Writing as Artistic Research 2
A joint Nordic two-day seminar event brings together teachers, researchers, and students of writing, as well as an audience interested in art writing, to reflect on language and engage in dialogue about writing in a time of multiple crises. The seminar is part of the sixth Research Pavilion.
Writing in a time of multi-crisis
One strand of the programme is reserved in its entirety for dealing with sustainability issues and ecological problematics of writing.
The seminar is multilingual; it seeks to open connections between languages and to find pathways to the interpretive diversity of words. Writing in artistic research is approached as an investigative practice experimenting with structuring, languaging, and the challenges of translation when mindful perceptions transform into writing.
Programme
Thursday, October 9
16–17:30 Screenings and conversation
- Dua Abbas Rizvi
- videowork Even the two wide worlds 2025
- Eddie Choo Wen Yi
- singel-channel video Rewound Trading Legacies 2025
17:45–20 On writing as artistic research: presentations and conversation
- Emma Kihl, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
- Elisabeth Hjorth, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg
- Panel discussion with Kihl, Hjorth, Antti Salminen & Lena Séraphin
Conversation ends at 19:15.
Friday, October 10
16–18:15 Lectures and conversation
- Emma Kihl: Artistic Writing Pedagogies – Thinking with an Ecology of Practices
- Karoliina Lummaa: Finnish forest poetics – Suomalaista metsäpoetiikkaa
The two lectures are followed by a conversation joined by Olli Pyyhtinen and Taru Elfving.
18:30–20 Discussions in small groups with Pia Korhonen, Susanna Laaksonen and Lena Séraphin.
Participants form three groups that join each thematic conversation on sustainability, resilience and writing, languaging or kielentäminen and situated writing.
Biographies
Eddie Choo Wen Yi
Eddie Choo Wen Yi is a multidisciplinary artist from Malaysia, based in Finland, completing an MFA at Uniarts Helsinki. Working in moving image and archives, they explore personal and collective histories, power dynamics, and social structures. Individual and collective practices, including lumbung radio and Station of Commons, are central. Their research, Rewound Trading Legacies, received the Finnish Art Society’s Young Artist Grant in 2023.
Read more at eddiechoowenyi.com
Taru Elfving
Taru Elfving is a curator and writer focused on nurturing undisciplinary and site-sensitive enquiries at the intersections of ecological, feminist and decolonial practices. As director of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago she leads a research residency on the island of Seili in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute, University of Turku. She is also a curatorial researcher in the transdisciplinary Centre for Sustainable Ocean Science (SOS) at Åbo Akademi University. She has published internationally and co-edited publications such as Contemporary Artist Residencies (Valiz 2019).
Elisabeth Hjorth
Elisabeth Hjorth is a writer and professor in Literary Composition at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Her literary and academic practice focuses on female autobiography, language/power, neurodiversity and autistic poetics. She holds a PhD in Ethics from Uppsala University. 2021- 2023 she was the project leader for the interdisciplinary research project ”Autistic Writing: Reclaiming Reloading Another Mother Tongue”, financed by the Swedish Research Council. Her latest book is Mutant (Glänta, 2021).
Read more at Elisabeth Hjorth’s homepage.
Emma Kihl
Emma Kihl is Senior Lecturer in Writing at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She teaches writing and art history and initiated the post-master’s course Feral Writing (2025). She has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and her work explores ecocriticism, literary practice, and collaboration across research, pedagogy, and art.
Pia Korhonen
Pia Korhonen (M.A. in Writing, 2025) is a writer whose work moves through expansive and elemental environments. Her texts explore landscapes shaped and dominated by wind, mountains, glaciers, and snow, as well as other-than-human forms of life. She primarily works with the fragment, the poem, and the lyrical essay.
Susanna Laaksonen
Susanna Laaksonen is a doctoral candidate at Uniarts Helsinki exploring the somatic-affective dimensions of writing. Her work spans film, TV, theatre, and media art. She studies micro-phenomenology and somatic movement, and her 2023 book Vapaan kirjoittajan anatomia (Anatomy of a Free Writer) examines the body’s role in a creative process.
Karoliina Lummaa
PhD Karoliina Lummaa is currently affiliated with the BIOS Research Unit, Helsinki, Finland. Lummaa’s long-time research topics include nonhuman artistic agency and cultural dimensions of environmental change and sustainability transitions. Lummaa’s background is in literary studies and her publications include monographs, articles and edited anthologies on Finnish literature, posthumanism and the environmental humanities.
Olli Pyyhtinen
Olli Pyyhtinen is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University. His work is philosophically oriented and entangled with art and addresses issues such as waste, multispecies relations and gift. Pyyhtinen has contributed to the relational and posthumanist turn in the social sciences and currently also studies creative writing at the Kriittinen Korkeakoulu.
Read more about Olli Pyyhtinen at his profile page.
Dua Abbas Rizvi
Dua Abbas Rizvi is a visual artist with a background in literature and art journalism. She works with both found and original media, and fragments of her own writing, to reflect on themes of memory, subjectivity, and the ambivalence of language.
Read more at duaabbasrizvi.com
Registration
The registration is open until 8 October 2025.
The Writing as Artistic Research 1
This event is the second part of a seminar series, the first of which was held at Puistokatu 4 in January 2025. Participation in this second seminar does not require attendance at the January event.
Read more about the January seminar.
