ON WRITING AT UNIVERSITIES OF THE ARTS - DIVA
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NILS CL AESSON
Has Sweden suffered from excessive academicisation? Even
children in primary school are to write in subjects such as
theoretical gymnastics and handicrafts. A view of knowled-
ge that benefits those who are good at writing but not at
NILS CLAESSON
kicking a ball or crafting with their hands. In higher artistic
education, the demands on young aspiring artists to express TEXTS THAT NOBODY READS
themselves in text increase.
ON WRITING AT UNIVERSITIES OF THE ARTS
T E X T S T H AT N O B O D Y R E A D S
How do art academies handle the requirements for an aca-
demicisation of a learning internship based on supervision,
experiments and production? Are there methods to become
friends with text and writing? Why not write to be read?
Does writing tasks have to be an art dentist’s visit?
Nils Claesson was commissioned to investigate what the
teaching of writing and theory looked like in higher artis-
tic education in Sweden. Educations that are also research
preparatory. The result was a report with proposals to the
Department of Film and Media at Stockholm University of
the Arts.
Nils Claesson is an artist, writer and filmmaker with a
doctorate in artistic research. He has written reports on
animated film (2009) and film scenography (2013) which
led to new subjects and educations at Stockholm University
of the Arts.
isbn: 978-91-88407-22-1
issn: 2002-603x
X Position nr 15
RREPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM AND MEDIA
Cover image from the work Peering into the Black Box
(2020) by Nils Claesson AT STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
TEXTS THAT NOBODY READS
NILS CLAESSON TEXTS THAT NOBODY READS ON WRITING AT UNIVERSITIES OF THE ARTS REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM AND MEDIA AT STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
PUBLISHED AS ISSUE 15 IN THE SERIES X POSITION. ISSN: 2002-603X © 2021 NILS CLAESSON GRAPHIC DESIGN & TYPESETTING: CARL EHRENKRONA ISBN: 978-91-88407-22-1 PUBLISHED BY RUIN, WWW.RUIN.SE PRINTING: TIPOGRAFIJA DARDEDZE HOLOGRAFIJA, RIGA, LATVIA
Contents INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1 SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS .......................................................................................................................... 7 EMPAPERMENT ..................................................................................................................................... 10 THE BANALITY OF COMPLIANCE AND THE NEED TO TRAIN DISSIDENTS.............................................. 12 THE VIRTUE OF COURAGE ..................................................................................................................... 13 PEOPLE SEE THEMSELVES AS GOODS IN A MARKETPLACE ................................................................... 18 THE FREEDOM AND BOUNDLESSNESS OF ART PROVOKES................................................................... 19 THE ACADEMIC DUNCE CAP.................................................................................................................. 21 PUBLICATION FORMS AT STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: EXPOSITION ................................. 24 THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF ART: WRITING AS ART’S POSITIVE DENTIST’S APPOINTMENT .................... 26 ANYTHING GOES IN STOCKHOLM ......................................................................................................... 29 TEXTS THAT NOBODY READS ................................................................................................................ 31 THE INSTITUTE FOR FUTURE STUDIES INVESTS IN DISSEMINATING ITS RESEARCH RESULTS .............. 32 PROPOSALS FOR VARIOUS METHODS AND MEASURES THAT CAN CONTRIBUTE TO CREATING A THINKING AND WRITING RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT........................................................................... 35 PROPOSAL FOR LONG AND SHORT COURSES FOR MEDIA AND FILM .................................................. 36 EPILOGUE .............................................................................................................................................. 38 HERE IS MY TEXT – AN ESSAY ................................................................................................................ 39
“I believe that the aim should be to write well, but
provisionally. A finished text is already dead and
buried.”
From an email from John Swedenmark
“Why should we care if people don’t read the text?
Nobody can write these days. Not even journalism
graduates.”
Anonymous manager
“Writing is the unknown. Before writing one knows
nothing of what one is about to write.”
Marguerite Duras in Writing
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this report is to propose various approaches and methods to create a better
climate for writing and thinking together at the Department of Film and Media, and indeed at
other departments of Stockholm University of the Arts. The goal is to reinforce thinking,
reading, writing, and dialogue as part of an effort to construct an artistic research environment.
The focus has been on studying writing at second cycle, given that this is the preparatory level
for those considering a career in artistic research, which is of course a distinguishing feature of
the university’s operations.
My method involves long conversations with those responsible for writing and thinking at
various universities of the arts, as well as with teachers, researchers, administrators and,
perhaps most importantly, people who work with text: from poets, playwrights, and authors to
theoreticians. The measures proposed in the report are applicable at a departmental level,
university-wide, Stockholm-wide or nationally. It might also be worth identifying those
physical locations in which teaching and research meet, or have opportunities to meet, at a
university of the arts: libraries and laboratories. Here, I would like to refer to another text
Labbtanken:12 röster om laboratorium och bibliotek [The Laboratory Concept: 12 voices on
the laboratory and library] by Nils Claesson and Mirko Lempert 1. Please feel free to read this
report alongside Labbtanken.
1
2013, Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. Available to download at http://www.diva-
portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1139775&dswid=814
1
Can we discuss art, film and the meaning of life with a machine?
Talking to Ingmar About Art (2001) is an electronic artwork created
in collaboration with the programmer Rolf Lindgren. From the
exhibition CRAC at the Liljevalchs gallery, 2000.
Talking to Ingmar About Art Photo: Nils Claesson
2
Drawing: Nils Claesson
3
It is the beginning of 2020 and a day-long writing course has attracted 73 students in groups of
two to ten over a few hectic weeks of January and February. The outbreak of the COVID-19
pandemic is only weeks away. As I write this, it seems long ago.
