GD Thesis 23

▮ Ro Antia • On Slowing Down, a Thought Index • An investigation of time, space, and post-obsolescence through a photographic lens. ▮ Andon Bakarov • NOTHING TO BEAR • This thesis investigates the historical timeline of the case of the dancing bear in Bulgaria, delving into the stages of the bear's life by analizing the intimate tamer-bear relationship. Aiming to grasp an aspect of the human view over animals, it researches the concept of captivation, and question the tendency of personification and objectification of non-human bodies. ▮ Lara Dautun • Two Stories of Feminist Publishing • The printed production of second-wave feminism constitutes a rich and diverse mass of periodicals, pamphlets, books and ephemera offering a vast reservoir of ideas and approaches for more sustainable and inclusive publishing practices. This thesis attempts to bring them to light, by searching for their traces in the Dutch archives (Atria & ILHIA), mapping their networks, and listening to the voices and stories of the women who shaped such a revolutionary movement. ▮ Lulu van Dijck • Have You Considered A Garden? • In this text, I offer notes on gender, dualism and ecology, in an attempt to unfold and disentangle the rootedness of oppressive dualist discourse in what we essentially call the Global North, and the places its colonialist tentacles have reached. My carrier bag moves from and beyond the garden, unnaming, the wild, snail intimacy, glitch, philosophy’s big boys (Plato, Descartes), and vulnerability: it is my undertaking at constructing a layered, non–linear understanding of all these interrelated concepts and phenomena, without forcing them into one single narrative. ▮ Marieke Dijsselhof • THE MYTHS AND THE FAITHFULLY PLASTIC HORSES • My relationship with toys has always been something mystic. Dreams, imagination, play, and magic. The combination of the unconscious, conscious, and uncertainty glide us into a world where fantasy becomes reality. ▮ Elina Ersdorf • I GOT CONSUMED BY A CONTENT I CONSUME • Social media and digital tools have made it easier than ever to capture and share our personal experiences, often leading to a sense of social currency and FOMO that encourages us to document and curate our lives, potentially obscuring our true identities. Our faith in what seems to be an infinite storage has led us to a culture of memories hoarding, which overabundance causes them to lose their value due to becoming disorganized clutter and contextless content. ▮ Ronaldo Wold Figueiredo • Coloring Outside the Lines • The thesis seeks to demonstrate the importance of maintaining free and unstructured spaces in the city for fostering innovation, diversity, and community interaction. What can we do? ▮ Einar Viðar Guðmundsson • The Armchair Sailor and the Beach Leopard • Mourning someone you didn't get the chance to know, that should have been a big part of your life is a peculiar feeling, in this thesis I try to get closer to a person that passed away nearly 27 years ago through stories, recordings and photographs. Specifically looking at a trip through Africa in the 70s, and adventures on a sailboat called Drífa from 1980 until 1992. ▮ Jannie Guo • Deformation of Time • The relationship between clock time and productivity is deeply interweaved into many facets of our daily life that has lead to the detachment of our internal regulation of circadian rhythms. This stands in conflict with the aspects of the slower processes which move according to autonomous values. Therefore, I am to question and contribute to the shift of liberating ourselves from the boundaries of time that modern social constructs maintain upon us. ▮ Patrick Hutchinson • The Precise Moment a Copy Becomes Independent • This thesis aims to establish when and how a copy may become distinct from its original. Ideas of adaptation and modification are established and, drawn in parallel to open-source culture, aim to question the state of established copyright ruling online. ▮ Isabella Elida Inan-Carter • The Kilim: A disappearing art, a hidden language, the work, words, and ways of women… • Turkish carpet weaving is slowly disappearing. In the past, carpets would be woven in almost every household but now only few continue this tradition. In this essay I will explore the changing nature of traditional Aegean village life, particularly for that of women. ▮ Valters Kalsers • Stalins Revenge • In the 50s, where Soviet dreams were woven with thick ideals, a story of growth began to unfold. Couple of engineers, in the heart of Moscow, envisioned a new way to cultivate giant hogweed as agricultural sillage. Their grand plan was to feed the cows and elevate the dairy industry in collective farms scattered throughout the Soviet Union. Yet, the decision makers were far removed from the actual farms, soil, and environments that this decision would affect. Unfortunately, none of the individuals responsible for executing these centralised design decisions realized the potential consequences, or chose to ignore them entirely. ▮ Yeeun Kim • Shaping Back • Chairs have appeared in human history for a long time, but they were not for everyone. Until the Middle Ages, the chair belonged to a ruler or an authority, and everyone could sit in a comfortable chair with a backrest after the Industrial Revolution when mass production became possible. We can find chairs everywhere we feel the irresistible urge to sit down. ▮ Tinka Kovačič • The Rite of Immortality: Preserving Symbolic Immortality Through Memory and Memorabilia • Symbolic immortality is a concept that allows us to participate in everyday life without denying the finality of death, the importance of which lies in the human need for a historical connection beyond the span of an individual life. By researching ambiguous loss, NDE and myth alongside with weaving in personal and family stories of love, loss and grief, I aim to add depth and nuance to this often-dismissed concept and wish to propose it as a ritual or practice that can help people to confront and overcome different kinds of loss. ▮ Alessandro Lucarini • Childhood lunches are the roots of Ambient Music • This thesis explores how nostalgia is expressed through the poetics and aesthetics of filmmaking by examining my personal memories using my family video archive. ▮ Amber Meekel • The Memorial Herbarium • This thesis examines a reflection of my own connection with the garden through my personal ornamental memories, collected in different herbaria. A partly observational but highly personal story of my own experiences of the garden, herbaria and in general the natural environment, humanity and technology. Written during the hibernation of the garden, this is a text which longs for the rebirth of nature in a digital realm and the reconnection with the physical and spiritual