ART FOREST
The Arts for Resilient Futures — ART FOREST — is an in-house, interdisciplinary platform that was founded in the autumn of 2022 by and for researchers in the aesthetic sciences. In these transformational times, it aims to provide a space that addresses the role of aesthetics in relation to climate change and environmental challenges, the ways in which these crises call for new ways of living, and which addresses the inequalities and conflicts that follow in their wake.
The arts and humanities are mobilising around issues concerning the climate and environment in a variety of ways. Both historically and in the present, different forms of artistic expression have examined and are examining the interactions between humans and nature, and may speak of the histories of their attachments and conflicts. How can we shape a better future by using this knowledge of the past?
ART FOREST gathers a range of smaller initiatives at Södertörn University, such as “Rataoskr – research group for cultural and literary human-animal studies” External link., which has extensive networks with scholars throughout northern Europe and published its first peer-reviewed anthology in 2022.
Externally funded research projects currently affiliated with ART FOREST include one literary project about the figure of the bear in northern-European nation building in the 19th and 20th centuries External link.; a project in art about Arctic nature; another about representations of extreme weather in art; External link. and a project in aesthetics about ice and cold as objects of for knowledge and representation.
Project applications that are being developed within ART FOREST include one about Swedish “eco-dramaturgy”, one on Harmut Rosa's resonance theory regarding people and the world, one called "Picturing the Nearby: Portrait and Landscape Photography in the North 1890-1950", and one called “Voices and noises - the establishment of the divide between human and non-human animals in Nordic literature around 2000”.
ART FOREST was initiated and coordinated by Dan Karlholm External link. (art), Ann-Sofie Lönngren External link. (literature), and Cecilia Sjöholm External link. (aesthetics) during the autumn of 2022.
During the spring of 2023, the platform is coordinated by Amelie Björck (literature), Anna Rådström (art) och Erik Wallrup (aesthetics).
Everyone is welcome!
If you want to know more, please email us.