Lena Seraphin

Introduction

Doctor of Arts Lena Séraphin is a visual artist and researcher. Her practice is based on sensitive text/writing and display as dramaturgy. Her postdoctoral project, Sharing Text, at Åbo Akademi University in 2020-2023, was an exploration of how text can be published site purposely and written in public space. She is currently PI for the artistic research project transitory writing in no one´s land supported by Kone Foundation 2024-25. Séraphin holds an MA in fine art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a doctorate from Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her thesis Don Quixote Complex and Investigations into Fictionality deals with writing/reading as a self-constituting practice and mutable identity. During the work on her thesis and in her postdoctoral studies at Konstfack, Stockholm, Séraphin facilitated artistic practice with the support of a fictive colleague. Their aim was to show that the imaginary can be an affirmative and knowledge-creating place. She is a co-founder of language-based artistic research (a special interest group for the Society for Artistic Research; SAR) and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
Currently Séraphin acts as the principal investigator in transitory writing in no one’s land supported by the Kone foundation (2024 – 2025). This research project is conducted by artists, researchers and writers Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Cordula Daus, and Lena Séraphin. The project is further supported by an advisory group that includes writer-curator PhD An Paenhuysen and artist-educator PhD Hannah Kaihovirta.

The research transitory writing in no one’s land investigates the artistic research method of collective writing being part of a larger field of research titled Language-based Artistic Research. This emergent field of research develops expanded language based practices within artistic research. The proposition is further embedded in artist-researcher Lena Séraphin’s doctoral dissertation concerning writing and subjectivity as well as her postdoctoral research Sharing Text on collective writing pursued with artist-researchers Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Cordula Daus and Vidha Saumya. Previous research iterations include the exposition Reading on Reading: Ecologies of Reading (Cocker, Daus and Séraphin, #4 Ruukku, 2019) and Textorium (Cocker, Coyotzi Borja, Daus, Saumya and Séraphin, #10 ViS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, 2023) as well as workshops, for example, in the #3 Research Pavilion in Venice 2019 and conference contributions at the 12th and 13th International SAR Conferences for Artistic Research in Vienna (Cocker, Coyotzi Borja, Daus, Saumya, Séraphin, Alexander Damianisch and Sepideh Karami) and Bauhaus Universität Weimar (Cocker and Séraphin) as well as publicly presented artistic outcomes.

Séraphin’s doctoral thesis The Don Quixote Complex and Investigations into Fictionality (2017) suggests reading as co-creation. This focus on co-creation within language-based practices was further explored in the postdoctoral project Sharing Text (2019-2023) at Åbo Akademi University with a collective writerly method suspending writing from meaning-making by an epistemic inquiry advancing open-minded dialogue. Sharing Text resulted in public presentations of artworks as well as collective writing as method being interweaved in both tuition and research at the Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies, and in extension explored with pupils in basic education (grades 2 and 5-6). The facilitation and mediation of artistic practices in this interdisciplinary setting as an artistic research residency within a faculty offering educational degree programs proved to be reciprocal and dynamic, bringing attention to how we conduct research in the arts as well as how we communicate, develop and share epistemic inquiries and generative learning processes with the potential to enhance reciprocity and empathy. Newness concerned the usage of the Academill building for site-specific presentations of artworks and situated learning.
For further information please visit https://writinginpublic.space/
ig transitory_writing

ORCID ID: 0009-0005-0001-5995