Spring 2026 courses: investigating political imaginaries at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg
Application deadline October 15, 2025
HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg offers two courses beginning in Spring 2026 which are formulated in relation to the conceptual framework of Political Imaginaries.
Focused Study: Contemporary Art and Health
HDK-Valand invites applications for the international course Focused Study: Contemporary Art and Health. Each iteration of the course is organised around a particular thematic focus, which shapes the course content. The Spring 2026 iteration has the theme of Death and Grief. It runs from January 2026 to June 2026.
The course is taught entirely in English and at distance via Zoom. Free to EU and EAA nationals, the course bears 7.5 ECTS and operates at 25 percent of full time studies. Teaching typically occurs across one day (morning and afternoon sessions) bi-weekly.
Focused Study: Contemporary Art and Health is aimed at artistic practitioners, cultural workers and healthcare practitioners who have an interest in understanding and working with the field of contemporary art and health. It will consider how multidisciplinary social-cultural-political perspectives on death and grief have shaped understandings and practices of healthcare and artistic practices. Students will learn about historial and contemporary developments of death and grief by studying various case studies of practice. The course emphasises how ethical, social, ecological and political challenges impact the design and production of artistic methods that can be applied by artists when investigating various death and grief contexts. Over the term, students work on developing their own project proposal relevant to the theme.
Focused Study: Contemporary Art and Health is taught by Dr. Cathryn Klasto and Jason E. Bowman and includes contributions by invited guests. It employs various teaching models including lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials and advance preparation is expected before teaching sessions. The course requires that students have a reliable internet connection and good working ear/headphones to participate effectively.
Application
The course does not require previous knowledge or experience of contemporary art, health or the specific theme of death and grief. Emphasis is placed on a willingness to engage and a curious attitude towards these areas. Admission is based on a letter of intent (written in English) of a maximum of 2000 characters including spaces stating why you are interested in attending the course.
Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art
Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art is a one-year international distance course at masters level taught online with five intensive workshops in: Lisbon, Portugal; Riga, Latvia; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Iași, Romania. It introduces key practices and debates in working with art in the public realm. This is a continuing professional development course for curators, commissioners, policymakers, artists, communities, activists, planners, architects and other professionals interested in the questions of commissioning, curating, and maintaining/de-commissioning contemporary public art.
What is the nature of public art? What do the policy-makers, commissioners, curators, artists and others working with public art need to know about this expanded field of practice? What are the processes and frameworks that operate when art is created in, and for, public space? How is public art implicated within spatial imaginaries of rural, urban, exurban, infrastructure, development and the touristic gaze? What do communities wishing to invite public art into their environments, or wishing to instigate public art commissions, need to know in order to pursue their desires and ambitions? Who can commission public art? Who is it commissioned for? What about decommissioning? What are the spaces of “publicness” in an era of climate change, population displacement, digital networks, war, and the privatization of space? How can curators, commissioners, communities, artists, and other practitioners effectively move between ideas and ideals of public culture, and the pragmatic contexts of actual decision-making, production, procurement, installation, and planning processes? What, if any, are the possible relationships between public art, local democracy and the political imaginary? Is publicness a Euro-centric construction of colonial-modernity?
The course is taught by Jason E. Bowman, Kerstin Bergendal, Kjell Caminha, Maddie Leach, Mick Wilson and includes contributions by invited guests. This course is an associated initiative of the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm).
Application and practicalities
This course, delivered in English, is based on a combination of distance education and participation in at least two intensive workshops (from a set of five). It runs from January 2026 to January 2027. Workshops in 2026 will be in Gothenburg, Sweden (March 18–20 and November 25-27); Lisbon, Portugal (May 13–15); Iași, Romania (July 21–25); and Riga, Latvia (September 23–25). Free to EU and EAA nationals, the course bears 30 ECTS and operates at 25 percent of full time studies. Students are responsible for their own costs of attending the two selected intensive workshops.
Admission is based on a letter of intention (written in English) stating your reasons to study, maximum 2000 characters and recent CV. Admission criteria: (i) clarity of purpose in attending course, as evidenced in letter; (ii) capacity to actively contribute to the group dialogue, evidenced in letter.
