Ten Stockholm Archipelago Lectures

Sofia Jonsson , 2021-11-01

The Stockholm Archipelago Lectures are part of the public activities of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory and have been since 2012. It was initiated as an event that marks the presence of the EHL at the KTH Campus. This Monday we look forward to our 10th lecture by looking back in time, finishing off with the announcement of this year’s keynote speaker.

In September 2012 the historian and geographer David Lowenthal visited the Division to give a series of talks. They were entitled the Archipelago Lectures, referring in part to the Stockholm Archipelago, but also to David’s career long professional and personal interest in islands, in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, in the Isle of Man where he had a summer house, and elsewhere. (From: Sverker Sörlin in “Defining Humanities – Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH“Report 2017-2018)

The Archipelago lecture was the first major public event of the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab and has become an annual institution every fall. In the early years the lectures were held at the KTH Campus, but for the 2018 lecture with Amitav Gosh on “The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change” we moved to central Stockholm and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. The event was announced in one of Sweden’s largest morning papers, Dagens Nyheter, and attracted our biggest audience so far. A little over 100 people came to listen to Amitav Gosh.

In 2019 the Archipelago Lecture was organized in collaboration with the workers educational associations ABF and the independent opinion group Arenagruppen. “What should socialism mean in the 21st century? An ecofeminist view” with Nancy Fraiser attracted over 200 people, who came to ABF to listen. The lecture was filmed and also streamed online for the first time without us knowing that this would soon be our new normal. Former EHL researcher Roberta Biasillo writes in the Biennial report “Integrative Humanities from the years 2019 in and 2020” Nancy Fraser “engaged with the audience and with us well beyond the time of the talk – we all sat and stood together, we ate next to each other and shook our hands. One year later, on 25 November 2020, we found ourselves online and it was no coincidence that the talk was on ideas and practices of care, repair, and restitution as ways to ensure just living conditions on Earth.”

In the first year of the pandemic we went online and welcomed Achille Mbembe as our Archipelago keynote speaker. From his home in South Africa he gave the lecture “Reflections on Planetary Habitability”. This became one of the EHL’s and the Division’s most visited single events so far, with over 500 people streaming it in real time.

This year we are happy to announce Kathryn Yusoff as our keynote speaker. Kathryn is a professor of inhuman geography at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of the acclaimed book “A billion black anthropocenes or none“. So, mark your calendars and check your connection – because on December 1 at 4.30 PM CET we are ready to go online again for the next Archipelago lecture.

Lectures from the past

September 9, 2012
“Reflections on the Environmental Humanities”
David Lowenthal, Professor Emeritus of Geography, University College London

September 11, 2013
“The Meltdown of a High Arctic Hunting Community”
Kirsten Hastrup, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

October 9, 2014
“Environmental Racism as State-Sanctioned Violence”
Laura Pulido, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California

November 2, 2015
“The humanities and global change research: relationships necessary, absent and possible”
Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of Manchester, England, and the University of Wollongong, Australia

October 27, 2016
“AlterLife in the Aftermath of Industrial Chemicals”
Michelle Murphy, Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto

October 5, 2017
“Connecting Dots in Toms River and Beyond”
Dan Fagin, award-winning author, and Professor of science journalism, New York University

September 26, 2018
“The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change”
Amitav Ghosh, award-winning writer of historical fiction and non-fiction

October 7, 2019
“What should socialism mean in the 21st century? An ecofeminist view”
Nancy Fraiser, Professor, The New School for Social Research, New York

November 25, 2020
“Reflections on Planetary Habitability”
Achille Mbembe, Professor in History and Politics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Baltic Sea Water Talks on Utö

Achim Klüppelberg , 2021-10-04

Utö, one of the major islands of the Stockholm archipelago, recently hosted the Baltic Sea Water Talks. David Nilsson, Associate Professor at our division and Director of the WaterCentre@KTH, has been a key participant of this conference. Many researchers, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists have joined to discuss how the island tackles the upcoming challenges of a changing Baltic Sea and ecosystem.

