Embedded Art History in A Burning World

An afternoon on art’s role in deepening and altering our understanding of geological and geopolitical crises

This October, the Art History department at Södertörn University in Stockholm is organizing a symposium on “Embedded Art History in a Burning World” to celebrate our 20th anniversary. The symposium seeks to examine art’s role in deepening and/or altering our understanding of crises–geological and geopolitical–and is centered around presentations given by a young generation of art historians (postdocs and doctoral students) affiliated with the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn (CBEES).

The program for this afternoon covers some fifty years of European history, through artistic works presented by the doctoral students and emerging scholars. A keynote lecture will follow in which the researchers and curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes address the symposium theme. They are both co-directors of the Post-socialist Art Centre (PACT) at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL and co-founders of Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art. Their numerous publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020) and Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021). A Concluding panel discussion will be followed by a reception.

Program:

13.00 Dan Karlholm, Welcome!
13.20 Joel Odebrant, On Britt Lundbohm-Reutersvärd’s Sotcyklon (1955)
13.40 Camilla Larsson, On Władysław Hasior’s The Sun Chariot (1972–76)
14.00 Break
14.20 Oscar Svanelid, On Sapphos döttrar’s Galaxernas spiraler liknar hårtofsen på spädbarnets hjässa (1986)
14.40 Moa Höglund, On Mirosław Bałka’s 37,1 (cont.) (1993)
15.00 Benjamin Wagner, On Thomas Demand’s Büro (1995)
15.20 Break
15.40 Keynote lecture. Maja and Reuben Fowkes “Forests without Shade and Lakes without Water”: Short Circuits of Developmentalism in the Socialist Anthropocene
16.30 Panel discussion. Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Katarina Wadstein Macleod, Tora Lane. Chair: Oscar Svanelid
17.15 Bar at cost price

Participants: Maja Fowkes (Associate Professor, Department of History of Art / Principal Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL), Reuben Fowkes (Associate Lecturer, Department of History of Art / Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL), Moa Höglund (Doctoral student Art History, Södertörn University), Dan Karlholm (Professor Art History, Södertörn University), Tora Lane (Associate Professor, Department for Slavic Studies, Stockholm University), Camilla Larsson (Postdoctoral researcher Art History, Södertörn University), Katarina Wadstein Macleod (Professor Art History, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University), Joel Odebrant (Postdoctoral researcher Art History, Södertörn University), Oscar Svanelid (Postdoctoral researcher Art History, Södertörn University), Benjamin Wagner (Doctoral student Art History, Södertörn University).

The symposium is one of three events on the occasion of the jubilee of Södertörn’s Art History, the other being a seminar on Visual cultures and counter-narratives in Romania and an adjoint opening in Art Space on October 17th. For more info, see calender of that date.