Join us for the inaugural Mejan Research Annual, a recurring platform for sharing and engaging in artistic research projects conducted at the Royal Institute of Art. Each project shapes its own form and content to delve into the specific questions we are invited to explore. At the heart of the Research Annual lies the collective exchange of methods and experiences amidst ongoing artistic research.
The 2023 Research Annual is scheduled for November 8th and 9th at the Royal Institute of Art. We invite you to three artistic research presentations:
8 November, 13:00 – 16:00 House 28*:
Anna Ådahl and Stefan Jonsson: Collective Agency in an era of Authoritarian Automation
9 November, 10:30 – 12:00, Rutiga golvet (Main building):
Filippa Arrias: The Stork from Paramaribo flew Away Never to Return – Transformation as “the Other”
9 November, 13:30 – 15:00, House 28*:
Emanuel Almborg: The Social Infant – an Artistic Observation of Infant Sociality
As we have a limited number of places, pre-registration is required for the sessions.
Send an email to: asa.andersson@kkh.se
About the three research projects:
Anna Ådahl & Stefan Jonsson: Collective Agency in an era of Authoritarian Automation
In a world characterized by the potentially total surveillance of human life, Collective Agency asks: What is a crowd in the 21stcentury? What are the consequences of crowd action and digital crowd modeling and control for our understanding of democracy? What agency does the crowd have in a postdigital era of surveillance capitalism? In extended dialogues, artistic practices, experimental writing, and a projected essay film, the project combines the resources of a writer and theorist of crowd phenomena, culture and migration with those of a visual artist exploring the technological tools operating today´s masses. We launch an inquiry into collective behavior and biometric surveillance. At the heart of this attempt, we situate the notions of transmediation and the porous body. How can they constitute a bridge and connection between various formats of critical thinking and aesthetic practices in different media and materia: image, text, voice, body, matter?
The research project is financed by the Swedish Research Council (2022-2025). Hosted by Linköping University/REMESO (the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society) in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Art.
Filippa Arrias: The Stork from Paramaribo flew Away never to return – Transformation as “the Other”
Through the creation of artworks in the form of painting, film/moving image and a literary travel diary, a family story is sought that has been hidden in time, but which has been made available through open archives and the internet. The project explores different aspects of time, memory and perception. Fiction and performance are juxtaposed with research documentation. The artistic process is followed through the diary. The personal biography becomes the common thread that gives access to a very specific post-colonial narrative in a delimited, polyphonic place: the small country of Suriname in northern South America, where the open complexity of creolity is a source of positive national identity, in contrast to the segregation and the reinvigorated interest in ideas of ethnicity and sovereignty in our own current moment.
During Filippa Arrias’ presentation at Research Annual, Sara Mannheimer, writer, and Johan Arrias, musician, will also take part.
The research project is financed by the Swedish Research Council (2018-2023).
Emanuel Almborg: The Social Infant – an Artistic Observation of Infant Sociality
Can group life develop in infancy? What does it look and sound like? Can artistic research produce a new understanding of infancy through a sensory, observational image? The research project The Social Infantwill address such questions, re-evaluating film’s observational mode to produce a new image of early childhood. This three-year research project is based on a longitudinal film study of a group of six infants. The research method will draw on and complicate methods from an international field of infant research. But where existing work prioritizes the mother-child relation, I will create a child peer group to illuminate a less researched subject: infant group relations.
The research project is financed by the Swedish Research Council (2023-2025). Collaboration with the BabyDevLab at University of East London and LUX, London.
The presentations and the event will be conducted in English.
As we have a limited number of places, pre-registration is required for the sessions. Please send an email to: asa.andersson@kkh.se
*House 28/Hus 28 is located at Holmamiralens torg 8, next to Royal Institute of Art. Rutiga golvet is situated in the main building at Flaggmansvägen 1.