David has written the following report, which was first published on the WaterBlog@KTH on 29 September 2021.

~*~

On pikes and potatoes

On the island Utö in Stockholm’s southern archipelago they grow pikes and potatoes next to each other. You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself!

In the beginning of September I returned to this wonderful spot, along with some 50 academics, entrepreneurs, investors and environmentalists. The occasion that brought us here was the first Baltic Sea Water Talks; a meeting of diverse professionals in search of practical solutions for challenges in the Baltic Sea.

KTH researchers visiting Utö’s famous windmill

People on the island of Utö have always depended on what nature gives, in one way or the other. While this might be said for all of humanity, it is never more obvious than on an island at sea. Already from the 12th century, it was the iron ore on the island that brought prosperity. After the mining was abandoned in the 19th century, all the trees were cut down to supply timber to the growing city of Stockholm. But fish was plenty and by the early 1900s, there were some 70 fishing boats stationed on Utö. Now there is only one part-time fisherman left. Instead, the island has become a popular tourism destination thanks to its unique nature, its heritage and birdlife. Yet again, nature provides the basis for local livelihood. But how do we make life in the archipelago sustainable after centuries of predatory resource extraction?

This is where the pikes and the potatoes come in. Initiativ Utö, a local NGO and also the host of the WaterTalks, has started to build “pike factories”. In these constructed wetlands and estuaries they aim to both restore the fishing stock and reduce nutrient loads. Nutrients in the run-off and sediments are collected through mechanical and biological methods and the estuaries are breeding places for pike. The pikes restore some balance in the local marine ecosystems and attracts sports fishers. The recovered nutrient is used in local small-scale farming, and seems to be particularly good for potatoes.

Currently, two research groups from KTH are actively doing research on the pike factory wetlands. A team led by Guna Rajarao Kuttuva looks into monitoring techniques and optimisation of the wetland. Another team led by Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol is investigating the potential of phosporous “mining” from the estuary sediments, where valuable phosphorous could be extracted as a commercial product. Research and innovation like theirs moves us towards “closing the loop” for food production on a whole new scale. Could the polluted seas become a source for valuable and scarce nutrients? Can we move towards a balance with nature and stop exhausting nature’s resources one after the other?

Thomas Hjelm of Initiativ Utö talking to Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol in the wetlands

And most importantly, what to do with the potatoes? For my part, I prefer the Swedish traditional dish “raggmunk”, a type of potato pancake. I can tell you that the Utö potatoes grown on sludge from the pike factory, are particularly well suited for raggmunk. Bon appétit!

Utö-Raggmunkar

10 Utö potatoes

3 eggs

2 dl flour

4 dl milk

1 teaspoon salt

Grate potatoes coarsely

Mix egg, flour, salt and milk and add grated potatoes

Form small “beefs” into saucepan and fry on medium-high, rich with butter

Serve with lingonberries

Le chef at work – grating away in the kitchen

STREAMS coming up this week!

Achim Klüppelberg , 2021-08-02

This week the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the division is hosting the long-awaited STREAMS-Conference (STREAMS-Transformative Environmental Humanities) digitally in Stockholm.

We are delighted that despite all the problems the organising committee had encountered during the Covid-19-pandemic the conference can finally take place – albeit only in a virtual format. The team has put together a very differentiated programme, encompassing a vast array of presentations, films, artwork, keynotes, roundtables and networking events. Scholars of Environmental Humanities, Energy History, Climate Change and the Anthropocene will meet artists, activists (e.g. from Extinction Rebellion Sweden) and editors on the new Streams EventsAIR Virtual Platform to facilitate a great networking experience despite the challenges of the new home-office-normality. The keynote-speakers are among others: Jürgen Renn, Adeline Johns-Putra, Michelle Bastian, Julie Sze, James Ogude and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

Coming up: Corinna Röver’s Dissertation Defence

Achim Klüppelberg , 2021-05-24

PhD-Colleague Corinna Röver is defending her doctoral thesis on 2 June, 2 p.m. (Stockholm Time) in the division’s Higher Seminar Series. Her dissertation with the title “Making Reindeer. The Negotiation of an Arctic Animal in Modern Swedish Sápmi, 1920-2020” will be discussed with opponent Prof. David Anderson, Chair in “The Anthropology of the North” at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

If you are interested in Corinna’s outstanding work, you can join via Zoom and in case that you need technical assistance for joining please contact history[at]abe.kth.se.

