire to foster intimacy, joy and curiosity about the food we eat, the way it reaches us and the effect it has on our minds and bodies.

For the session on Interdisciplinary Practices in Research in the Arts, moderated by head of research Kathryn Cok (KC), we had invited six recently graduated master’s students from the KABK and KC, one KABK/KC graduating duo and one docartes PhD candidate who share their personal experiences with conducting their research beyond their own disciplines.

With Sanne Bakker, Kaja Majoor, Yelim Ki & Lawrence McGuire, Josie McCure, Leonie Brandner and Kalina Vladovska.

Artist-researchers Anja Groten, Taum Karni and Irakli Sabekia explored the concepts of 'Collectivity & Building Trust’ in the evening session at the Royal Conservatoire (KC). This session was moderated by composer, sound artist and researcher at ACPA Gabriel Paiuk.

Artist-researchers Casper Schipper & Olaf, Bjarni Gunnarsson and Alison Isadora explored ‘Relationships and Networks in Music Creation’. This session was moderated by Assistant Professor at ACPA and lector Music, Education & Society at KC Paul Craenen.