About the thesis:
This thesis in design considers aesthetics as a central epistemological practice in a time when it often is relegated to the periphery. The findings reveal that aesthetic intuitions relate to a language of coding the world through sympathetic thinking-feeling.
The project unfolds traditional Japanese aesthetic notions such as yūgen, iki, ma, wabi, sabi and mono no aware. The research also reveals links to the esoteric Buddhism of ‘three intimacies’ (speech, mind, and body), where meaning is enfolded, in order to be unfolded or read in complicity by an attuned reader. How to read matter?
In a parallel reading of Deleuze’s affect ontology, new congruent relations emerge — a new materialism characterised by an animated reality, where matter constitutes forcefields. In the artistic process a ‘logic of sense’ and ‘non-sense’ operate in tandem. Complicity establishes a new methodology for artistic research, where sense knowledge, language and symbolism meet in a contraction — a life expands holographically.
Faculty Opponent: Gray Kochhar-Lindgren
Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is Honorary Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong, Co-Founder of Wild Studios Consulting & Creative Productions LLC, and served as the 2025-26 Eminent Scholar in the Humanities Chair and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. A Fulbright Scholar and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for AI, Society, and Critique, Gray was also the Team Lead for Transdisciplinarity-in-Action, which won HKU and UGC Teaching Excellence Awards (Team). His most recent books are Pintxos and Transdisciplinary Experiments(with Wendy Sims-Schouten and Jack Tsao), and, currently, he is working on After Magritte, Immanent Noir, and Becoming Elemental.
Read more about Gray Kochhar-Lindgren:
Researchgate
University of Hong Kong
Wild Studios Consulting and Creative Productions
Academia.edu
Examination board
Kristiina Koskentola, artist, PhD in artistic research, Finnish transdisciplinary artist. Currently she divides her time between Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Northern China.
Henk Slager
Åsa Andersson, artist, PhD in Fine Art and Continental Philosophy, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
Alternate
Karin Peterson, PhD in Art, Senior Lecturer, Department of Design and Crafts, Steneby, HDK-Valand
