Accelerator SU

A conversation between artist Lisa Tan and Håkan Fischer, professor in human biological psychology on 29 November, 2024.

For the exhibition Dodge and/or Burn, Lisa Tan has looked at the intersection between the nervous system and interior life as a way to examine the operations of art, uncertainty and the formation of the self. As a professor in biological psychology this intersection is Håkan Fischer’s expertise and field of research. The focus of biological psychology is understanding and explaining psychological functions with the help of underlying biological processes, or, in other words how our experience of the world is connected to processes in the brain. Departing from the exhibition Dodge and/or Burn, Tan and Fischer discuss their respective methods and different considerations in exploring human inner life.

Samtal om armlängds avstånd mellan Susanna Dahlberg, vd för Riksteatern och Mårten Snickare, professor i konstvetenskap samt föreståndare Accelerator.

Susanna Dahlberg, vd för Riksteatern. 25 års erfarenhet som chef och producent inom scenkonstområdet. År 2019 publicerades Dahlbergs masteruppsats What is the length of an arm? om hur armlängds avstånd används inom konst- och kulturpolitiken i Sverige idag. Hon har varit en del av det offentliga samtalet kring konstnärlig frihet sedan dess.

Seminar with Nicole R. Fleetwood, inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.

Contemporary black diasporic art and the American carceral system are two focal points of Fleetwood’s research. In the seminar, she explores the multiple temporalities that impact the lives of incarcerated people and their loved ones. Carceral time is a broad framework that encompasses sentencing guidelines, the disparate temporalities that separate incarcerated and nonincarcerated people, the afterlife of imprisonment (such as parole and e-incarceration), and the long duration of racialized captivity and erasure in settler nation states. The seminar will focus specifically on how carceral time restructures Black intimacy and quotidian life.

Nicole R. Fleetwood is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, and the author of a number of books: Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011); On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (2015) and the price winning Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020). In connection with the latter book, she also curated an exhibition on the same topic at MoMA PS1, New York.

A conversation presented as part of the Battle of Ideas Debate festival at Accelerator on November 16th 2022.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the return of war to Europe has shocked the world and appears to have upended many assumptions about how international politics operates. What are the roots of the crisis in Ukraine and what will be the implications for reshaping Europe? Is this a new moment of Western unity and a reassertion of ‘Western values’ or the return of History and deeper geopolitical tensions? If borders and nation states still need to be taken seriously, how can countries offer solidarity to others?

Speakers:

Alex Voronov, journalist and writer. Since Russia’s invasion he has done several trips to the Ukraine to report from the war zone. Voronov is a former political editor of Eskilstuna-Kuriren, and currently an editorial writer at Liberala Nyhetsbyrån.

Maria Nilsson, Associate Professor of Journalism at the Institute of Media Studies, Stockholm University. Nilsson’s research interests include the politics of representation; questions of power, credibility and agency in visual media practices; and visual journalism and journalism in various historical and current contexts.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl, author and journalist. Chair at the Freiblickinstitut, Germany correspondent for online publication Spiked.

Norska konstnären Tori Wrånes i ett samtal med Therese Kellner, curator och intendent på Accelerator.

I Tori Wrånes första soloutställning i Stockholm omsluts besökaren av marina världar där pälsklädda urvarelser rör sig till havets rytm. För Accelerator har Wrånes skapat BIG WATER som tar sin utgångspunkt på olika platser i världshaven: ovan ytan i Thailands kustland och under ytan i Norges arktiska vatten. De två platserna flätas samman i ett storskaligt video- och musikverk.

Tori Wrånes är en av Norges mest uppmärksammade konstnärer, och har haft soloutställningar och skapat beställningsverk för konstinstitutioner och biennaler över hela världen. Wrånes skapar surrealistiska världar med hybrida former och mutationer där varelser utför säregna ritualer. Med humor och värme utvidgar hon verkligheten bortanför rådande normer och kategoriseringar.

Artist talk recorded on 27 April 2022 at Accelerator, to introduce the work "PRE-EXODUS" and invite a conversation on its related themes.

Participants

Solenne Tadros, artist

Lina Aastrup, curator

Shahram Khosravi, professor of social anthropology, Stockholm University

Leila Khoury Nimry was thirteen years old when she fled her home in Haifa, Palestine during the Nakba in 1948. In "PRE-EXODUS" she shares the memories of her childhood bedroom, illustrated and developed into a virtual reality experience, created by artist Solenne Tadros. The work activates questions of memory, intergenerational trauma, forced displacement and loss of land.