The one-day writing workshop was designed for students and professional artists wishing
to apply for a doctoral studentship. The concept is simple: the course was open to all applicants
on the condition that they agree to turn off their mobile phones and work without internet access
for the entire day. The purpose of this analogue day was to establish a temporary artistic
research environment and to help participants hone their doctoral projects and research
questions. On Tuesdays, the workshop was in Swedish and on Fridays, English. There was also
one other unspoken requirement: that everyone in the room would share, participate in the
discussion, listen to others, and offer their thoughts on their ideas and projects. Participants in
the course included film directors, assistant lecturers from Konstfack, radio producers, dancers,
screenwriters, documentary filmmakers, circus aerial rope artists, poets, choreographers,
filmmakers, authors, textile artists, visual artists, and political activists from Peru who work
with street theatre and performances. The majority of course participants were women and
many were migrants. Discussions proved to be generous of spirit as the various artistic
disciplines mixed within the group, one possible explanation being that they did not see one
another as competitors and were able to vent their curiosity.
As there were no native English speakers in attendance, Fridays were often more
spontaneous, with the English language being mistreated and mutilated and communication at
its pinnacle. Some participants had come from far away, travelling up from Malmö or taking a
flight from Tallinn or Lisbon. Master’s students from the Departments of Film and Media and
Performing Arts at Stockholm University of the Arts excelled, being accustomed to articulating
their practice and able to refer to other artists and researchers. This initiative to create a writing
and thinking group of students seems to have paid off. At the conclusion of the courses, I wrote
an email to Maria Hedman Hvitfeldt, head of the Department of Film and Media, who had
commissioned me to design and hold the writing course for prospective doctoral candidates.
Dear Maria,
[...] I see a need for a discussion on research that offers the opportunity to ask the
simplest questions. Awareness is low regarding how to obtain available
dissertations and degree projects. It is difficult to gain an overview of the field,
something that I consider remarkable considering that there are some 50 PhDs in
Artistic Practices in Sweden 2 and that relatively large funds are allocated to artistic
research every year. It would make life easier for those applying for a doctoral
position or artistic research placement if some kind of guide existed. I have often
been required to explain in my course how to access dissertations and that one of
the basic research methods is to learn to refer to the work of other researchers. [...]
There is a fear of saying the wrong thing and appearing stupid. This primarily
applies to those with a long professional practice. I get the impression that they do
not really trust their own practical experience but believe that some kind of
theoretical ingenuity is required to take a doctorate. [...] In my opinion, there is a
great need to conduct open discourse regarding research as a phenomenon, rather
than simply explaining and informing.
2
NB: This figure is wrong; in fact, there are approximately 200 PhDs in Artistic Practices in Sweden, equating to
800 years of education.
4Maria’s response to my email was to task me with studying the need and opportunities to create
an environment more conducive to writing and contemplation at the Department of Film and
Media, to propose measures and courses, and to investigate possible collaborations with other
schools.
5Above: Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt/How to Explain
Pictures to a Dead Hare, action by Joseph Beuys, 1965 © Joseph
Beuys/Bildupphovsrätt 2020
Below: Feldhase or Young Hare painted by Albrecht Dührer in 1502.
6SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS
For many artists who are not themselves authors, writing is an intermediate form. An artist uses
text in their professional practice to explain what they are doing: they may write the occasional
debate article, but most of their writing is done in project descriptions, scholarship applications,
and various proposals for projects that will be something other than simply a text. Writing
becomes a transitional form.
The text is comparable to the floorplans for a new building. It outlines a film, a play, or an
art project. This transitional form is interesting in that it reflects hierarchies, a range of values,
and the limits of what is possible to accomplish, whether artistically, politically, or
economically. But the status of a text varies: a film script is unequivocally an intermediate
form, except in exceptional cases such as Ingmar Bergman’s script for Fanny and Alexander,
while a play is an artwork in its own right. A drama. What is or is not art is a matter for constant
investigation, discussion, and renegotiation. The transitional form is sister to the sketch and the
model. The phenomenon of the intermediate form is clear in architecture, which has a tradition
of paper architecture: visionary proposals for buildings that will never be built, often designed
to provoke a discussion along the lines of building a skyscraper in the middle of Riddarfjärden.
For today’s artists, writing as a transitional form is completely digitised.
The majority of funds, foundations, and institutions that support the arts and artistic research
projects only accept digital application forms. These digital forms are relatively similar and are
usually divided into fields such as project idea, goals, purpose, budget, target group, timetable
and any project partners. The artist/project owner is also expected to upload a CV, examples
of their work, and references. The digital forms used to apply for support for the arts are
relatively similar to the digital forms used to apply to higher education in the arts. The ability
to complete a digital form is crucial to benefiting from the various forms of support and
education currently available in Sweden and Europe as a whole. The relationship of artists to
these digital forms is almost as powerless as that of farmers to the weather and climate. It is no
longer possible, as it once was, to redraw the form to accommodate your own boxes and
comments 3.
3
In the 1990s, artist and film curator Anna Linder applied for funding to curate various projects and with the
help of a ruler was able to add her own boxes to her application, thus securing support! Today, this would be
impossible.
7Sune Jonsson’s debut book The Village with the Blue House is based
on documentary photographs and a semifictional literary text that
recreates rural life in northern Sweden before depopulation took hold.
By the time he produced his work, the village Sune Jonsson describes
no longer existed. The text reconstructs a lost world with the help of
photographs.
Albert and Thea Johansson, Nordmaling Municipality, 1956.
Photo: Sune Jonsson/Västerbotten Museum
8Poster by Mårten Medbo and Nils Claesson.
