Thursday, 28 January

At Konstfack, our daily work is about engaging in teaching and learning; to engage with the arts in thinking and acting. Including the moments of ache, and the sometimes painful moments of disorder and disbelief, before the thoughts find their form and expression.
Through the triad Thinking, Aching, Acting, we invite the participants of the node to reconsider aesthetic learning processes as offering particular method(s) for blazing trails through unknown territories. Inspired by Gert Biesta, we want to investigate how these may offer conditions for the creation of what Biesta (2006) has discussed as “timely spaces” where unpredictability and risk may support “the arrival of a new subject” (ibid). How can we conceptualize thinking, aching and acting in an educational setting where measurability is a core function? The tension of embracing unknowing as a goal of knowledge is ever present in methodologies that pertain to the realm of art as well as that of knowledge production. This node wants to conjure a timely space that may support the arrival of new ways of thinking, aching and acting in the realm of educational research and practice, as well as new ways to arrive as thinking, aching actors in the world today.
Dialogue is at the centre of how we think about education, art and becoming the subject. However, to quote Biesta, “Dialogue is not necessary about conversation – but about being-in-the-world – a way of existing with the world.” (2017:16)
Following this line of thought and still engaging in the conversation – however in a hybrid version – we have also invited Spekulativa Juntan to help us to develop the ideas discussed from and with Biesta into another form(at). In a performative collaborative session – at a distance – we will investigate how far we can stretch these ideas into the future(s).
Participants should be prepared to do some small tasks, connecting to Biesta’s lecture, and share this online. The second day (Thursday) contains a collaborative session with Spekulativa Juntan where the participants will produce an “object” which is possible to present at Konstfack, as a collaborative assemblage. Material for this session can be collected at Konstfack beforehand.

The preparation for this session includes collecting material from Konstfack for the hands-on work each participant will perform individually, yet collectively. Material will be available at the Konstfack reception during Tuesday. The texts to be read during the session will be distributed online at 9:00 a.m.
Spekulativa Juntan will initiate the readings and weavings. The node participants will attend online, while the three artists present from Spekulativa Juntan, Maria Stiernborg, Kajsa Wadhia and Anna Kinbom lead the session from Biblioteksgatan at Konstfack. Also, the node coordinators Anette Göthlund and Miriam von Schantz will attend from Biblioteksgatan.

All participants are welcome to hand in their results from the workshop at the Konstfack reception Thursday after 3 p.m. and during Friday. From what has been handed in, Spekulativa Juntan will build a collective piece in Biblioteksgatan, which will be documented and presented on the Konstfack Research Week webpage.

Spekulativa Juntan is an artist run initiative by Kajsa Wadhia, Maria Stiernborg, Mariana Suikkanen Gomes and Anna Kinbom. It is a conversation-based artwork where they read sci-fi and speculative feminism together, while creating collective craft ornaments. Spekulativa Juntan aims to initiate new ways to meet within and through art. It provides a shared space to collectively invest time in trying out a hybrid of two well-known formats: the reading circle and the sewing circle. The times we live in give rise to feelings of hopelessness around climate change, inequality, racism and politics. Reading texts within sci-fi and speculative feminism, they want to take part of alternative fantasies of possible and impossible futures.
To give voice to alternative narratives, reading aloud together, and listening to stories that entail speculative power shifts and unexpected revolutionary forces, pushes our boundaries of the imaginable and challenges the hegemony of the dominant narratives. Working with our hands offers the idea of taking matters into your own hands, it gives a sense of productivity that can have a ripple effect for participants. It can give a sense of hope, a feeling that it is possible to change things in a positive direction and make a difference. With speculative feminism we are training our ability to dream new dreams together.
Spekulativa Juntan made a commission for Stockholm Konst at Lagaplan outside Bagarmossen Library the summer of 2020 and have had gatherings in Stockholm and Uppsala since 2019.