Towards a Pedagogy of the Utopian Image. Doctoral Dissertation by Emanuel Almborg
This practice-based PhD project investigates the conditions for a pedagogy of the utopian imagein contemporary art and film. It starts from the premise that there is a need for new political and social visions and scenarios. The project asks what role art and artist film, both as a medium and as a social activity, can play in experimenting with and sketching such visions and scenarios – a process described as a pedagogy of the “utopian image”.
The PhD submission consists of the three films, Talking Hands/Говорящие руки, 2016, The Nth Degree, 2018, and Acorn, 2021, along with the exhibition Bildningarat Mint in Stockholm, which ran from 2 to 25 September 2021. Links to these films and documentation of the exhibition are included in the PDF submission, which also includes a written component with theoretical considerations and reflections on method.
Doctoral Dissertation
by due permission of the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, Sweden. To be defended at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Faculty opponents
Dr Susan Kelly, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and Critical Studies at Goldsmiths College, London.
Olivier Marboeuf, Paris-based writer, curator and film producer at Spectre Productions.
Emanuel Almborg’s dissertation has been carried out and supervised within the graduate programme in Visual Arts at the Royal Institute of Art. The dissertation is presented at Lund University in the framework of the cooperation agreement between the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, and the Royal Institute of Art regarding doctoral education in the subject Visual Arts. The PhD education has been funded through a collaboration between the Royal Institute of Art and Stockholm University of the Arts.