18.03.26 – 20.03.26, Research Days 2026, Play

What if play were set at the heart of reseach, to become its driving force?

With Play as its central theme, KASK & Conservatorium announces the first edition of the Research Days: a three-day festival for researchers, artists, students and visitors to explore playfulness in thought and action — through performances, lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions, workshops and interventions.

Playfulness as a radical gesture

Playing is a fundamental way to engage with the world. How we play both reflects and shapes our ways of being and knowing. Playing also introduces instability and imagination, placing us in a fluid, indeterminate field of experience.

In artistic research, playfulness can function as a mindset and as a research method. Here, playing becomes a critical tool for exploring ideas, testing assumptions, and generating knowledge. When researchers and artists fully embrace play, they tap into its disruptive potential, using uncertainty and improvisation to challenge norms.

Yet play is never neutral. It is situated, embodied, and negotiated: shaped by movement, territory, materials, social structures, media, and the technologies through which it unfolds.

When does art or research in the arts become a playful proposition? Who is allowed to play, and who is excluded? And how might playfulness be understood as an attitude that opens up possibilities and moves beyond normative constraints?