world. ▮ Hilal Mutluel • Türkiye’s Alphabet Reform: Reimagining the Art and Meaning of Calligraphy and Printing • This essay aims to focus on the Alphabet reform that happened in Turkiye in 1929 from Arabic script to Latin and I’m using the reform as a framework to understand what got lost through transliteration. ▮ Chiara Nowak • Feminist-Tech Design: Narratives of Empowerment • The thesis posits that the contraceptive pill has transitioned from a symbol of empowerment to a tool of control, which is being further intensified by the emergence of Female Health Technologies (Femtech). It further argues that Femtech needs to be reimagined as a truly feminist technology, given its current design which perpetuates systems of power and control over the female body. ▮ Julia Olijkan • The malleability of man • This thesis discusses body modification as a way of exploring human potential and evolving desire. Extreme forms of body modification represent a new form of human expression and evolution in the post-humanism paradigm. Society is redefining what it means to be human, animal, and machine, and the boundaries between them are becoming blurred. Iconic cases of extreme body modification and examples from art and film illustrate how these practices reflect a world in transition. ▮ Isabel Pereira • When I bring Salt to the Table • Salt is crucial to the preservation of ingredients like Bacalhau, Beef Jerky, Capperi sotto sale, and Soy Sauce. But salt also has a cultural significance, connecting us to our past. Through historical sources, fables, cultural folktales, and personal memories, we can explore how salt has been used to preserve food and how it has played a role in our cultural heritage. Let me take you through my path of salt. ▮ Maria Rivero Gonzalez • I Can See Things Crumbling • Can we measure social decay through the tempo and performativity of an endangered language? And how can it be used as a means to reject past/present forms of oppression? As an act of resistance against cultural endangerment? Using the Spanish Civil War as point of departure, this thesis aims to shed some light on the nuances of social and infrastructural processes of decay that happen in war torn territories, touching upon the endangerment of cultural heritage and the continuous perpetuation of violence. ▮ Samuel Salminen • Toponymocide • Toponymic inscription, also known as geographical naming, carries political significance in constructing identities and promoting certain historical narratives while denying others. Through a decolonial analysis, this thesis examines the practice of Hebraizing Arabic toponyms in Palestine and the power of cartography and the Latin script in colonial discursive practices. ▮ Simonida Savić • A Vertical Geography of Mushrooms • A vertical reading of the mushroom: while we're traveling through space, we arrive at different altitudes before entering the soil on the earth, where fungi and mushrooms habitate. I tried to use the mushroom as a research method and a bedrock for how I would like to investigate each subtheme, while peeling off each layer of the mushroom as we go down. ▮ Luna van Schadewijk • Revisiting Jamaica’s Train Tracks • The railways that run throughout Jamaica, put in place by British colonisers and abandoned in 1992, have remained on the island like scars on the soil. In this text I question the ways in which they continue to shape Jamaica today, what collective memory they represent and whether there is a way to subvert the meanings they carry. ▮ Erae Shin • Ambivalent Feeding • Feeding others generally is considered one of the altruistic behaviours found among living creatures as altruistic behaviour entails providing valuable benefits to others at a personal cost. Handing nutritious food to needy strangers, even if one desires the food, is a uniquely human form of altruistic behaviour. ▮ Renata Sidorenko • The Allure of the Lover Archetype. An Exploration of its Use and Meaning in Advertising, Art, and AI. • This thesis explores the application of archetypes in advertising and visual art by drawing upon the work of Carl Jung “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”and Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson’s book “The Hero and the Outlaw”. ▮ Basia Strzeżek • Hobgoblin’s Pleasure • A text full of back and forth contradicting dwelling on possibility of engagement with being in a current climate. To make this quest tangible, i employ and build upon the ever-expanding definition of the ornament, not purely as a graphic gesture, but mostly as an expression — a tool for communication and fulfilment. ▮ Alexandra Superson • A very short history of food and its representations • How did Food as we know it come to be and what Impact did it have on us, both biologically, historically and politically? ▮ Jacky Tang • Allegories in the Face Saloon • An experimental document that combines prose with short form fiction, to research the human face as a communication tool in the context of linguistics, the myth and the spectacle, dramaturgy, Chinese theatre, face reading and control. Having touched upon all these topics, we’re left with humanity and storytelling. ▮ Alice Vink • The Most Underrated Actor • In this thesis I aim to examine the relationship between humans and nature by analysing popular and lesser-known contemporary movies. I’m using the tree as a ‘metaphor’ for nature in the wider sense. ▮ Leona Wehrenberg • Beyond Entertainment: The Potential of Emotional Design in Video Games • This thesis explores how emotional design in games affects players' emotions and behaviors, showcasing both positive and negative impacts in the “real” world. It demonstrates the power of game designers and their possibility to create beneficial outcomes for players. ▮ Robin Wielink • Shades of Indigo • This thesis explores Amsterdam as a denim capital and color (with a focus on indigo), from commercial applications to independent expression with artistic analysis and psychological and philosophical perspectives. It is also a metaphorical quest on the shades that we wear as a mask to present ourselves to the world - do we show our true colors, or do we conceal us behind a facade? ▮ Aiym Zhaishylyk • Bureaucracy: An avant-garde project • This paper will examine bureaucracy together with the avant-garde art of the 20th century.

*Find here the writings (or, rarely even, speakings, mappings and tastings) of 33 determined graduates of the 22/23 Graphic Design year at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Thank you dearly to:
Füsun Türetken + Dirk Vis for guiding the writing process,
& Thomas Buxó + François Girard-Meunier for coding help.

The website was created by Lara Dautun + Patrick Hutchinson.

Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023

Filter by:

Author

Title

Keywords