Here is the abstract of this valuable contribution:

The Arctic has long been perceived as a static, timeless place of shielded wilderness. This perception extended to the reindeer as both part of the Arctic environment and of traditional Indigenous livelihoods. Physically, the reindeer of Swedish Sápmi looks largely the same today as it did a century ago – an animal ostensibly unaltered and unchanged.

Nevertheless, this thesis argues that the reindeer has undergone a number of fundamental shifts of meaning in Swedish Sápmi over the past century. The dissertation asks how the reindeer’s roles and functions evolved in Swedish Sápmi from ca. 1920 to 2020 and examines how, why and by whom the reindeer has been negotiated. It explores the changing understanding of the reindeer’s role in society, studies emerging idea(l)s and purposes, and considers what mark they left on the animal.

This study is a history of the ideas, discourses and practices that shaped the modern reindeer. It examines ways of understanding and making reindeer. At different points in time, varying combinations of actors have sought to control, shape and re-define this Arctic animal. The meaning attached to it changed as a result, and with it reindeer-related policies. Swedish state policies towards the Sámi and reindeer husbandry have especially deeply impacted the way reindeer were understood and governed. Over the course of a century, policy efforts aimed to control the reindeer’s movements, health, reproduction and death, with varying success. Discourse and associated practices generated multiple versions of the reindeer. In terms of these changing versions, the thesis conceptualizes the reindeer as a changing technology and a socially constructed resource.

Five empirical chapters trace how the reindeer was negotiated, especially between the Swedish state and Sámi herders. They show how the reindeer’s role and purpose has been under repeated negotiation and discuss some of these roles. Restrictive border and grazing policies made the reindeer a trespasser at the turn of the twentieth century. From the 1950s onwards, a modernist improvement project envisioned it as economic resource. In the course of such rationalization efforts, the reindeer became an object of techno-scientific interest. Improvers attempted to transform reindeer into productive, reliable meat machines. These efforts faced a severe setback when the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 contaminated considerable numbers of reindeer, turning it into a toxic animal and a threatened bearer of Sámi culture. In more recent years, we find the reindeer at an intersection of consumer demand for natural foods and Sámi agency. It has become a symbol for claims to self-determination. Sámi champions of food sovereignty and land rights have started to reclaim and promote the reindeer as traditional and wholesome source of food through the Slow Food Sápmi movement.

A closer look at these re-definitions reveals that the reindeer is no timeless, passive backdrop to human action. The reindeer itself has history – it is a historical animal with agency of its own, able to challenge efforts of control. Nevertheless, the different notions of the reindeer materialized into policies and ways of governing not only the reindeer but also their Indigenous herders. The (re)negotiations of what reindeer are or ought to be provide insights into the relationship between representatives of the Swedish state and of Sámi reindeer husbandry, as well as colonial legacies and persistently unequal power relations.

In Swedish:

Arktis har länge uppfattats som en statisk, tidlös och avskild ödemark. Denna uppfattning gäller även renar, som setts som en del av både den arktiska miljön och urfolkens traditionella levnadssätt. Renen i svenska Sápmi ser fysiskt i stort sett likadan ut idag som för hundra år sedan – ett djur som till synes förblev oförändrat genom tiden.

