The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm) is an initiative dedicated to interdisciplinary practice and research at the intersection of contemporary art and the evolving landscape of politics. As the first Swedish Centre of Excellence in Artistic Research, CAPIm is jointly based at HDK-Valand and Kungl. Konsthögskolan (KKH), two leading institutions of higher education in art. The Centre is committed to fostering connections between art, research, and education through new approaches.
In this interview, Natasha Marie Llorens, co-chair of CAPIm, discusses the center’s origins, goals, and its approach to integrating artistic research with education, offering a platform that supports established artists while engaging BA and MA students. CAPIm is preparing for its official launch on October 23rd, featuring presentations from the first senior researchers at the Centre and other researchers. The launch will present the Centre’s vision and program such as the coming summer school in June 2025 in Marseille, which will be open for students and researchers.
Interviewed by Michele Masucci.
MM: What sparked the idea to form a center of excellence in artistic research?
NML: When I first took a position at the Royal Institute of Art in 2020, my understanding of artistic research was that it provided a way for artists with archival or bibliographically-based practices to get long-term support and infrastructure for their work, which is often less well-received in the gallery world. But I soon realized thatin the Nordic region major government funding bodies like VR are becoming a fundamental element of non-commercial support for the arts more broadly, both within art academies like KKH and as grants to individuals. Artists are increasingly expected to articulate what they do as “research” no matter how they consider the relation between their practices and knowledge production. The definition of artistic research should matter to everyone, in other words, because those funding streams will increasingly define which practices get supported beyond the gallery.
I also noticed that we at KKH did not systematically connect our teaching philosophies for BA and MA students to either the potential or the challenge of engaging in artistic research. On a fundamental level, we were not providing instruction in the critical reading and writing skills necessary to come to the “artistic research” table. On a more conceptual level, we were not providing models to all emerging artists for artistic research as a category of artistic practice as part of the core curriculum. The idea behind CAPIm emerged,for me at least, from a pedagogical imperative to make the debate within the field more democratic by creating infrastructure to include BA and MA students in the artistic research discussion on their own terms. I see CAPIm’s capacity to aggregate existing positions within the field of artistic research and make it available for students to engage in a lot of different ways as an act of political imagination.
MM: What does a center of excellence in artistic research do?
NML: I see the Centre as an infrastructure. It supports and fosters artistic research at the highest level of the field internationally; it engenders pedagogical experimentation; it provides space to discuss the political stakes of artistic research at a critical moment; and it insists on the existing and necessary connection between acts of imagination and political acts.
MM: How did the collaboration with HDK-Valand come about, what does it entail?
NML: I reached out to Mick Wilson at HDK-Valand because I felt the call from VR to initiate a Center of Excellence was a unique opportunity to circumvent the impending budget crisis. HDK-Valand’s extensive experience building and sustaining a research environment in the arts made it a crucial partner in producing infrastructure with longevity in the field. The unique experimental margin we enjoy at KKH because of our size and the history of the institution complemented HDK-Valand’s strengths, and together I felt we could do good work towards a more common interest than either of our institutions.
What are the highlights for the center this academic year?
NML: The new staff members and the visiting international Senior Researcher are the highlights this year. You, for example, Michele, who will contribute a perspective based on your doctoral work on the politics of collectivity in the arts as well as a broad experience with complex research projects; Dr. Valentina Desideri, who will join both the Centre and the Text Area in September to develop a curriculum around artistic research methods specifically for our students from an embodied perspective; and Mexican artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo who will be in residence in October and November as our inaugural Senior Researcher. Her work draws on Mesoamerican cosmologies and speculative fiction to propose alternative worldmaking. Naomi will hold a public seminar in the late afternoon of October 3rd and will also speak at the CAPIm launch on the 23rd of October. I am also excited about the advisory board, who will meet several times over the course of the year to reflect critically on our framework and the research goals we have set for ourselves. They are: Stefan Jonsson, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Head of Division at Linköping University; Maria Hlavajova, founding general and artistic director of BAK in Utrecht, Tanya El Khoury, an artist and director of Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, New York; and Jay Pather, a choreographer, curator, Professor and director the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town.
How does CAPIm relate contemporary art and political imaginaries, could you exemplify?
NML: I don’t separate contemporary art from acts of political imagination. Each aesthetic decision is a political decision, both because such an act represents that world order (even if only on a very abstract level) and because representation shapes subjects to the same degree that it is shaped by them. When an artist acts on their imagination, they produce the possibility of that imagination for others. I think of CAPIm as an infrastructure for those who acknowledge this non-separation. In that sense, the Centre is critical when contemporary art is increasingly controlled by the interests aligned with the market and conservative forms of nationalism, both in Sweden and more broadly. I see CAPIm as a fold in the surrounding landscape, one that allows for support from mounting pressures elsewhere.
How do your backgrounds influence your roles at CAPIm, and what do you find most rewarding or challenging about leading the Centre?
NML: I work with artists to make shows and do collaborative research, I write in a focused way about their work, I teach them—and I only teach artists at this point. What I bring to CAPIm is an unwavering commitment to make space for research by artists or research done in the interests of artists.It is challenging and rewarding to begin building something new that might transform both KKH and the field. This project entails a tremendous responsibility, but it feels a lot better than sitting around identifying problems without the resources to do anything to change things.
How does CAPIm engage with the wider community and foster collaborations?
NML: The focus to date has been on making sure the collaboration between KKH and HDK-Valand is solid and integrating CAPIm into the day-to-day operations in both institutions. There are initiatives planned to connect to a broader audience, such as the annual symposium next fall and the summer school next June, which will include students from both schools and members of the broader community of artistic researchers. We will speak in more detail about these and other programmatic elements at the official launch event on October 23rd.
How can we engage with the center? What does it offer?
NML: We see CAPIm as a powerful platform to aggregate research interests already present in the field. We don’t make grants to individuals, but we would eventually like to work with people on external grant applications hosted by the Center. There is already a process to collaborate with faculty and affiliate courses with CAPIm. We see the Research Annual and the Summer School as two recurring events that create points of significant contact between the Center and external researchers, but we will develop more as the initial structure settles into place.