»STITCHPUNK: INFUSED« explores labour as a form of knowledge, which is an overlooked resource in conversations about sustainability.
Li Actuallee
Photos: Katharina Ley
Developed by Li Actuallee during their SBYD Textile Residency, STITCHPUNK: INFUSED explores labour as a form of knowledge, which is an overlooked resource in conversations about sustainability. Although environmental narratives emphasise materials, they rarely acknowledge the bodies that gather, spin, dye, stitch and transport them. Li Actuallee’s work reveals this invisible labour. Using crochet and knitting techniques, as well as hand-built tools that deposit charcoal, pastel or ink, the textiles become records of gesture, fatigue, rhythm and interruption. Each mark is a trace of the body in time. The works unfold in ‚craft time‘: slow, non-linear and resistant to productivity norms. They are shaped by rest, repetition and emotional endurance. Drawing on Marx‘s writings about alienated labour and contemporary critiques of craft economies, the project reflects on how craft workers today must commodify both their identity and their time. By combining soft textile techniques with pigments that reference industrial labour, the work challenges the boundaries between ‚hard‘ and ‚soft‘, manual and emotional, and personal and political. Stitchpunk insists that labour remains visible – stained, marked and embodied. The work was presented at Museum Folkwang.
- This residency was part of SBYD, through which Folkwang University awards grants to international artists and designers invited to Essen to realise their own projects on site. In 2025, the programme’s third round was announced in India. In collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore.
»Digital Compost Lab« explores how we can rethink digital excess as a regenerative resource.
Vinay Khare
Photos: Katharina Ley
Developed by Vinay Khare during his SBYD Tech Residency, the Digital Compost Lab investigates how we can make intangible digital decay tangible and meaningful while fostering a culture of mindful digital consumption. Through participatory interactions, digital media is transformed into evolving soundscapes, glitch art and cross-medium expressions, rethinking waste as a beginning rather than an endpoint. In a world of constant production, digital overproduction leaves invisible yet tangible traces, from server emissions to cognitive overload. The project is informed by the contrast between the cyclical biosphere, where waste becomes nourishment, and the largely linear anthroposphere, where production accumulates. The Digital Compost Lab is situated within this context and asks how we might rethink digital excess as a regenerative resource. Using analogue technologies such as cassettes and tape loops, as well as older technical processes, the work highlights the physical and temporal qualities of data that are often overlooked in the modern digital age. The work was presented at Museum Folkwang. - This residency was part of SBYD, through which Folkwang University awards grants to international artists and designers invited to Essen to realise their own projects on site. In 2025, the programme’s third round was announced in India. In collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore.
During her residency at SBYD.SPACE, Yuri Nakai explored how repair can function as an architectural and social principle in a post-industrial region such as the Ruhr area.
Together with artist Konstantin Pütz, she developed the performance »ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS WE RECONCILE«, which brings together the insights from her research. The video features excerpts from the performance, which took place on 21 June on the Rungenberghalde in Gelsenkirchen.
The work was presented at the Gutes Klima Festival 2025 in cooperation with Bonnekamp-Stiftung and the Museum Folkwang at Zeche Carl. This residency was part of SBYD.SPACE, through which Folkwang University awards grants to international artists and designers invited to Essen to realise their own projects on site. In 2025, the programme’s second round was announced in Japan. In collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Goethe-Institut Kyoto Villa Kamogawa, the thematic focus was developed and the grant recipients selected.
Under the title »ESSEN ESSEN«, Masatoshi Noguchi spent three months in Essen/Gelsenkirchen developing a site-specific project that explored the relationship between consumption, water balance, and environmental awareness.
Photos: Dominik Antoni Krolikowski, Masatoshi Noguchi, SBYD.SPACE
Playing on the double meaning of »Essen« – both city and food – he reflected artistically on human bodily cycles, ecological loops, and resource use. In Japan, it’s widely known that watermelon has diuretic/detoxifying properties.
Recipe: »You sweat, I sorbet« (Watermelon Rose Sorbet)
Yields: Approx. 1 litre Prep time: 15 minutes
Ingredients: – Seedless watermelon juice: 1 litre – Brown sugar: 11 teaspoons – Lime juice: 4 teaspoons – Rose water(Chtoura): 11 drops (Rose water has a strong scent, so use it sparingly.) – Salt: 1/5 – 1/4 teaspoon
Equipment: – Blender – Strainer – Ice cube molds
Instructions: 1 – Blend watermelon cubes until smooth, then strain to remove any seeds. Measure 1 liter of juice. 2 – Add brown sugar, lime juice, rose water, and salt to the watermelon juice. Blend again until the sugar is fully dissolved. 3 – Pour the mixture into ice cube molds and freeze until solid. 4 – Once frozen, remove cubes from molds. Blend or pulse in a food processor until it reaches a slushy, sorbet-like consistency. Serve immediately. 5 – Optional: Garnish with fresh mint, a sprinkle of cardamom powder, or a touch more salt or rose water.
The work was presented at the Gutes Klima Festival 2025 in cooperation with Bonnekamp-Stiftung and the Museum Folkwang at Zeche Carl. This residency was part of SBYD.SPACE, through which Folkwang University awards grants to international artists and designers invited to Essen to realise their own projects on site. In 2025, the programme’s second round was announced in Japan. In collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Goethe-Institut Kyoto Villa Kamogawa, the thematic focus was developed and the grant recipients selected.
»Metallophytes: Echoes of Extraction« reveals the hidden presence of heavy metals in Germany’s soils through stoneware ceramics, using plant ash glazes formed by pollutants absorbed by metallophytes – plants tolerant to toxicity.
Accompanied by a booklet, the project turns environmental data into a poetic archive, raising awareness about soil contamination and endangered metallophytes. The ceramics act as witnesses to industrial legacies from mining and agriculture, inviting dialogue on environmental impact and evolving pollution levels, while promoting the conservation of these unique metallophyte ecosystems.
The project was developed as part of the SBYD Designer-in-Residence programme and was exhibited for the first time at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven in 2024.
»Re:source« is a project focused on repurposing e-waste by reusing electronic components from discarded electronic devices in newly designed functional products.
Supported by a digital library that records used electronic components, the design process disassembles and reconfigures outdated devices into new ones, allowing these repurposed parts to be considered from the outset. The resourceful, circular design approach of »Re:source« challenges conventional design processes and moves away from the aesthetics of newness. By incorporating discarded electronic components into new products, the project highlights the unique characteristics of different donor devices, shaping their unconventional forms and questioning traditional design methods. A series of coffee grinders designed in this way illustrates the circular design process and its distinctive approach to form-giving.
The project was developed as part of the SBYD Designer-in-Residence programme and was exhibited for the first time at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven in 2024.
»Habitat« is an investigation into pine resin as a binder combining carbon-negative biochar, which is derived from biogenic residues through pyrolysis, to develop a new material.
The project focuses on the agency of the material itself, providing objects that enable new modes of co-existence and interactions with other species to promote a more sustainable and liveable future. Due to their materiality, the objects have tendencies that are inherent to living systems: the ability to change, to decay and to return to nature as nutrients.
The project was developed as part of the SBYD Designer-in-Residence programme and was exhibited for the first time at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven in 2024.
