Affiliations + Non-Affiliations
- Visiting Fellow, Institute for Unmeasurable Research
- Resident Observer, Basement Archives of Forgotten Proposals
- Associate Member, International Society for the Refusal of Metrics
- Affiliated without paperwork, The University of You Never Know What
- Informal collaborator, School of Loopholes and Escape Routes
- Member of the Projectariat, though not by choice.
Selected Publications
- Beyond the Protocol: Research That Refuses Metrics (Journal of Fugitive Knowledge, 2019)
- How to Value What Cannot Be Counted: Art as Labour, Labour as Art (Proceedings of the Invisible Academy, 2020)
- Against the Efficiency Trap: Notes on Slow Inquiry in Art Schools (Working Paper, 2021)
- The Researcher as Guest: Toward Hospitable Institutional Relations in the Arts (Photocopied edition, 2022)
- Artistic Knowledge Without Footnotes: Education Outside Accreditation (Zine, 2023)
Teaching Experience
- Art as Invisible Labour, guest seminar, School of Non-Alignment (2018)
- How to Refuse a Form, workshop for administrators (2019)
- Institutional Critique from the Inside, course held during faculty strikes (2020)
- Research Without Outputs: A Studio Practice, self-organized class in a borrowed kitchen (2021–ongoing)
- Maintenance, Care, and Creativity, workshop co-led with custodial staff (2022)
Grants & Residencies
- Residency in Everyday Life, duration: permanent, self-administered (2017–∞)
- Emergency Funding for Ideas Without Outcomes, provided by sympathetic peers (2019)
- Zero-Budget Grant for Unlimited Thinking, internally generated (2020)
- Unofficial Fellowship in Institutional Refusal, conducted across several universities simultaneously (2022)
Administrative Service
- Invented Alternative Meeting Structures (walking, eating, silent, dream-based)
- Drafted Grant Proposal on Autumn Leaves (rejected for lack of “impact”)
- Initiated Institutional Report (in manga, with Akiuki Simbo; possible anime adaptation)
- Proposed Evaluation by Collective Potluck (never implemented, but remembered fondly)
Approach
The Very Special Researcher works from the conviction that:
- Art is labour, but systematically undervalued, misrecognized, and rendered precarious.
- Teaching is an art practice, even (especially) when spontaneous or unstructured.
- Institutions exploit artists’ unpaid creativity while demanding outputs — a structure that must be re-imagined.
Preferred Job Conditions
- To work within and against institutions, never trapped in one hierarchy.
- To be paid for the real labour of thinking, making, and maintaining, not just for paperwork.
- To replace precarious contracts with conditions of care and security.
- To direct resources toward experiments without guaranteed outcomes.
- To be evaluated not by metrics, but by shared transformations, solidarities, and moments of hospitality.
- To inhabit a workplace where administrative forms are optional — and where artistic labour is finally recognized as work.