The Design Lectorate had a very chatty KABK Graduation Show. In the lead up to the Awards Show, during which we hosted two on-stage conversations with award-winning graduates, we joined forces with Mushroom Radio, which was set up in the former director's office, for live dialogues between graduating students and tutors about their research practices. Each day a tutor-researcher in the KABK Research Group engaged a student-researcher in conversation about how and why they each conduct research in, through, and with art and design.

We spoke of the material agency of baskets and duckweed, iron ore concentrate and whale fat, meme ooze and time; the research potential of ceramics, web scraping, rehearsals, listening and props; the conceptual imperatives of hauntology, poison, migrant identity, fear, caretaking and collective authorship. We asked one another: In what forms and modes and registers does research manifest in art design today? What role has research played in these students’ graduation projects?

A special thank you to all the graduating students that took part, so generously sharing their thoughts on research and giving advice to the tutors on how to continue their projects and to KABK for how better to integrate research into its curricula. It was exciting to learn how many of these artists and designers will be continuing to engage with research post-graduation, either in ongoing academic trajectories or in their own practices.

Anke Sondi Rumohr, BA Graphic Design
Dominik Vrabič Dežman, BA Graphic Design
Natalia Nikoniuk & Bo Wielders, BA Fine Arts
Giath Taha, Master Artistic Research
Anni Nöps, BA Art Science
Ada Popowicz, BA Graphic Design
Tina Farifteh, BA Photography
Jesse Greulich, BA Interior Architecture & Furniture Design
Ellen Yiu, BA Fine Arts

'The Research Question' radio show was accompanied by a physical/visual counterpart. Before their conversations on the radio, students and tutors could take a look through the window of the KABK Research Space (BA. 103) to encounter a selection of the material and theoretical references currently under consideration by members of the KABK Design and the Deep Future Research Group.