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.

At the end of the morning, TogetherTogether presented a new iteration of their graduation project: a live, site-responsive performance shaped for the Conservatory Hall and activated in direct relation with the audience. Emerging from co-creation, collective storytelling and space-making, the performance explored the ongoing search for collectivity; its moments of joy, its tensions, and the delicate work of forming a ‘collective body’ while making intangible relations perceptible.

As a collective, TogetherTogether works through participatory and embodied methods that open space for counter-narratives and shared agency. Their practice consistently asks how we might resist the pressures of individualism and productivism by foregrounding co-creation, relationality, and learning with and through the body.

Their contribution offered both a question and a proposal: a temporary space in which agency could be reclaimed, futures imagined, and the fundamental “What if?” posed together with everyone present.

Following the performance, the Deep Futures Research Group and TogetherTogether came together for a conversation about the affinities between their research approaches. Reflecting on their respective practices, they discussed the value and the challenges of working collectively in creative practice research.

In this session, ACPA marked the lead-up to its 25th anniversary by offering insight into its past, present, and future. Academic director Erik Viskil reflected on the institute’s role in supporting research in and through the arts, and on the new agreements to be forged between the University of the Arts The Hague and Leiden University in the coming year. The audience then viewed a short video by Jed Wentz, introducing his research on historical theatre techniques and their relevance for film. The session concluded with filmmaker and coordinator Georgie Brinkman in conversation with PhD alumnus Siamak Anvari, who spoke about how film plays a role in his artistic research on music.

In this afternoon session, Caeso invited the audience into an experiment in listening. By presenting the same artwork with shifting amounts of contextual information, he opened a shared reflection on how framing shapes our perception: what becomes legible, what remains opaque, and how poetic possibilities emerge when context is withheld or reintroduced. With Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn facilitating the conversation, the session developed into a lively exchange about the challenges of presenting sound-based work that may not immediately reveal itself to a broader audience.

In this extended afternoon session, five recent graduates from KC and KABK returned to share how their MA research continues to inform—and transform—their professional practices. Moderated by Alice Twemlow and Andrew Wright, the conversation moved between sound, image, landscape, taxonomy, storytelling, and activism, offering a rich cross-section of what practice-based research can look like.

Through a series of short presentations, the alumni reflected on the methods they developed during their studies, the forms their research now takes outside the academy, and the ongoing process of learning and unlearning that comes with carrying research into new contexts.

In the late afternoon, Justin Bennett, Irene Ruipérez Canales, and Renate Zentschnig presented the preliminary findings of Sounding Urban Places, a collaborative project exploring the soundscapes of the Binckhorst neighbourhood. The project outcomes include an audio paper, an online sound map, audio routes, and an educational package designed for secondary schools.

The presentations were followed by a roundtable moderated by Paul Craenen, joined by Sabrina Lindemann and Marcel Cobussen.

Shadman Shahid presented Gazing: An Act of Defiance, a project examining the photographic archives of the British Raj in Bengal. By re-contextualising and re-siting colonial photographs, the work explores how photographic fiction can challenge and defy the authority of historical archives, revealing suppressed or alternative perspectives.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A with Dafni Melidou.

In the evening session, Robert de Bree and Rebecca Huber explored the diversity and experimentation of 19th-century concert culture. Through a combination of research presentations and live performance, they examined the practice of miscellaneous programming and improvisation, highlighting how technical skill, creativity, and audience engagement shaped the concert experience.

Students from Rebecca’s string quartet class—Ajda Porenta, Miyu Nohashi, Dalila Guzzi, and Adele Xiang—performed selected examples to illustrate these historical programming strategies and their impact on reception.

JRD25 concluded in the New Music Lab with a special evening featuring a conversation between Dirar Kalash and Richard Barrett, followed by a live performance by the Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble (SEE). Kalash and Barrett reflected on improvisation, composition, and the intersections of artistic research and political urgency in music.

The conversation was followed by a performance by SEE, bringing together acoustic instruments and live electronics. With a large lineup of performers for this evening, the ensemble created an immersive sonic experience for the JRD25 audience.