9EMPAPERMENT
There is an increasing tendency in the world of arts, its support systems, and education
administration to place greater significance on text-based forms, to allocate more and more
time and energy to documentation and control, and to allow the administrative apparatus
around digital forms to occupy a growing proportion of the density of the artistic and
educational system. This is most apparent in the number of employees of the Swedish Arts
Grants Committee, which had six employees a decade ago but now has over 30, or the
Department of Law at Stockholm University, which deals with laws and regulations and is the
first-cycle programme with the largest number of applicants in Sweden.
Growing bureaucracy is not only a problem for the arts and academia but for society as a
whole, something that philosopher Jonna Bornemark describes as empaperment in her 2018
book Det omätbaras renässans: En uppgörelse med pedanternas herravälde [The Renaissance
of the Unmeasurable: Coming to terms with the world domination of the pedant].
This is a formula with a tendency to reproduce. So-called New Public management (NPM)
is a battery of methods for evaluating and controlling the machinery of public authority using
ideas borrowed from the market. The easiest way to grasp the scope of NPM is to think about
all of the digital forms that you, the consumer, student or professional, must complete in order
to grade an experience, performance or product, such as the grading and evaluation a teacher
receives through an anonymised course evaluation. In one way, this zest for forms and the lush
flora of evaluation and feedback acts as an equaliser in the national and international “likes”
economy. It connotes the spread of market logic. The logic of the market is to create instant
gratification. Satisfied customers. This is achieved through short-term thinking and a common
currency of “likes”. But pressing a like button or filling in a digital form cannot replace an
understanding of a complex knowledge process through which students can emotionally move
between extremes. To create, to be creative, is no simple linear transaction but rather
something an artist must come to terms with during their training, something that can be
described as sitting both inside and outside a rollercoaster on which strong emotions are often
confused and jumbled. A creative process almost always involves feelings of loss, euphoria,
despair, and joy that combine with meaning and then, in the next moment, meaninglessness.
It is precisely this complexity in the creative process that makes higher education in the arts
so specialised and demands such a large measure of personal guidance by other artists in the
guise of a teacher. It is the method itself, of propagating from mouth to mouth and person to
person, that creates continuity in artistic practice.
This is why the view of students and pupils as customers is so detrimental to an artistic
higher education. In a shop, the customer is always right. In a shop, the customer must always
be satisfied with the service offered. In a university of the arts, however, admission as a student
is an invitation to become a stakeholder, not a consumer of goods and services. An artistic
education is also an invitation to test yourself and to be tested by your creations.
10What would happen if everyone did this? Elin Wikström, 1993. The work
originally took place in the ICA Malmborg supermarket in Malmö in 1993
but this photograph was taken when it was recreated as part of the exhibition
Svensk konceptkonst [Swedish Conceptual Art] at Kalmar Konstmuseum in
2010.
Photo: Oscar Guermouche
11THE BANALITY OF COMPLIANCE AND THE NEED TO TRAIN DISSIDENTS
Democracy is founded on the idea of defending minorities, not on allowing minorities to
govern.
Freedom of the press, freedom of association, academic freedom and the laws that defend
these freedoms are the very backbone of a democratic society. It should therefore be a stated
goal that in the process of writing and thinking we train dissidents. When we talk about
dissidence, we often think of the tradition of resistance against totalitarianism that emerged
in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, in which the visual arts, literature, poetry, cinema,
performance and the actions of courageous individuals played a crucial role in overthrowing
a corrupt and incompetent system. Dissidence expressed through various disciplines in a
constant struggle against forces intent on censorship and control. This was a struggle that
was about both protecting the integrity of art but also a defence of art for art’s sake: through
songs, books, plays, films, exhibitions in people’s living rooms, photographs, smuggled art
magazines, VHS cassettes, concerts in impossible venues, and performance art that
infiltrated everyday situations. For years, literature copied on typewriters stood for
resistance to a totalitarian system where there was constant interaction within and outside
the established institutions.
In Sweden, there is every reason for concern about the compliance of the artistic and
scientific community in the face of new directives concerning digital forms. The fact that so
many adapt so easily and smoothly to new rules and regulations handed down from those in
power is a threat to democracy, even if those requirements are written with the best of
intentions.
A democratic society is based on the existence of opposing interests. The ongoing
struggle for political and financial power and influence and an open and free public
discourse are society’s vaccine against corruption, misrule and decline.
Democracy is hard work because it forces people to engage themselves in the big issues.
12THE VIRTUE OF COURAGE
An education in critical thinking and reflective practice has been present in the courses in
the philosophy of knowledge and knowledge through reflection given by Ingela Josefson,
Barbro Smeds, and others at the Departments of Film and Media, Performing Arts and
Acting at Stockholm University of the Arts and its predecessors.
These courses have highlighted philosophers such as Hannah Arendt as examples.
Aristotle’s ideas on the virtue of courage are used as course literature and a moral drama
such as Antigone is updated some 2,500 years after its premiere. It is in the meeting between
practicing artists, texts, and committed course coordinators that a climate of writing and
thinking is created. Course participants are trained to give their experiences and feelings
linguistic expression. In a practical knowledge tradition, the point of departure is to
encourage participants to write about their feelings rather than research questions; about an
itch, that something seems amiss, that something isn’t right, a stone in the shoe. This is
called dilemma writing. Simple comparisons may also lead to big questions. In preparation
for his doctoral thesis Clay-Based Experience and Language-Ness (HDK 2017), Mårten
Medbo began by asking himself why certain ceramics enjoy high status as edifying works
of art, while others are considered handicrafts of lower status. This became the point of
departure for the thesis and Medbo’s continued research and experimentation.
The practical knowledge tradition’s practice originates not in the art world but in working
life, first and foremost in a meeting between workers in the healthcare sector and graphic
industry during the 1970s and ‘80s. The radical thing about the method is that it challenges
professionals to change their own working situation – if they have the power to do so.
Knowledge becomes the agent of change.
