Many of my works are, in one way or another, research-based. The projects listed under the research menu range from an expanded multi-year trajectory to brief escapades down rabbit holes.
Research is not a linear process, but a network of ongoing investigations that I revisit over time. Some ideas lie dormant for years and reappear when they become relevant, while others evolve alongside my artistic practice.
I think of it as a mycelial network: a hidden, interconnected system that is constantly expanding beneath the surface. In this analogy, the artworks emerge like mushrooms, the visible extensions of underlying processes. Each piece is part of a broader ecosystem of thought, shaped by past investigations and feeding into future explorations.
The work is informed by disciplines such as media theory and cultural anthropology. I am particularly interested in our relationship with (digital) technologies, and how to carve out agency in a corporate-dominated technological world. The computer is a tool to think with and a collaborator, with which I explore both readily available consumer applications and more advanced software, looking for ways to intervene in digital spaces – through emoji proposals, using Wikipedia for research exercises, or other online interventions.
I am also drawn to how (popular) fiction helps us understand reality, whether through blockbuster cinema, science fiction or the supernatural practices. Increasingly, my practice is concerned with activism for ecological change, asking how (digital) art can contribute to protest and resistance, and how a technological practice itself can, or cannot, be sustainable.
The Artist in His Museum by Charles Willson Peale. 1822. Courtesy Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, photo by Steven Zucker, CC by 4.0.
The above painting has always struck me as a another analogy to my artistic research practice, and the dissemination of my work. The painter, Peale, is standing in his art studio as he lifts the curtain – almost as in a sideshow – to reveal his museum, one of the first public natural history museums, in the background.
Selected research activities
As a Ph.D candidate I am part of the research cluster Art & Society (formerly Intermedia) and the research group Art & Recollection (formerly Deep Histories Fragile Memories) of the Associated Faculty of the Arts of KU Leuven and LUCA School of Arts, Belgium.
2019
Screening Inertia, VSAC / Visual Science of Art Conference, Leuven (BE)
2020
Residency at RU, New York (US)
Mistakes. The artist talk, online screening, New York (US)/Antwerp (BE)
Presentation at Future Visions CIIA Pre-congress by FilmEU (online)
Lecture, Return Retrace Repair Refrain. Art History department of Leuven University as part of Wendy Morris and Laurens Dhaenens’ course.
2021
EARN/Smart Culture Postresearch Condition, Value & Recognition (Online). Participation and presentation as part of the Value workshop by Rolf Hughes and Rachel Armstrong.
Digital Dimensions. LUCA School of Arts, Brussels, animation and film department. A course exploring digital developments in moving image, in collaboration with Guido Devadder.
The Plot, The Compositor, and Mourning/Mistakes. Peer reviewed publication for VIS Journal for artistic research #6.
The Plot. Seminar as part of the Regenerative Aesthetics course by Volkmar Mühleis at LUCA, Gent (BE).
Loops: The snake biting its own tail, Groundhog Day, and the Infinity Cage, lecture and workshop for Re:anima, Genk (BE). Invited by Steven Malliet.
2022
Digital Dimensions. LUCA School of Arts, Brussels, animation and film department. A course exploring digital developments in moving image.
Guest lecture MIND (Media and Information Design), LUCA School of Arts Brussels, invited by Sandy Claes.
Presentation at Unconference, Digisoc at BAC, Leuven (BE).
De Letterzetter. Peer reviewed article for Forum+vol. 29 nr. 2.
Bits & Pieces at Collectie De.Groen, Arnhem (NL). Talk and NFT discussion with Jan Robert Leegte and Ganbrood (Bas Uterwijk).
Lecture and discussion as part of the Research in the Arts class by Wendy Morris and Laurens Dhaenens for the LUCA audiovisual arts department, Brussels.
NFT feed at Oddstream, Nijmegen (NL). Panel discussion with Inte Gloerich, Rutger van der Tas and Jeroen van der Most. Moderated by Emiel van der Pol.
Loops: The snake biting its own tail, Groundhog Day, and the Infinity Cage, lecture and artistic presentation for Re:anima, LUCA School of Arts, Genk (BE).
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings, symposium of research cluster dhfm at LUCA, Brussels and Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp (BE).
2023
Tutor/advisor master’s papers Film, LUCA, Brussels (BE).
Lecture Academie Noord, Brasschaat (BE).
Residency & lecture, Art Lab Gnesta (SE).
Lecture LUCA School of Arts, research in the arts class, Brussels (BE).
Lecture & discussion, Emptiness & Infinite Space IV, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (NL).