Contact information for the seminar
-
Lena Seraphin
- Part-time teacher, Art history and -theory, Academy of Fine Arts
- lena.seraphin@uniarts.fi
-
Antti Eemeli Salminen
- Professor, Master’s Degree Programme in Writing, Theatre Academy
- +358440363536
- antti.salminen@uniarts.fi
Writing in a time of multi-crisis
One strand of the programme is reserved in its entirety for dealing with sustainability issues and ecological problematics of writing.
The seminar is multilingual; it seeks to open connections between languages and to find pathways to the interpretive diversity of words. Writing in artistic research is approached as an investigative practice experimenting with structuring, languaging, and the challenges of translation when mindful perceptions transform into writing.
Programme
Thursday, October 9
16–17:30 Screenings and conversation
- Dua Abbas Rizvi
- videowork Even the two wide worlds 2025
- Eddie Choo Wen Yi
- singel-channel video Rewound Trading Legacies 2025
17:45–20 On writing as artistic research: presentations and conversation
- Emma Kihl, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
- Elisabeth Hjorth, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg
- Panel discussion with Kihl, Hjorth, Antti Salminen & Lena Séraphin
Conversation ends at 19:15.
Friday, October 10
16–18:15 Lectures and conversation
- Emma Kihl: Artistic Writing Pedagogies – Thinking with an Ecology of Practices
- Karoliina Lummaa: Finnish forest poetics – Suomalaista metsäpoetiikkaa
The two lectures are followed by a conversation joined by Olli Pyyhtinen and Taru Elfving.
18:30–20 Discussions in small groups with Pia Korhonen, Susanna Laaksonen and Lena Séraphin.
Participants form three groups that join each thematic conversation on sustainability, resilience and writing, languaging or kielentäminen and situated writing.
Biographies
Eddie Choo Wen Yi
Eddie Choo Wen Yi is a multidisciplinary artist from Malaysia, based in Finland, completing an MFA at Uniarts Helsinki. Working in moving image and archives, they explore personal and collective histories, power dynamics, and social structures. Individual and collective practices, including lumbung radio and Station of Commons, are central. Their research, Rewound Trading Legacies, received the Finnish Art Society’s Young Artist Grant in 2023.
Read more at eddiechoowenyi.com
Taru Elfving
Taru Elfving is a curator and writer focused on nurturing undisciplinary and site-sensitive enquiries at the intersections of ecological, feminist and decolonial practices. As director of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago she leads a research residency on the island of Seili in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute, University of Turku. She is also a curatorial researcher in the transdisciplinary Centre for Sustainable Ocean Science (SOS) at Åbo Akademi University. She has published internationally and co-edited publications such as Contemporary Artist Residencies (Valiz 2019).
Elisabeth Hjorth
Elisabeth Hjorth is a writer and professor in Literary Composition at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Her literary and academic practice focuses on female autobiography, language/power, neurodiversity and autistic poetics. She holds a PhD in Ethics from Uppsala University. 2021- 2023 she was the project leader for the interdisciplinary research project ”Autistic Writing: Reclaiming Reloading Another Mother Tongue”, financed by the Swedish Research Council. Her latest book is Mutant (Glänta, 2021).
Read more at Elisabeth Hjorth’s homepage.
Emma Kihl
Emma Kihl is Senior Lecturer in Writing at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She teaches writing and art history and initiated the post-master’s course Feral Writing (2025). She has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and her work explores ecocriticism, literary practice, and collaboration across research, pedagogy, and art.
Pia Korhonen
Pia Korhonen (M.A. in Writing, 2025) is a writer whose work moves through expansive and elemental environments. Her texts explore landscapes shaped and dominated by wind, mountains, glaciers, and snow, as well as other-than-human forms of life. She primarily works with the fragment, the poem, and the lyrical essay.
Susanna Laaksonen
Susanna Laaksonen is a doctoral candidate at Uniarts Helsinki exploring the somatic-affective dimensions of writing. Her work spans film, TV, theatre, and media art. She studies micro-phenomenology and somatic movement, and her 2023 book Vapaan kirjoittajan anatomia (Anatomy of a Free Writer) examines the body’s role in a creative process.
Karoliina Lummaa
PhD Karoliina Lummaa is currently affiliated with the BIOS Research Unit, Helsinki, Finland. Lummaa’s long-time research topics include nonhuman artistic agency and cultural dimensions of environmental change and sustainability transitions. Lummaa’s background is in literary studies and her publications include monographs, articles and edited anthologies on Finnish literature, posthumanism and the environmental humanities.
Olli Pyyhtinen
Olli Pyyhtinen is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University. His work is philosophically oriented and entangled with art and addresses issues such as waste, multispecies relations and gift. Pyyhtinen has contributed to the relational and posthumanist turn in the social sciences and currently also studies creative writing at the Kriittinen Korkeakoulu.
Read more about Olli Pyyhtinen at his profile page.
Dua Abbas Rizvi
Dua Abbas Rizvi is a visual artist with a background in literature and art journalism. She works with both found and original media, and fragments of her own writing, to reflect on themes of memory, subjectivity, and the ambivalence of language.
Read more at duaabbasrizvi.com
Registration
The registration is open until 8 October 2025.
The Writing as Artistic Research 1
This event is the second part of a seminar series, the first of which was held at Puistokatu 4 in January 2025. Participation in this second seminar does not require attendance at the January event.
Read more about the January seminar.
Contact information for the seminar
-
Lena Seraphin
- Part-time teacher, Art history and -theory, Academy of Fine Arts
- lena.seraphin@uniarts.fi
-
Antti Eemeli Salminen
- Professor, Master’s Degree Programme in Writing, Theatre Academy
- +358440363536
- antti.salminen@uniarts.fi