Loving Others, Othering Love: A Toolbox for Postcolonial and Feminist Artistic Practices
Mara Lee
The artistic research project intends to examine the role that love plays in the construction of Othered women. The result will be a feminist/postcolonial toolbox in the form of a hybridized reference book that uses literary and poetic forms, as well as theoretical expository writing.
The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2017–2020)
Work a work
Karin Hansson, Åsa Andersson Broms, Shiva Anoushirvani, Per Hasselberg, George Kentros, Nils Claesson
In the interdisciplinary art project, Work a work, a group of artists explore the concept of work from a philosophical, political, and critical perspective through an open and collaborative work process including researchers and union activists.
Changing global work relations and digital labour are transforming the way we perform our identities and understand our life worlds. Crowd-sourcing, micro-tasks, the sharing economy, and an expanding class of temporary and flexible workers strengthen commodification of relations and create extreme forms of alienation. The shift away from permanent employment to short term and independent contract work challenges the labour rights established during the last hundred years to keep class warfare at bay. However, at the same time, social media also strengthens community and enables labour activism on a global scale.
To develop an understanding of this ongoing transformation of what we know as “work”, we start with our own artistic practices and work relations, developing artistic research methodologies. Here we start with ideas about the reflective practitioner, researchers’ situatedness, and art as micro-publics or infrastructuring, to explore how the reflexive artistic work process can be enhanced and supported through collaboration, and how the idea of work can be developed through materialization and art performance. Work a work takes place in workshops, online, in public seminars, and foremost in artists’ practices, through artworks.
The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2017–2020)
Refuse to Kill – Stories of the Conscientious Objectors
Björn Larsson, Carl Johan Erikson
Refuse to Kill – Stories of the Conscientious Objectors, investigates a specific phase in Sweden’s recent history through one of the great existential narratives of the human condition: the concept of peace and reconciliation. In this artistic research project we utilise the potential of the large number of experiences and stories from the 35 000 young men who, between 1966 and 1992, made the choice to not enter traditional military service, but instead applied for, and were granted, unarmed civil service.
The conscientious objector movement’s existential issue surrounding the right to refuse to kill relates to both the individual’s freedom and artistic expression in relation to the law – then as well as now. Artists had an important role in the conscientious objector movement; many chose civil service, and artists were very active in the public discourse that led to legislative change. The research project wants to learn through the experiences of the conscientious objectors and reconnect to the artists’ role as agents in a contemporary political landscape.
The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2017–2020)
The Stork from Paramaribo Flew Away Never to Return – Transformation as “the Other”
Filippa Arrias
In the artistic research project, The Stork from Paramaribo Flew Away Never to Return – Transformation as “the Other”, I will advance my inquiries into how a content/subject matter transforms by being translated in-between different artistic medias and materials. By reflecting on an inherited “hi-Story”, at the time fictional as well as real, I will use both painting, documentation and writing to express different aspects of that same story.
The intention is to relieve the polyphony of “the Story”, by stressing the coherence in-between the specificity of the media and its means of interpretation. The specific qualities that signify a certain media or material, thus decide its validity. I focus on the materialities of painting as the means of expression in my research. The artistic process activates as well as defuses the different materials in its strive to make sense to the content. The factual qualities of the materials as well as their symbolical connotations blend into an ongoing dialogue. In my research project painting and the palimpsestic qualities of the media represent the figuration of time, memory and imagination.
The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2018–2020)
Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image
Annika Larsson
How can the Moving Image and the Laughing Body become agents for new thought, acts, and embodiment? The project will examine the Moving Image and the Laughing Body’s capacity for new and alternative modes of thinking, acting and being, and their potential to overturn our habitual course and change the order of things. Through a series of audio-visual montages and contexts, it will experiment with new modes of knowledge production, viewing and circulation, and examine the interconnection between Laughter, the Moving Image and Non-Knowledge.
Like the sudden invasion of laughter that for a moment sets us off course, this project will explore ways in which we communicate beyond instrumental language, subjectivity and reason, to experience what the moving image and our bodies can do and how they can teach us about the limits of our thinking.
The project ran in collaboration with the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg – HFBK) where Annika Larsson has a Professorship. The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2018–2020)
Looking for Jeanne
Petra Bauer
In autumn 2017, as the #MeToo movement spread through societies, women demanded that society should take their negative experiences and exploitation seriously. The events can be compared to the 1970s when artists made films and artwork to visualize, question and change the role and position of women in society. For example, Chantal Akerman made the film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975) which was very important for initiating a feminist debate about women’s work, resistance and their roles in society. The film Jeanne Dielman also revealed the need for a film that was based on feminist theory and practice.
Petra Bauer’s research project Looking for Jeanne is rooted in and reflects on the film Jeanne Dielman and asks the questions: Who is a contemporary Jeanne Dielman? How can the film – through its aesthetics – investigate, question and change unequal conditions and exploitative arrangements regarding women’s work and their role in today’s global society? The research project, in close collaboration with feminist organizations and networks, will produce three films about contemporary forms of feminized work today: sex work, maternity and house work. The three year project follows the theme of the film Jeanne Dielman, accompanied by an annual symposium about social reproduction in our contemporary society, based on theoretical and artistic perspectives in collaboration with reference groups.
The Artistic Research was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2019–2021)
The Final Repository: A Macroscopic Exploration
Carl Johan Erikson & Karin Willén
The research project was funded by The Seed Box Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, Linköpings universitet. (2018)
Den byråkratiska teatern
Andjeas Ejiksson
The research project was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2014–2015)
Flaskpost: Drift och upptäckt
Ellie Ga
The research project was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2014–2017)
A4-arket
Emma Kihl
The research project was funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2011-2013)