Ändå argumenterar denna avhandling för att renen har genomgått ett antal grundläggande betydelseförskjutningar i svenska Sápmi under det senaste århundradet. Den utforskar den föränderliga förståelsen av renens roll i samhället och den studerar framväxande idéer och syften och hur dessa påverkade djuret. Avhandlingen frågar hur renens roller och funktioner har utvecklats i svenska Sápmi mellan 1920 och 2020 och undersöker hur, varför och av vem renarnas förvandling har genomförts.

Denna studie är en historia som innefattar de idéer, diskurser och metoder som formade den moderna renen. Den undersöker sätt att förstå och “göra” renen som djur men också som inslag i ekonomi och samhälle. Vid olika tillfällen har olika kombinationer av aktörer försökt kontrollera, forma och omdefiniera detta arktiska djur. Som resultat förändrades dess betydelse, och därmed även den politiska styrningen av renen. Särskilt den svenska statliga politiken gentemot samerna och renskötseln har djupt påverkat hur renar förstods och styrdes. Under ett helt århundrade har politiska ansträngningar syftat till att kontrollera renens rörelser, hälsa, reproduktion och död, med varierande framgång. Diskurs och tillhörande praktiker genererade flera versioner av renen. Med tanke på dessa föränderliga versioner konceptualiserar avhandlingen renen som en socialt konstruerad resurs.

Fem empiriska kapitel spårar hur renen förhandlades, speciellt mellan svenska staten och samiska renskötare. Restriktiv gräns- och renbetespolitik gjorde renen till en inkräktare vid 1900- talets början. Från 1950-talet och framåt sågs renen som en ekonomisk resurs i ett statligt modernistikt förbättringsprojekt. Under dessa rationaliseringsinsatser blev renen till ett objekt av teknovetenskapligt intresse. Reformatorer försökte omvandla renar till produktiva, pålitliga köttmaskiner. Dessa ansträngningar mötte ett allvarligt bakslag när kärnkraftsolyckan i Tjernobyl 1986 förorenade ett stort antal renar och gjorde det till ett giftigt djur och en hotad bärare av samisk kultur. På senare år ser vi renarna i skärningen mellan konsumenternas efterfrågan på naturliga livsmedel och samisk agens. Renen har blivit en symbol för anspråk på självbestämmande, där samiska förkämpare för livsmedelssuveränitet och markrättigheter har börjat återta och främja renen som traditionell samisk och hälsosam matkälla genom Slow Food Sápmi-rörelsen.

En närmare granskning av dessa omdefinitioner visar att renen inte är någon tidlös, passiv bakgrund till människornas handlingar. Renen har en egen historia – det är ett historiskt djur med egen agens, som kan utmana kontrollförsök. Ändå omsattes de olika föreställningarna om renen till politik och sätt att styra inte bara renen utan också dess samiska ägare. Att förstå (om)förhandlingarna om vad en ren är eller borde vara ger insikter i förhållandet mellan representanter för den svenska staten och samiska renskötare, liksom förhållandets koloniala arv och kvarvarande ojämna maktförhållanden.

Discussing the issue of flying and sustainability

Achim Klüppelberg , 2021-01-18

By Nina Wormbs

The week before Christmas, a number of colleagues at the Division gathered for a workshop where we discussed flying habits. It was part of the research project Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations: from data to practice at the EECS school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, led by Daniel Pargman with funding from the Swedish Energy Agency. Elina Eriksson led the workshop with support from Daniel and Aksel Bjørn-Hansen.

The aim of the project is to see how we might reduce the carbon footprint of KTH that stems from flying. Since flying is a large part of KTH emissions and totally dominates those of travel, it could be seen as low hanging fruit. At the same time, travel is nowadays also part and parcel of academic culture. Thus, there are interesting obstacles to change behaviour.

Academic flying has interested us at the Division for many years and as a response to a discussion at our kick-off in 2015, the blog The travelling scientist was launched and Johan Gärdebo had a small project with workshops of similar kind.