Accelerator has a collaboration with the International Master’s Programme in Curating Art at Stockholm University. The students create events in connection to themes that Accelerator wishes to highlight in the exhibition programme. The exhibition "PRE-EXODUS" is part of Lina Aastrup’s degree project.

“Why would I have to find a home? I’ve never had one.”

This conversation engages a Stockholm-based filmmaker, Sophie Vuković, and two professors from Stockholm University, Fataneh Farahani and Shahram Khosravi, in a joint discussion on the meaning of home and homing, hospitality and hostility, and the distinction between homelessness and houselessness.

In this public discussion, recorded at Accelerator on December 16, 2021, we addressed questions such as, Who is “at home” in academic and cultural worlds? Can the body be a place of homing, a personal archive that we carry around with us? The conversation was moderated by Jelena Jovičić, project leader for Art & Research at Accelerator.

Read more about the event: https://acceleratorsu.art/en/evenemang/art-research-conversation-unhomed/

A conversation on April 6, 2022, about traces of colonialism in public art and spaces. How can a critical discussion about those traces challenge the presupposed “neutrality” of Sweden? How can artists and researchers work to make critical knowledge about this reach a wider audience?

Participants

Hanni Kamaly, artist

Lena Sawyer, senior lecturer, Department of social work at Gothenburg University

Michael Barrett, curator, Museum of World Culture

Alessandro Petti, professor of architecture and social justice, Royal Institute of Art

The conversation was moderated by Mårten Snickare, professor in art history and the administrative director of Accelerator. It was initiated and arranged by Jelena Jovičić, project leader Art + Research, Accelerator.

Hur upplevs tid i arbetande kroppar? Och vad betyder ”hem” för de som arbetar för att överleva? Accelerator visade den dokumentära kortfilmen ”En mammas kropp” 25 november 2021. Efter filmen samtalade Shahram Khosravi, professor i socialantropologi, med filmaren Jonelle Twum. Samtalet hölls på engelska.

"En mammas kropp" är ett intimt porträtt av två hotellstäderskor utifrån en dotters perspektiv. Samtidigt som kvinnorna genomför sina dagliga arbetsrutiner reflekterar dottern över hur kvinnornas yrke påverkar deras kroppar och relation till tid. Kvinnorna, i sin tur, navigerar och bemöter arbetets hårda och monotona villkor med vana, precision och skönhet.

Medverkande

Jonelle Twum är filmare, pedagog, researcher och kulturproducent, som i sitt arbete ofta utforskar frågor om villkoren kring synlighet/osynlighet, minnen och historieskildringar utifrån ett svart feministiskt perspektiv. Twum är även grundare av Black Archives Sweden, ett samtida arkiv som tar sin utgångspunkt i afrosvenskars och svarta personer i Sveriges erfarenheter.

Shahram Khosravi är en tidigare taxichaufför som för närvarande är professor i antropologi vid Stockholms universitet.

Brittiske konstnären Jonathan Baldock i ett samtal med Therese Kellner, curator och intendent på Accelerator.

Warm Inside är Jonathan Baldocks första soloutställning i Sverige. För Accelerators underjordiska rum har Baldock skapat en stillsam parallellvärld med nyskapade skulpturer, vilkas storlek och form utgår från tankar om mänskliga kokonger – platser för väntan och metamorfos. Baldock har ett starkt intresse för performativitet, myter, folklore och traditionella ritualer. Han arbetar återkommande med hur trauma, sensualitet, sårbarhet och andlighet färgar vår relation till den mänskliga kroppen och de rum den bebor.

A conversation between British artist Jonathan Baldock and Therese Kellner, curator at Accelerator.

Warm Inside is Jonathan Baldock’s first solo exhibition in Sweden. In Accelerator’s subterranean space, Baldock has produced a peaceful parallel world with newly created sculptures, whose dimensions and designs are based on an idea of human cocoons – places for waiting and metamorphosis. Baldock has a strong interest in performativity, myth, folklore and traditional rituals. His work explores how trauma, sensuality, vulnerability and spirituality affect the manner in which we relate to the human body and the space it inhabits.