In this workshop we will explore the dynamic entanglement of architecture and artistic practice within academic research. What is often seen as separate—creative practice versus writing and critical reflection—can in fact form a unique feedback system. In this space, spatial exploration, field work, experimentation, intuition, and reflection intersect and evolve, often through public presentations and open dialogues that accompany ongoing research projects. Rather than reinforcing disciplinary boundaries, the interplay between architecture, art and academic writing opens up a productive force field in which representational strategies can be challenged and reimagined. This convergence fosters new modes of inquiry that are both theoretically grounded and materially engaged. Together with our invited guest, Marc Duncan we will discuss particularly documentary film practice. PhD candidates will present their research projects and films.

SAM JOSEPH

(IN)VISIBLE (11 minutes): This is a fictionalised work based on my own experience. It seeks to raise awareness of the often-invisible nature of domestic violence, intentionally avoiding gratuitous depictions of abuse.

FALLEN (5 minutes): This is a performance piece inspired by conversations with Killed Women and will form part of their Fallen Women campaign later this year. FALLEN raises awareness of femicide, including deaths resulting from women being pushed from heights, and advocates for legislative change. It is also an example of hybrid filmmaking, existing not only as a short film but also as aVR and multi-screen projection installation, as well as a screen print series.The spaces and design of both films dismantle conventional visual codes associated with representations of violence.

CLÁUDIA DA PALMA ROMÃO

THE PATH OF THE BONES (5 min): The oral narrative draws on a poetic short story by the Portuguese eco-mythologist Sofia Batalha, from her book Sanctuary, in which she guides us on an ancestral journey into the “body-landscape” of the far west of the IberianPeninsula’s cultural memory. This video essay unfolds as one of the first storytelling exercises conceived as a speculative living archive. It serves asa receptacle for encounters, remembrances and counter-histories that run transversally to the theoretical and scientific written framework. In doing so, the work repositions history and iconography as contested terrain. It proposes an argument not as the recovery of a fixed or “pure” past, but as the activation of possible pasts — histories that have been silenced, fragmented or displaced. Through layered imagery of archaeological fragments, archival documents, site perambulations and oral traditions, the visual and oral narrative traces specific localities of an ancient past that persists. Myths emerge as thresholds between non-linear temporalities and overlapping realities, while histories resonate as reverberations of an earth-language.

BAIQI CHEN

OUT OF PLACE: FROM CAN THO TO CHENGHAI (20 min): This film centres on an elderly man born in Can Tho, Vietnam and his life long connection to a grand family mansion in Chenghai, China over the past century. Drawing on his memories and imaginings of life in Vietnam, I use this architectural space to explore how he and his family have come to understand their own fate while navigating dramatic political regime changes and turbulent social upheavals across a hundred years. Through this case, the film examines how such structures were constructed, abandoned and later repurposed. Behind them lies a tortuous yet little-known history, representing the original sin and the shackles of an entire generation. This forms the essential context through which contemporary audiences may observe, understand and engage with these spaces today.

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Max Duncan is an award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer and journalist whose work has appeared on platforms including the BBC, PBS, The Guardian, The New York Times and Al Jazeera and screened at major international festivals. He worked for a decade in China, first for Reuters news agency in Beijing and then independently, and has reported widely across Asia (including multiple trips to North Korea), Africa, Europe and Latin America. Max has received recognition including a World Press Photo Award, been supported by organizations including Pulitzer, and is an alumnus of Yaddo and Logan Nonfiction programs. His first feature documentary, Made in Ethiopia, was awarded the Special Jury Mention at Tribeca Festival 2024.