2024 Lecture KdG Advanced Master, Art & Design in the Anthropocene, Antwerp (BE).
2025 Lecture KdG Advanced Master, Digital Cultures, Antwerp (BE).
Selected reading
Allahyari, Morehshin, Rourke, Daniel, The 3D Additivist Cookbook, The Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2016
Bould, Mark, The Anthropocene Unconscious. Climate Catastrophe Culture, Verso, London, 2021
Boyd, Brian, On the Origin of Stories. Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2010
Boyer, Pascal, Why Divination? Evolved Psychology and Strategic Interaction in the Production of Truth, Current Anthropology, volume 61, issue 1, 2020. doi: 10.1086/706879
Clasen, Mathias, Johnson, John A., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens, Scrivner, Coltan, Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 168, 2021, Doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397
Cramer, Florian, Anti-Media. Ephemera on Speculative Arts, Institute of Networked Cultures / NAI010, Rotterdam, 2023
Davis, Erik, Techgnosis: myth, magic, mysticism in the age of information, Harmony Books, New York, 1998
Dawkins, Richard, Unweaving the Rainbow, Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder, Penguin, London, 1999
Gambetta, Daniele, Beyond the Faust and the Hype-Imaginaries of Large Language Text Models, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam / Dinamopress, Rome, 2023 [ networkcultures.org ]
Gerner, Alexander, Guerra, Michele, On the Cinematic Self- Cinematic experience as Out-of- Body experience?, BoD, Lisbon, 2014, http://hdl.handle.net/10451/46395
Ghosh, Amitav, The Great Derangement. Climate Change and the Unthinkable, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2016
Grieve, Gregory Price, Cyber Zen: Imaging Authentic Buddhist Identity, Community, and Practices in the Virtual World of SecondLife, Routledge, London, 2016, doi: 10.4324/9781315645858
Hampshire, Max, Kolling, Paul, Seidler, Paul, Terra0. Can an augmented forest own and utilise itself?, Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, 2016 [www]
Haraway, Donna, The Teddy Bear Patriarchy. Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York, 1908-1936, Social Text No. 11 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp. 20-64 (47 pages), Duke University Press, Durham, 1984
Heise, Ursula K., Imagining Extinction. The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2016
Huhtamo, Erkki, Illusions in Motion: Media Archeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013
Jentsch, Ernst, On the Psychology of the Uncanny, 1906, translated by Roy Sellars
Johanson, Donald, Edgar, Blake, From Lucy to Language, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996
Keller, Corey, Brought to Light. Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art / Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009
Klein, Norman M., The Vatican to Vegas. A History of Special Effects, New Press, New York, 2004
Lewis-Williams, David, The Mind in the Cave, Thames & Hudson, London, 2002
Lewis-Williams, David, Pearce, David, Inside the Neolithic Mind. Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods, Thames & Hudson, London, 2005
Maleck, Edward J., Real people, virtual places, and the spaces in between, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, volume 58, p. 3-12, 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.seps.2016.10.008
McKibben, Bill, The End of Nature, Viking Press, Dublin, 1990
McKibben, Bill, What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art, grist.org, 2005 [www]
McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964
Milnes, Tom, Ephemer(e)ality Capture. Glitch Practices in Photogrammetry, Journal for Artistic Research, issue 24, 2021, doi: 10.22501/jar.547896
Mumford, Lewis, Art and Technics, Columbia University Press, New York, 1952
Morton, Timothy, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013
Natale, Simone (ed.), Pasulka, Diana (ed.), Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019
Nyhart, Lynn K., Science, Art, and Authenticity in Natural History Displays (published in Models. The Third Dimension of Science), Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004
Pinker, Steven, How the Mind Works, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1997
Pisters, Patricia,The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2012
Quammen, David, Spillover. Animal Infections and the next Human Pandemic, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2012
Quammen, David, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction, Scribner, New York, 1996
Robinson, Kim Stanley, The Ministry for the Future, Orbit, London, 2020
Salerno, Daniele (ed.), Rigney, Ann (ed.), Archiving Activism in the Digital Age, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2024
Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory, A.A. Knopf, New York, 1996
Sconce, Jeffrey, Haunted Media. Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, Duke University Press, Durham, 2000
Simard, Suzanne, Finding the Mother Tree. Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Knopf Vintage Books, New York, 2021
Singh, Rashmi, Understanding Transition Spaces, Importance and Role in Indian Architecture, Ba Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Gurugram, 2015
Solnit, Rebecca, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Viking Press, New York, 2003
Stewart, Susan, On Longing. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke University Press, Durham, 1993
Steyerl, Hito, Mean Images, New Left Review 140/141, London, March/June 2023
Steyerl, Hito, Ripping reality: Blind spots and wrecked data in 3D, european institute for progressive cultural policies, Linz, 2012
Stiles, Sasha, Technelegy, Eyewear Poetry, London, 2021
Turkle, Sherry, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984
Urban, Hugh, The Medium is The Message in the Spacious Present. Channeling Television, and the New Age, 2015, doi: 10.1163/9789004264083_016
Wonders, Karen, Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala, 1993
Wonders, Karen, Habitat dioramas as ecological theatre, European Review, Volume 1, Issue 3, July 1993, pp. 285 – 300