We are pleased to announce our new guest researchers and programme for fall 2025.
Senior guest researchers
Liv Bugge: Bugge is an artist whose practice explores how societal mechanisms are internalized, shaping normative ethics and dichotomies such as life and non-life, human and nature. Grounded in queer and feminist perspectives, her work employs sculpture, moving image, and installation. Bugge studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium, completing her PhD The Other Wild: Touching Art as Confrontation at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2019, where she is now Professor of Fine Art. From 2012 to 2020, she co-ran the platform FRANK with artist Sille Storihle.
Jonas Staal: Staal is an artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018–ongoing), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (2020–ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021–ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union.
Research and pedagogical program
Feral writing: Ecocritical dialogues
Stockholm. Fall term, September 1–January 15, 2026
This year-long course offers students in-depth experience in literary-artistic writing focused on ecocritical perspectives. Ecocriticism is centered on the interplay between human and more-than-human entities, highlighting mutable relationships that shape our ecological and cultural contexts. We explore writing as a practice that activates language to make visible and renegotiate these relationships. Students acquire tools for reflective and speculative thinking on alternative ecological futures and narrative possibilities. More.
The Looking-Glass Dialogues
Stockholm, October 1
This new seminar series, convened by Dr. Axel Andersson, stages a dialogue about the past, present and future of artistic processes within institutional academic frameworks. Lisa Tan and Lisa Torell, two highly accomplished artists, educators, and researchers, will hold an inaugural conversation on “Art in the Academy”. More.
Studio Practice: On Affordances
Gothenburg, October 6–10
Emerging from the ongoing collaboration between Stefano Harney, Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at KHM Cologne, and Dr. Valentina Desideri, a Researcher at CAPIm, this course considers the relation between affordances and study, as well as their relationship to study and the organization of the senses.
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Propaganda Training
Gothenburg, October 14
Jonas Staal leads a workshop based on his propaganda research and organizational artwork that is also part of the Swedish Public Art Agency’s “Contemporary Art Days”. Stahl asks: What is propaganda, how does it operate in our present time, and what is the role of art and culture in it? How does propaganda research contribute to combating rising authoritarianism? The workshop balances theoretical analysis with physical training and collective strategizing. More.
Queer Fire: On Touching and Being Touched
Stockholm, October 27–28 and November 24–25
Liv Bugge leads a four-day practice-based workshop from the perspective of her own artistic practice. Bugge’s broad focus is multidirectional relationships, proposing Clark and Yusoff’s “Queer Fire: Ecology, Combustion and Pyrosexual Desire” as a starting point to address how energy politics relates to our bodies. The research intensive explores notions of learning, touching as key to knowledge and the way the politics of desire, reproduction, and fire relate to one another. More.
Quarterly Reports: Beyond business-as-usual
Gothenburg, November 10–11
This blended symposium brings together researchers working across design, contemporary art, curating, and pedagogy, to present the first year of their research in dialogue with senior researchers. Keynote: Jonas Staal. More.
About
Based at two institutions: The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and HDK-Valand at The University of Gothenburg, the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary is committed to interdisciplinary practice and research in the meeting between contemporary art and the future of politics. See full programme on our website.
