Four new PhD students within design, narrative processes, sloyd education & critical sound practice

Petra Lilja, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Miro Sazdic Löwstedt and Cara Tolmie will be joining the transdisciplinary PhD programme Art, Technology and Design (KTD), run jointly by Konstfack and The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The four were selected out of 185 applicants.

The KTD programme aims at a radical rethinking of the relationships individual-community-environment and to contribute to a more sustainable society. The areas of the four new students' research are design, narrative processes, sloyd education and critical sound practice.

Petra Lilja: Cultivating Caring Coexistence – designing post-anthropocentric futures. In this research project the connections and controversies between human-centeredness in design and ultimately, human survival on Earth, will be explored. Drawing from posthuman theory in combination with speculative design tools, the research will address ‘the who in care’ with the aim to disrupt human-centeredness and open up for reconfigurations of design practices to better engage with troubled presents where a myriad of other species is overlooked and becoming extinct.

Miro Sazdic Löwstedt: Sloyd – exploring how to manifold historiographies This research project aimes at developing pedagogy within craft practices based on intersectional perspectives, as well as by formulating a methodology. In collaboration with Södertälje Kulturskola, El Sistema and Tjejhuset Södertälje the project will initially be situated in Hovsjö/Södertälje. Over time will be explored how to build a program that addresses diversity amongst children and young people on their own terms.

Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen: Visual Empire. In this project the researcher proposes a critical reflection on the frictions between vernacular artifacts and official documents while also addressing the role of photography in structuring identities and imagination as part of a process of decolonization. By tracing a history of local photographic practices by Vietnamese – rather than the commonly referred legacy by foreign born photographers – Visual Empire is an investigation in the dissemination of cameras, the translation of the photographic gaze to the Far East and the making of the modern and decolonized subject in Vietnam.

Cara Tolmie: Listening to the Displaced Vocal Body. The singer-listener relationship is unique in its body-body dynamic within spaces of sonic production. As the only musical instrument contained within the body itself, through the singing voice we are confronted not only with a sonic object but also a complex human body that we relate to both conceptually and affectively. The notion of the ‘displaced vocal body’ and its potential to reorganise the conditions of listening within its space of performance is explored, defining this ‘displaced vocal body’ as the use of performative, vocal and choreographic methods that seek to disturb the continuity between a voice and the body which produces that voice.

The new PhD students presented their projects during Konstfack Research Week 2019.

To learn more about research at Konstfack, please click here.

Konstfack, LM Ericssons väg 14, subway station Telefonplan, Stockholm