This method for encouraging professionals to express their knowledge and experience
has also been proven to work very well in practice for artists as a route to language: to words,
reading, their own thoughts, and writing. The great advantage of this method is that it creates Kommenterad [A1]: I assume that the comma as a
space and time to put language to something through dialogue in small groups; an active separation is intentional, and this was not meant to say
“reading their own thoughts” (which would also make
dialogue in which course participants engage closely with one another’s texts and are read
sense)?
themselves. The course literature is carefully selected, including for example a book by
Hans Larsson, Intuition: några ord om diktning och vetenskap [Intuition: A Few Words
About Poetry and Science], which attempts to put into words that gut-feeling that allows
quick decisions – commonplace in so many occupations from healthcare to painting – as
well as in thought.
13Why should certain ceramics enjoy high status as fine art, while
others are considered handicrafts of lower status even though they
look the same? This was the question that Mårten Medbo asked
himself and that became the starting point for his research.
Photo: Nils Claesson.
14Samson is a work by Chris Burden consisting of a 100 ton jack
connected to a gear box and a turnstile. The jack pushes two large
timbers against the walls of the gallery incrementally for each visitor
passing through the turnstile and could theoretically bring down the
building. In his work, Chris Burden (1956-2015) sought out uncertain
and dangerous situations.
© Chris Burden / Bildupphovsrätt 2020
15It should be emphasised that different artistic disciplines have very different relationships
to words and pictures. Perhaps the most distinct boundary runs between mimes, dancers and
actors. While the mime and the dancer relate to images, rhythm and flow, the actor
traditionally relates very closely to the details of the written word – down to the last
semicolon and comma. This creates fruitful misunderstandings and a conflict as old the
performing arts.
There is a constant struggle going on within artistic education and research between
acolytes of the written word, and images, respectively. In practice, this means that different
higher education institutes interpret preparation for research and the documentation of artistic
practice in different ways.
The idea of training in critical thinking and writing also runs through the courses arranged
by the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking (ITW) that were available to teachers
and researchers at the Departments of Film and Media, Acting, and Performing Arts during
summer 2014. The methods developed at ITW are based on thinking and writing as a
collective, participatory, and liberating intellectual process. The methods draw strength from
resistance as action: in an interest for counterpublics and counternarratives and making space
for the voices of minorities and the oppressed. The term counterpublic comes from an
analysis that the public sphere and the public discourse in a society are dominated by a single
narrative and that there are explanatory models and analyses in circulation as an alternative to
the cultural hegemony: voices that seek to and need to be heard. Theories on counterpublics
are often linked to the Italian philosopher and Marxist activist Antonio Gramsci’s theory of
hegemony. In Gramsci’s analysis, social order and the authority of the ruling class are not
simply secured through violence but through ideological domination of societal institutions:
the state, the family, the Church, schools, universities, and the mass media. Ideas about power
and counterpower, hegemony and various forms of public have inspired many political
movements, and not only on the far left. In Sweden, similar ideas lay behind the emergence
of free theatre groups, the radical press, Folkets Bio [The People’s Cinema], and other
counterculture organisations during the 1970s and ‘80s, many of which still play a role in
Swedish film, theatre, artistic life, and the media. Back to Bard: some of the methods used by
ITW are taken from traditional school teaching and from anthroposophy. Course participants
read and write by hand in special exercise books. They read texts and discuss them with the
group. Computers and smartphones are removed from the equation, initially creating a sense
of being alone and naked. Course participants write in their own exercise book and are
trained to discuss, to converse with one another, and to share. This is a return to writing and
reading as a physical and spatial experience that may stimulate renewed interest in both
reading and writing. Paradoxically, withdrawing from the digital world and electronic
networks may prove to be an act of liberation. It is possible to write without a machine. It is
possible to discuss and see things without digital cookies and electronic tentacles registering
everything you like, dislike, read and don’t read. It is emancipation from algorithms designed
to measure your desires and inclination to buy.
A return to writing by hand also actualises the written word as symbols, sounds and
images, and body as material. Not only that, but your hand remembers. Your handwriting or
drawing will take up where you left off last time you wrote or drew by hand.
16Artist Dan Lageryd creates a new narrative about the city of
Stockholm, about people and their identities, through a close reading
of pizzeria menus. Pizza Moon is a large square from which a grey
moon with dark shadows emerges. The moon consists of the names of
Stockholm pizzerias and the pizzas they serve. It contains over
300,000 characters that Dan has copied by hand from some 505 pizza
menus. It becomes a kind of concrete poetry about longing and the
spirit of place:
Pizza Moon © Dan Lageryd
17PEOPLE SEE THEMSELVES AS GOODS IN A MARKETPLACE
The logic of the market dictates that all human relationships be reified. People describe
themselves and their loved ones in terms of goods in a marketplace. This is most clearly
expressed in the various digital services used to search for love and new sexual partners, such
as Tinder. For the arts, this implies that artists should view themselves as brands that need to
be built and maintained through their artistic practice. This is reflected in the practice and
existence of education in the arts: in the dilemma of whether a school should be a production
house for the manufacture of art or simply a school. From an educational point of view, this
also creates friction between, on the one hand, developing the talent of students and, on the
other, the student’s own need to develop their brand. The world beyond the school gates is
called the industry and the industry often becomes some kind of third person, always hovering
as a phantom presence. I sometimes wonder if this talk of the industry is simply a useful
yardstick, like the average viewer used by a television company as some kind of metric for the
norm. Will the average viewer understand this? What about the average viewer! The average
viewer needs to be able to keep up! A more diverse society and globalised media has rendered
the average viewer redundant but his spirit lingers on.