In the workshop we received information on our flight patterns, data that the project has collected after great work. It was not easy for Pargman and his colleagues to get a full picture of the flying at KTH, and not even now do they know for certain the sources of KTH flying emissions. This data is of course crucial since the government has required that public agencies work with their emissions. And if we do not have data, we cannot report and reduce.

It turned out that flying at our Division, perhaps not so surprisingly, was not evenly distributed among our colleagues for the year 2019. Of 47 employees, 12 did not fly at all, whereas some made about a dozen flights. Moreover, the type of flights varied, and this is particularly interesting since the focus is CO2 emissions. Based on our division’s data a medium-range flight to Europe emits 3,4 times as much as a Scandinavian flight. And an intercontinental flight emits 20 times as much. Not surprisingly, Division emissions from intercontinental flights make up almost 80 percent. (See figure below.)

In the workshop we were encouraged to think about travelling and if and how to change it. This we did in small groups (everything on zoom of course) and with feedback through Menti. The first question regarded what flights could be avoided and common suggestions were intercontinental ones, very brief conference trips and those of committee work. On the other hand, field trips and archival work was hard to avoid.

This was most likely connected also to the insights of the pandemic, where we have realised that some things can indeed be done differently. The second question in the workshop focused on precisely this: what did we learn from the pandemic that we can use in the future. Here answers varied from the longing for real meetings with colleagues to realising that many meetings work fine digitally. Some digital conferences that we have experienced also shows that this was of meeting can be more inclusive.

About a dozen people joined the workshop, and hopefully it can still help the Division in contributing to a constructive change. KTH has environmental and emission targets and if we do not want to see hard regulation from above, we need to work from below. The workshop participants were in agreement that we have a responsibility to reach the climate objectives and most also believed that flying less is possible.

Nina Wormbs

Co-author of Grounded: Beyond flygskam (2019)

Our New Post-Doc in Energy History: Marta Musso Investigating Resource Exploitation and Possibilities for Digital Archives

Achim Klüppelberg , 2020-12-07

Covid-19 profoundly changes the way we work. What luckily has not changed, is that new people join us at the division. Marta has recently taken up the position of a post-doc, while we are mostly working from home. Thus we asked her the following questions to introduce Marta’s work, show potential for collaboration and to get to know her a little bit better.

A picture of Marta Musso, smiling warmly and friendly, open curly brown hair, glasses

Could you please tell us about yourself and the fields you are working on?

My name is Marta Musso and I am the new post-doc in energy history at the department, working together with Per Högselius. My research follows two main strands: the first one is linked to energy policy history, and it focusses on the international economic policy of resource exploitation, and the relations between state and enterprises in negotiations for resource exploitation in the post-colonial years. The second strand of research refers to the development of digital archives, and the usage of digital-born documents on behalf of historians. I am involved in preservation projects to allow historians to make the best out of digitisation and digital technologies, such as Archives Portal Europe (www.archivesportaleurope.net). At the same time, I am an advocate of digital preservation, particularly for what concerns energy archives. Currently I am the president of Eogan, the network of energy archives.

What do you work on right now? Do you feel an impact by the current pandemic on your work?

My current research project at KTH is an extension of my PhD, which focussed on the development of the Algerian oil industry and on the nationalisation of oil resources in the post-colonial years. I am now looking at the claims of the G-77 and OPEC countries in particular with regards to the international commodity market in the years leading to and following the 1973 oil crisis. Luckily so far I have found a lot of material online (thumbs up to the UN archives which have a very good digitisation strategy!), and I have much material from my PhD years that I did not get to properly study (particular from the OPEC archives). However, I would like to also visit the OECD archives in Paris and not only are they closed, but on their website they state clearly that they do not do digitisation on demand. Hopefully the situation will change between now and Autumn 2021. Other than that, it is bad that I cannot get to meet my new colleagues and get a better feeling of the spirit of the department; on the other hand, there are a lot of interesting things happening online and I don’t feel like I am missing out. As a matter of fact, having a toddler in the house, some things are easier to do online than in person, so I also appreciate the good side of this difficult situation.

