This is an innovative distance/blended course taught online and in face-to-face intensives in different locations across Europe. The course is through English and introduces key themes and questions in respect of politics, affiliation and the ontology of friendship with particular reference to contemporary art practices, theories and institutions. The course is based on current research and framed as an inquiry-based process, where the key task for course participants is the production of a project proposal relevant to their own practice (e.g., theory, criticism, art making, curatorial work, cultural studies, philosophy or other research across the creative arts and the humanities). We also welcome PhD researchers in different arts-based and non-arts based disciplines to audit the course as guest researchers.
This course is part of a wider set of courses on art and the political imaginary that are associated initiatives of Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm), the first Swedish Centre of Excellence in the field of Artistic Research.
Participants are expected to: (i) actively engage in the online workshops, lectures and seminars; (ii) engage in extensive (!) shared reading; (iii) join at least one face-to-face research intensive (from a choice of four); and (iv) and explore the implications of the course themes for their own practice and/or further studies. Participants are specifically invited to develop project ideas connected to the course themes, and relevant to the participants’ own practice, (e.g., theory, criticism, art making, curatorial work, cultural studies, philosophy or other research across the creative arts and the humanities).
guest speakers
Guest speakers in 2021, 2022, and 2023 included inter alia, Nick Aikens, Kathrin Böhm, Jason E. Bowman, Céline Condorelli, Quinsy Gario, Jennifer Hayashida, Maria Hlavajova, Steven Henry Madoff, Walter Mignolo, Jota Mombaça, Sarah Pierce, Bojana Piškur, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Thiago de Paula Souz, Helena Reckitt, Grace Samboh & Ratna Mufida, Shuddha Sengupta, Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Claire Tancons.
Speakers invited for 2024 include researchers at the new Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (to be announced shortly), and guest speakers: Gary Farrelly (artist), Melanie Pocock and Marilou Launeuville co-curators of the Exhibition (8 March- 7 July 2024) Friends in Love and War — L’Éloge des meilleures ennemies, Kristen Sharp (RMIT University), Martyn Hudson (Northumbria Univesity), Niels Van Tomme (independent curator) and other special guests to be announced shortly. For more detailed programme see the course support page on CANVAS.
application each year
Application via www.universityadmissions.se (for international applicants) and via www.antagning.se (for Swedish applicants).
exhibition.school 