This chaffing between brand-building and freely experimental art also applies to artistic
practice. I have participated in two collective artistic research projects: Performing the
Common (2012) and Workawork (2017–2019). Both projects applied the feminist research
methodology memory work. Briefly, the method involves groups of people exploring their
individual memories in writing to achieve an analysis. Participants are encouraged to write
down their experiences in the third person. The aim is to build up a joint analysis, or map of
values and preconceptions about the world, which in turn can be used as the basis for a societal
analysis and awareness of their own situation. This research method is not far removed from
Pablo Freire’s liberating pedagogy. It has become apparent that, in a group of artists, all of
whom are anxious to safeguard their own brand, memory work has a more catalytic effect,
acting as a starting motor for an artistic process but then coming to a screeching halt as another
mechanism kicks in: the artists shut down the discussion and begin working on their own
projects. They do their own thing.
18THE FREEDOM AND BOUNDLESSNESS THAT ART PROVOKES
Art, or the arts, stand for a strong, cherished, revolutionary and critical counterforce in society.
In the notion of art and its self-efficacy, there is a sense of something that cannot be limited by
digital forms, markets, brand building, or like buttons. That art is not a dietary supplement
produced to improve people’s sense of well-being but rather an alarm clock, a canary in the
mine. It is a metric for the health of society as a whole. Art stands for something exalted,
timeless and without borders, a dimension of society that is both spiritual and corporeal. Art
has an inexplicable energy. Naturally, this is a source of some annoyance to many people and
creates uncertainty, even among those who work with administrative tasks at a university of
the arts but who have experience from other higher education institutions. The formal, by-the-
books, neurotic administrative attitude can easily gain the upper hand at a university of the arts.
Even schools with sound finances lack the kind of robust premises needed for experiments and
exhibitions. It seems that the white office cube with a computer and a desk is the ideal. The
bright open-plan office landscape or fixed workstations in which all of the people are
replaceable are the furnishing norm today in many companies and schools.
The ambivalence in art’s mission to create means that, when it comes to writing and
thinking, higher education institutions for the arts sometimes get it wrong in their view of how
writing should be valued, encouraged, and given space in lessons. This includes their view of
the writing artist and the results of writing and of what is commonly referred to as theory, and
even in their view of artistic research. At times, it might be formulated in the words: Why can’t
we talk about research instead? Why must we bring art into it? Sometimes, art phobics conceal
their fear behind technology. Behind inventing new machines or equipment. When did
machines become neutral?
The most obvious example of art being confronted by rigid academic thinking has been in
the examination of Master’s students. As a rule, Master’s students present an artistic work
accompanied by a thesis in Swedish or English. They also have the opportunity to submit their
thesis in one of Sweden’s minority languages, although this is very rare indeed.
19From The Disasters of War/Los Desastres de la Guerra. With his
innovative way of creating tension between text and image, not unlike
a composer’s use of counterpoint, Francisco Goya is considered to be
one of the first modern artists.
20THE ACADEMIC DUNCE CAP
It is not unknown for external experts to examine work based entirely on the quality and scope
of the thesis, ignoring the artwork completely. This is generally because the academic external
expert feels uncertain when confronted with the artwork but feels confident in their command
of the written words as a form of expression and thus secure in their role as a critical reader of
the thesis. Such encounters between academics and artistic master’s students can sometimes be
extremely unfortunate in as much as the poor student feels that their art has been completely
overlooked while an academic dunce’s cap has been placed upon their head.
But shouldn’t students undertaking an artistic master’s degree be able to take criticism? Are
they so fragile? Why should art students be handled with kid gloves?
The thing is, no school wants unhappy, disappointed and demoralised students. The
demands on an art student are different from those on, for example, a would-be engineer or a
trainee teacher. Students at a university of the arts are expected to share their personal histories,
to challenge themselves, their families, and friends in various complex artistic processes and
expand their boundaries time and time again. Generally, this means many hours of teaching
and supervision, as well as dialogue and criticism of their own practice. Young people who are
taught to courageously give their all in artistic processes may also become oversensitive to
criticism, which can be construed as an attack on their identity and person. There is a need to
develop additional methods for taking and giving criticism in second and third-cycle
programmes. There is an opportunity to develop a functioning culture of criticism on artistic
higher education programmes.
How criticism is received and given is dependent on the local environment in which it is
offered. Karin Hansson, who has experience of research in a number of fields including human-
computer interaction, sociology of art, art history, and artistic research, is currently working on
several interdisciplinary projects. Karin believes that it is important to understand that different
research disciplines have different ways of giving and receiving criticism. In research fields in
which methods and empirical study are clearly separated from the researcher and the research
is more of a collective process, there are well-developed and often highly detailed procedures
for criticism. Within research in the humanities and the arts, it is more difficult to separate the
method and empirical study from the researcher as they are sometimes the same thing, making
it difficult to criticise the research without criticising the researcher. These differences are often
expressed in cultural practices that are expressed in aesthetic genres. It may be a matter of
something as banal as whether to use a table in a text or to structure it according to a certain
model. A mistake will be dismissed rather than taken seriously. According to Karin, these
practices are also an expression of the researcher/artist’s identity, which is why, paradoxically,
writing can create major barriers to communication for artists, who are also expected to shape
the written word into an entirely new and distinct piece of art. A more transparent, scientific
way of writing based on simplification and clarification threatens the very identity of the artist 4.
4
Cf. a more developed discussion of this in Hansson, Karin. (2013). Art as Participatory Methodology in
Tidskrift För Genusvetenskap [Journal for Gender Studies], no. 1).
21Honoré Daumier had an eye for what happens when the people of Paris
are consumed by passion for the great ideal. This drawing shows a
literary discussion.
22Le Déjeuner en fourrure [Lunch in fur] 1936, Meret Oppenheim.
