Unifilia Sleep-philia

Rooted in neuroaesthetic methodologies and explorations of invasiveness and behaviour, the work was developed in collaboration with schools and applied learning methods. Its evolution was guided by Paula Karvonen’s artistic research, drawing from neuro- and ecopsychology, somatic perception, dysregulation, and embodied learning processes shaped through biographies, biophilias, and social design. Central to this is an investigation and appreciation with spatial dramaturgy—how space, (temporary) necessity, an iterated route, sense of release, tension or discomfort, and proximity choreograph forms of comprehension, behaviour and an autonomy and cognition beyond. The project formed part of School as (a) Designer – Economics of Temporalities, Unmediating Future Feasibilities and Design Expertises In-situ, where Karvonen acted as the principal author of the artistic methodology and research. Within the Design Akatemia school programme (https://ado.fi, https://www.ornamo.fi/en, https://www.ornamo.fi/en/article/critical-curiosity-for-schools/), she developed and explored approaches that position students, teachers and participants as thinkers, designers and actors of lived experience and affective cognition. Sleep-philia is a horizontal study in which the beauty and difficulty of being exhales through a drawn line. The horizontal plane becomes a site for sensing, wisdom of nervous system and subtle recognition of being. The installation unfolded through ten planks, ten pencils, salt, sugar and the logics of release—mapping contours of time and being, whether collective or solitary, regulated or dysfunctional, aesthetic or non-aesthetic. The work suggests that true comprehension can be as demanding as a line -as being itself. Rest appears as an elemental offering—a quiet yet profound form of existence. The project is funded by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), Architecture and Design, and contributed to the final production during 2024–2026. Participatory workshops were carried out in school, gallery and museum contexts with students, teachers, other participants, performers and art and entrepreneurship pilots. New forms of collaboration and action are also being developed and integrated further based on various ways of the project concept and the research. Alongside the Sleep-philia exhibition at Galleria Tila, Helsinki, in September 2025, a further exhibition was presented at the Architecture and Design Museum Studio in Helsinki (School Inhale - 10 October to 31 December 2025). The exhibition is curated and it was set together with the students and their work based on the several working briefs and time spent together during 2024-2025. To take part, please contact: paula@sosio.fi / +358503762005