What do you aim for in the near future in terms of research, projects, or public outreach?

I hope to have a book manuscript by end of 2021, and 2/3 papers out in the meantime. I also really like to engage in public history projects, and I would like to be more involved in making documentaries or to communicate my research in other ways than academic papers – but it is difficult to find the time and the opportunities! I also hope that my research could be of interest to current energy policies, particularly with regards to international coordination in the fight against climate change. One of the aims of my current research is to show how many lost opportunities there were in the 1970s to develop a more balance global economy

In the very near future, I am presenting a volume I have recently co-edited, which is being published by the Journal of Energy History as open access, on the 11th December, at 2pm. (Registration here)

Video presentation of Marta’s project

Thank you Marta. It is great to have you and your expertise with us!

Streaming STREAMS: Join the conversation on August 5–7

, 2020-07-27

By Johan Gärdebo and Roberta Biasillo

On August 5–7, we host Streaming STREAMS – a series of online conversations and presentations about the Environmental Humanities (EH). These sessions will function as an introductory event for the upcoming STREAMS-conference (Stockholm, August 3–7, 2021).

The three-day event has the ambition to initiate conversations to be continued, open a space for many other contributions to be hosted during this next months, build a community of academics, artists and activists addressing the environmental crisis to be gathered in real life.

Our Programme

We took up the challenge of envisioning diverse and easy-to-follow formats and adjusting academic and less academic contents to the WWW and we came up with a manifold programme consisting of three sessions per day.

Each day begins with an interview between an early career and a distinguished scholar exploring specific realms of expertise within the EH, namely postcolonial studies, ecocriticism and environmental justice. Then, a hands-on roundtable will give a taste of the selected panels for the conference and present innovative approaches and themes in use. Finally, we will dedicate the conclusive daily session to a self-reflexive and inclusive forum discussion in which an invited speaker will share her/his/their experience in facing every-day scholarly challenges.

On August 5 we will meet Dipesh Chakrabarty, historian and professor at the University of Chicago. Moving from his wide-ranging scholarship, the interview will explore crucial conceptual knots of the EH and will pay particular attention to potential future developments of the field.

The stream Approaching Time-Things will put the question of time at the forefront, both as analytical lens and object of inquiry: “is time that hard to grasp?” Finally, the forum discussion with Greta Gaard, ecofeminist scholar, will explore narratives of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

On August 6, James Ogude, literary scholar and Director at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (Pretoria), will join us for an interview on “Ubuntu and the Principle of Co-Agency in African Ecology”.

The stream Feminist Posthumanities will present their trailer “The Posthumanities Hub, submerged at ART LAB GNESTA”.

Our forum discussion will engage with publication venues. Together with Dolly Jørgensen, historian of the environment and technology and co-editor of the open-access journal Environmental Humanities, we will see how journals are part of remaking scholarly fields.

On August 7 Julie Sze, professor of American Studies at the University of California (Davis), will speak about the topic of her most recent book “Environmental Justice in a moment of danger”.

The stream Environmental History of Migration will host a roundtable discussion on “Environments of Italian diaspora”.

Our concluding forum discussion on making academia sustainable will have as guest speakers historian Kathleen Brosnan and political ecologist Felipe Milanez. They will address a variety of challenges under the umbrella of sustainability.

To join for the live sessions and updates on these and upcoming STREAMS-events, register here.

***

Full programme for Streaming STREAMS, 5–7 August, 2020.

Follow STREAMS on social media (Facebook and Twitter).

STREAMS is an international conference for the Environmental Humanities (EH) that gathers researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines as well as artists, activists and practitioners. EH has grown considerably during the last decade and STREAMS seeks to offer a space in which this experimental and dynamic field can meet, discuss and set out future directions for thinking and acting amidst the ongoing ecological disaster.

STREAMS is hosted by the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory (EHL).