© Meret Oppenheim / Bildupphovsrätt 2020
23PUBLICATION FORMS AT STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS:
EXPOSITION
Words are a blunt instrument when it comes to describing and presenting a complex reality, an
artistic experience, or represented insight that works at all levels and with all senses, both from
the artist’s perspective and the receiver’s. Insight often exists in the gaps between words,
pictures, movement, action, body and space. Sometimes one quickly forgets only to later recall
in a photographic flash followed by a cold shower, or washed down by memories and fried on
a griddle of anxiety. How can we describe it in words? Can it be done? It is possible to come
close? That is why philosophy is interested in art. The Ancient Greek concept of catharsis,
meaning purification or cleansing, is used by Aristotle in his Poetics to describe what happens
in the mind of an audience member experiencing a Greek tragedy. The question he was actually
trying to answer was why we enjoy experiencing the dramatization of dreadful events.
Immanuel Kant uses the sublime, in the sense of boundlessness and disruptive, and compares
the experience of art to natural phenomena such as storms at sea or earthquakes. These are
concepts born of language’s awkwardness in capturing a powerful experience.
At Stockholm University of the Arts, there is a practice with a multilayered exposure area
of text, images, sounds and references. This presentation is called exposition. In English,
exposition means both a major art exhibition and a detailed explanation or account of a
phenomenon, its history, and situation. At Stockholm University of the Arts, exposition is a
concept that can be linked to artistic research and is also how master’s students show their work
in preparation for future research. The exposition form is applied in both two-year master’s
programmes and by doctoral candidates. The exposition should not be regarded as a finished
work of art, but as a representation richer than simply words and pictures and yet still something
that can be exhibited audio-visually on a screen with all of the limitations of a data tin can.
Today, doctoral candidates at Stockholm University of the Arts are recommended to curate
expositions to document their artistic research projects. The publication platform for an
exposition is the online portal Research Catalogue.
For those familiar with the 1990s art movement known as new media art, the format will be
reminiscent of that period’s online art and interfaces.
The concept is associated with the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), which is behind
both the Research Catalogue publication system and the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).
The publication platform for degree projects at first, second and third cycle at Stockholm
University of the Arts is DiVA. The DiVA portal is a common search service for research
publications and student theses written at 49 higher education institutions and research
institutes. It is administered by Uppsala University Library.
Artists sometimes also publish their master’s thesis or exposition as a book. Mia Engberg is
a documentary filmmaker, researcher, and doctoral student at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Mia has recently published the book Den visuella tystnaden – en essä om film [The Visual
Silence: An Essay on Film]. The book is based on the anti-film research project The Visual
Silence, which was financed through the Swedish Research Council’s Artistic Research
Committee. Mia Engberg reported her research in the form of an exposition in the Research
Catalogue but was not satisfied to rely on this outlet alone: “This is to do with my previous
book, Belleville Baby. One day I was walking past the library and saw a young woman with a
nose ring sitting engrossed in my book. As not many people have the patience to visit the
Research Catalogue to find research results, I wanted to publish a book to start a discourse with
24a broader and preferably younger readership of cineastes. That’s why I published the book,”
explains Mia.
Mia Engberg writes about her own films and research into visual
silence, but also about her two cinematic lodestars, Marguerite Duras
and Derek Jarman. Photo: Sara Mac Key
The book is well-written with lovely references to Mia Engberg’s artistic colleagues in the
realm of cinema, Marguerite Duras and Derek Jarman, while at the same time it bears witness
to an illness that struck Engberg during her work on the project. Mia adopts a refreshing tone
and I can only sympathise with her goal of communicating with a wider public, which is of
course especially important given that she is a practicing artist on the state payroll. Artistic
third-cycle study programmes are crucial to the production of all kinds of art in Sweden. Many
artists do their most significant work as students thanks to the resources, time, peace and quiet,
and stability afforded them to complete their projects within the framework provided by well-
resourced art schools. An extensive list could be compiled of artistic careers jumpstarted by
such programmes. Sweden may well have the most generous and technically advanced artistic
higher education in the world.
25THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF ART: WRITING AS ART’S POSITIVE DENTIST’S
APPOINTMENT
The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm invests in fostering the joy of writing and integrating
writing into artistic practice, so that it does not become an alien practice.
Perhaps we could describe it as art’s dentist’s appointment, designed to provide the artist
with strong, gleaming teeth that they can sink into their work. The Royal Institute of Art
constructs a writing triangle between the supervisor, librarian, and fine art student. All writing
teaching is based on individual supervision. There are no general writing courses. Students
have one year to write their text, which must be between 12 and 15 pages long. The supervisor
maintains an active dialogue with the student about reading and literature. Together with the
librarian, suitable books are identified and ordered for the student to read. The supervisor
attempts to challenge the student’s choice of literature and reading by suggesting texts and
books. Once the writing is underway, the supervisor takes on the role of editor – and often
proofreader. The supervisor may cycle to the student’s home to collect their texts. Various
forms of writing, ideally experimental and poetic, are encouraged. Students are challenged to
both write within an essayistic tradition and to break down the boundaries of the essay form.
Here, a minor digression may be in order: a text published in a book or magazine is almost
never the product of a single person’s efforts. A text is commissioned. It is edited and revised.
It is proofread several times. It is abridged. Headings are added. It is given graphic form. Not
even a classic novel has a fixed form. It is published in various editions and updated much like
a film may appear in the cinema or art gallery in different versions or be remade as a television
series. Texts and books are dough to be constantly kneaded and baked.
The key to writing at the Royal Institute of Art is personal writing and supervision. Once a
text is completed, it will be read by a professor who will offer yet another layer of criticism.
Once all of these criticisms have been addressed, the librarian will publish the essay on DiVA.
The lesson the Royal Institute of Art provides is that the desire to write is central and that this
must be accompanied by flexible, diligent supervision. Students are challenged to write freely
but to be consistent in their use of notes and references. The resulting texts are very different:
from the highly practical to poetic excursions, from political manifestos to handmade books
that are artworks in themselves.
