A jerrycan of whale oil, an essay by Mark Fisher, a hunk of plastiglomerate, a cluster of climate justice imaginaries, a book by Emanuele Coccia, iron ore from Baffin Island smelted with silicon dioxide, the concept of toxicity, a looping selection of scraped digital media, the affordances of caretakership, a bag of granite dust, a folder of digital image waste, a 3-axis Fluxgate probe...
These are just some of the physical and theoretical references currently under consideration by members of the KABK Design and the Deep Future Research Group.
During the KABK Graduation Show, visitors could take a peek through the window of the Research Space, BA. 103, to see for themselves. These objects accompanied 'The Research Question' on Mushroom Radio.
Each year tutors and members of staff at KABK have the opportunity to join a Research Group. The five selected tutor-researchers work not only on individual projects but also collaboratively, as a group, on a range of initiatives and interventions that respond to the central imperative of the Design and the Deep Future research project, headed by KABK Design Lector Alice Twemlow.
The collective project explores ways in which design and art can intervene in or interpret aspects of climate catastrophe, planetary degradation and the loss of biodiversity.
Jasper Coppes
Core tutor, theory and writing, MA Artistic Research
Long-term dialogues with specific sites, people and other entities form the basis of Jasper Coppes’ practice, which takes shape across various media, such as film, writing, sculpture, architecture and sound. With his work, he questions the dominant stories we tell about landscapes and the processes within them.
Research project: Poison Lake—Looking into the dual nature of granite dust as toxic waste and mineral nutrition.
Katrin Korfmann
Senior tutor, Image, BA Graphic Design
Katrin Korfmann is an artist working on the cutting edge of photography, post-photography and installation art. With a critical attitude towards the world around her and explicitly in relation to contemporary visual culture, Korfmann uses many self-photographed images to investigate their historical, social and visual context.
Research project: Collaborating with Image Ruins — Developing artistic strategies for digital photographic image debris.
Vibeke Mascini
Tutor, Sculpture, BA Fine Art
In long-term collaboration with scientists, engineers, government employees and musicians, and through sculptures, installations, video and text, Vibeke Mascini explores a scaling of abstract phenomena into a sensorial scope. With the intention to seek agency from intimacy, she situates herself and her work between species, industrial and natural processes, media and matter.
Research project: The Caretaker — Seeking to understand the legal role and specific relationship of a ‘caretaker’ to a natural resource that by law cannot formally be owned.
Hannes Bernard
Tutor, Graphic Design, BA Graphic Design
The founder of SulSolSal, based in Amsterdam, Cape Town and São Paulo, Hannes Bernard combines cultural, historical and economic research to create communal spaces, publications, video installations and performances. His work investigates the complex relationship between design, economics and society while reflecting on the spectacle of global development.
Research project: The Long Now—Investigating the converging temporalities of Anthropocenic media by scraping, collecting and generating new narratives using digital and social media artefacts.
Louis Braddock Clarke
Tutor, Graphic Design, BA Graphic Design
Louis Braddock Clarke works at the intersection of art, geography, physics and philosophy. His experimental research enquiry, blending scientific and conceptual theories and materialising in contemporary mediums, centres on the technological layers of human activity where electromagnetism, bio-mineralisation and geological sonics can be glimpsed and listened to.
Research project: Out of Focus—Sampling the shifts in iron magnetism in Greenland to navigate the intersections of climate change, mineral extraction, indigenous cosmology, and post-colonialism.