Research issues are not at the heart but rather earnestness and playfulness.
It is within this triangle of library, editorship and desire that writing thrives. It is not
unknown for students to struggle with writing, in which case the supervisor will suggest
alternative solutions for working with texts. In one such case, a collaboration arose in which
an art historian interviewed the student and then wrote about the student’s work and issues.
Writing in artistic study programmes demands many such solutions to avoid becoming a
production house for theoretical karaoke and empty text calories. My source of information
regarding the Royal Institute of Art’s approach to writing for fine art students is Emma Kihl.
Emma herself trained in fine art at the Royal Institute of Art and has also conducted the research
project A Study of the A4 Sheet, which was funded by the Swedish Research Council.
In addition to her position as adjunct lecturer in fine art at the Royal Institute of Art, Emma
is currently a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at Södertörn University.
“There is also a need for many more role models for writing and thinking artists. The missing
element at the Royal Institute of Art is reading and perhaps some form of ceremony when the
text is completed,” says Emma.
The Royal Institute of Art also offers a freestanding second-cycle course in Artist Books,
with an approach to writing and books that has proved successful in inspiring students: lovingly
handcrafted books made by the artists themselves.
26The Royal Institute of Art offers a five-year programme in Fine Arts. At one time, the school
applied a process of elimination for students after the completion of the bachelor’s programme
but this created too much uncertainty, discontent, and a generally difficult situation for
students, teachers, and professors alike. Today, the school has returned to a five-year
programme. The Royal Institute of Art’s organisation is still characterised by a tradition dating
from the era of Johan Tobias Sergel, full of unwritten rules that, while not always easy to
understand, seem to work. It exists in a kind of imaginary world founded on an alternative
conception of time that intuitively takes account of the long arc of learning and creativity that
art necessarily entails. A process of oil, clay, body, metal and text, it is a slow process but
unique.
Whenever I describe the Royal Institute of Art’s writing and supervision process to students
in fine art it is apparent how affronted they are by the practice. The method applied at the Royal
Institute of Art is redolent of the work of an editor at an art or culture journal to which people
submit pictures, photographs, etc. that they want published. Here, the editor’s task is to extract
text from people who are not as a rule used to expressing themselves in writing. This demands
great sensitivity on the part of the editor/supervisor that should not be confused with cossetting
but is more a matter of respect for a nascent artistic practice. Perhaps there is a need for a
training course for supervisors/editors working with all forms of art and text.
“Then you can do things that you didn’t think you were capable of.”
Text from Lars Norén’s play War became an artwork on traffic signs
by art duo FA+, Ingrid Falk and Gustavo Aguerre, 2004.
Photo: Nils Claesson
27“It is worthwhile underlining that the essayistic form is viable and accepted in the academic
world, or at least parts of it, and indeed in the large and multilayered US educational system,”
observes Professor Kristina Hagström-Ståhl of the Academy of Music and Drama and the
PARSE platform for artistic research at the University of Gothenburg. Kristina is currently
leading a writing course for doctoral students at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing
Arts’ graduate school in Gothenburg. The course is given in English and Swedish and the
course’s literature seminar primarily deals with texts from the Anglo-Saxon world.
There is an invisible wall running between Stockholm and Gothenburg when it comes to the
role of text in art education, in those elements of master’s programmes preparing students for
third-cycle studies, and in how theses should be written. Under previous head of department
Mick Wilson, the University of Gothenburg’s HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design
introduced the requirement for all doctoral dissertations in artistic disciplines to include a
minimum of 130 printed pages of text. Funds were also allocated for book production.
Gothenburg also has similar rules regarding text, scope, and written academic work at first and
second cycle. Essay writing plays an important role at the Photography Department at HDK-
Valand. Niclas Östlind is a senior lecturer with responsibility for writing and thinking. He
summarises the position of photography as entirely dependent on the practical application of
theory. As modern photography defined itself in the 1980s and 90s, it went through a process
of theoretical writing and image-making hand in hand. Although this process began in the
United States, it was reflected in Sweden a decade later. For photography, it was a matter of
coming to terms with documentary photography’s romantic ideal of authenticity.
This debate was won by postmodernists, who proved that images are constructions, that it
is possible to artificially create and reinforce those elements associated with authenticity and
documentary photography. Examples from photographic images include the strong influence
of the postmodern discourse on architecture: in the affirmation of the mixture of styles,
decorative and narrative elements in buildings not only serve as an accommodation with
modernism’s aesthetic cult of colour and form, but also a critique of modernism’s totalitarian
tendencies.
It was through a critical discussion and writing about photographic images that
postmodernism and critical theory gained the upper hand in contemporary art. In Sweden, this
began with the exhibition Implosion curated by Lars Nittve at Moderna Museet (Nittve went
on to become director of the museum). This was followed by other exhibitions, including Lika
med [Equals] (1991) curated by Iréne Berggren, which Niclas Östlind describes as “a welcome
acknowledgement of photography as art” 5 in his survey of the breakthrough of Swedish fine-
art photography as part of his doctoral dissertation. This included a reconstruction of the
exhibition together with Iréne Berggren.
The discourse on photography and authenticity as a construction led to the hegemony of
Konstfack’s Department of Photography and Index in Stockholm in the art world during the
1990s. It was then that the art world experienced its great theoretical wave, with Continental
philosophers beginning to dominate the public discourse, especially regarding fine art, in texts
published in the magazines Kris, Material and Index.
This was followed up by leading postmodern theorists with roots in photography, including
Tuija Lindström and Hans Hedberg, who developed photography study programmes in
Gothenburg.
The postmodern ideas’ tradition and its strength in photography means that writing remains
important to photographers at Valand, as a matter of being able to write about their own and
other photographers’ work. It is apparent that Niclas Östlind has a background as a curator,
exhibitor, and publicist. The Photography Department at Valand works actively to ensure that
5
https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/28442
28its students’ writing is read. Students must complete their essays in December of their second
year, giving them one semester to cut their texts by half to 25-30 A4 pages and have them
printed. The Photography Department has also created its own webzine 6 in which to publish
the texts. There is a vision of having the students read, and that their writing has meaning above
and beyond simply completing the course syllabus.
ANYTHING GOES IN STOCKHOLM
At both Stockholm University of the Arts and the Royal Institute of Art, the regulations are
less stringent and more open to interpretation. There is constant experimentation with
publication platforms, intermediate seminars for artistic doctoral candidates, and even titles
and words. This is sometimes detrimental for students.
Konstfack, on the other hand, is in the process of redesigning its research and second and
third-cycle programmes with a view to being granted the right to examine doctors in its own
right.
Konstfack’s head of research, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Magnus Bärtås, is leading the work
of transforming thinking, writing and artistic research.
Magnus played a pivotal role in the emerging field of artistic research in Sweden, primarily
by coining the term verkberättelse [work stories] to describe a written or oral narrative about
the forming of an artwork.
An artistic doctoral candidate’s training at Konstfack is intended to be applicable in practice,
they are free to write in Swedish, and intensive efforts are underway to prepare course
syllabuses, as well as to identify good examples of artists who write about their own artistic
practice. Magnus describes how critical theory triumphed in the artistic life of the 1990s, a
period during which a view was cultivated of artists as so wild and unruly that they needed the
help of philosophy to organise and structure their ideas. As this view gained the upper hand
over artists, an implicit understanding was reached that one’s practice should be described in
the language of critical theory. In Konstfack’s planned new third-cycle programmes, writing
will be on the artist’s terms and based on their own experiences of artistic creation. How this
will actually look in practice, and which route the texts may go, is impossible to answer today.
Magnus Bärtås is also one of the editors of the knowingly named VIS – Nordic Journal for
Artistic Research. We will shortly come to the matter of why art publications such as VIS and
JAR do not pay researchers when they publish extensive combinations of their words and texts.
Magnus contends that being published in these journals offers the benefit of thorough peer
review.
Meanwhile, this makes publication in JAR or VIS almost exclusively reserved for artists who
are either employed and have research as part of their job description, working on externally
funded projects, or financially independent. Freelance artists with a doctoral education quite
simply cannot afford this luxury. In many ways, this transforms artistic research and these
publications to a sport with few practitioners and a small coterie of spectators, equivalent to
the collectors of expensive wines or stamps.
*
6
https://ugotphotography.se
29As an example of the artist who writes: why not Elis Eriksson? The artist, who lived to be
almost 100 years old, was a dyslexic author and an innovator in the Swedish language, a
political and poetic artist who followed his own path.
Elis Eriksson, from a T-shirt published by Ronnells Antikvariat.
30TEXTS THAT NOBODY READS
Books That Nobody Reads was the title of an evening arranged by Mårten Medbo, Ingela
Josefson and me at Ronnells Antikvariat in 2018. The event took the form of a discussion of
artistic research and writing based on our theses and Ingela Josefson’s practical experience of
teaching and lecturing on practical traditions of knowledge. Our intention was to highlight the
lack of interest in, and publicity for, artistic research and writing. The same applies to the
research weeks at Stockholm’s artistic higher education institutions, which take place at the
end of January and beginning of February each year. It is then that the Royal Institute of Art,
Konstfack, Stockholm University of the Arts and the Royal College of Music exhibit the results
of their research practices.
This year, between them these events did not yield a single article in the culture pages of the
daily press or report on television or radio. The combined artistic research output of all of
Stockholm’s artistic higher education institutions was met with a deafening silence.
This lack of publicity for artistic research and writing practices makes for a vulnerable
environment. Niclas Östlind was one of the arrangers of the Swedish Research Council
symposium Artistic Research with Impact, which was held at Konstfack on 20 November 2019.
“Despite invitations being sent to representatives of Sweden’s museums and all of the major
newspapers, no one attended. Not a single one,” says Niclas Östlind.
It is possible that the silence surrounding artistic and much other research can be partly
explained by the fact that the academic system in its entirety is a kind of planned economy with
a points system as its currency. There are algorithms and tools to evaluate texts and their
influence – this is called bibliometrics – but mechanisms that reward public discourse and
criticism appear to be lacking. This is something that Magnus Linton examines in his book Text
& Stil: om konsten att berätta med vetenskap [Text & Style: About the art of using science to
tell stories], which is aimed at experienced writers of academic texts and has the mission
statement of getting academics to write in plain, comprehensible Swedish. Magnus Linton is
currently employed half-time at the Institute for Futures Studies and spends the rest of his time
visiting higher education institutions to give free courses on text and style to academics. This
is financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, an independent foundation with the goal of
promoting and supporting research in the humanities and social sciences. Magnus Linton is a
journalist by trade and his book is packed with practical advice and alert observations. “When
you read some researchers on social media and then the same person’s latest academic article,
it sometimes leaves the impression that a quick-witted, entertaining mind has somehow been
transformed into a blockhead. This is often because the latter text has been drained of all of the
vital elements of colloquial language.” (Text & Style, p. 58)
Linton describes the pitfalls of academic writing with acuity. The book is educational and
each chapter contains recipes for style. What the book actually reveals is the complete
indifference to any public discourse within the sphere of scientific writing, that many
researchers and academics spend a great deal of time writing grant applications, and that what
really matters in academia is publication in scientific journals rather than engaging with the
public. That silence reigns around research is of little consequence given that the spotlight of
publicity is a matter of no concern to the internal academic scoring system.
31You can also read