Conveners, organisers and participants to STREAMS remain committed to inclusivity with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression and identity, sexual orientation, and physical abilities in terms topics discussed at their conference.

Visiting the Cosmos: Science Fiction in the Gallery

, 2020-02-24

by Caroline Elgh Klingborg, Curator, Bonniers Konsthall

Last fall, I brought a group of researchers and guests from KTH’s Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment to the exhibit I curated for Bonniers Konsthall, entitled Cosmological Arrows: Journeys through Inner and Outer Space.* Their curiosity in the powers of science fiction and speculative fiction by way of research and teaching (for instance, the course Science Goes Fiction) sparked engagement and conversation, for which I’ve been asked to contribute my thoughts behind the exhibit. As I see it, we are living in a world where we are facing countless ecological, technical, and political challenges. The state of the world is an apparent and important part of the public debate where researchers, activists and other engaged people want to create visibility and change. At the same time, there also seem to be a growing sense of powerlessness, especially among young people, that it might be too late to save our planet. Since we are facing all these challenges together as humans and more-than-humans living on this damaged planet, we need new forms of interdisciplinary knowledge and new forms of collaborations. And here we can turn to the arts.

During recent years, we have seen a growing number of exhibitions and art projects—internationally and in Sweden—that evolve around the state of the world and our present future. Nearby subject areas such as science fiction, space, co-habitation and the more-than-human have interested an increasing number of artists in recent years. Themes like these have been featured in international exhibitions such as Gravity: Imagining the Universe after Einstein at MAXXI in Rome, Is This Tomorrow? at Whitechapel Gallery in London, Tomorrow is the Question at ARoS in Århus, and—not least—May You Live in Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff for the latest Venice Biennale. In Sweden, I need to point at exhibitions such as The non-human Animal at Uppsala Art Museum, Sensing Nature from Within at Moderna Museet in Malmö and Animalesque and Art Across Species and Beings at Bildmuseet in Umeå. It is distinctly clear that visual artists, curators and art institutions feel the need to engage with the rapid technological, ecological and political changes the world is going through—and to rethink the definitions of nature, agency, materiality and what it means to be human.

Caroline Elgh Klingborg, curator, of Cosmological Arrows. Photo by Cecilia Åsberg.

Climate researchers like Keri Facer has spoken about the arts as something we will need more of in the present future and that art can teach us about experimental thinking and how to live with some uncertainty. So, from various disciplines, there seem to be an openness and wish for interdisciplinary collaborations to bring forward new perspectives on human and more-than-human forms of co-habitation. Some of these perspectives were brought forward in the exhibition. The exhibition was shown during autumn 2019 and assembled a group of artists—Allora & Calzadilla, Lee Bul, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Debora Elgeholm, Johannes Heldén, Anna Hoetjes, Jone Kvie, Lawrence Lek, Caroline Mesquita, Brittany Nelson, Lea Porsager, Larissa Sansour, Arseny Zhilyaev and Asya Volodina—who are all interested in science fiction and humanity’s conception of the cosmos. In keeping with our own time, my intention for this exhibition was to highlight how visual artists are using space and the genre of science fiction as an imaginary laboratory that forms the basis for discussions of today’s ethical, moral, existential and political dilemmas.

Sofia Jonsson poses with Lee Bul’s, Civitas Solis II, 2014. Photo by Cecilia Åsberg.

Cosmological Arrows showed the connections between contemporary art and science fiction, and how this rather new relationship can contribute to new ways of thinking, being and acting in the world. In the preface to her science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) writes about how she uses science fiction to do leaps of imagination. Le Guin does not believe that her work as an author contributes any kind of evidence-based research into how the future will look (because no divine or visionary prophesies come from science fiction) but instead describes reality and the time in which the book is being written.

This reading was also appropriate for the artworks presented in Cosmological Arrows. The exhibition clearly showed that science fiction does not constitute an escape into another world. Rather the exhibition highlighted and illustrated an intricate interplay between reality and fiction in which science fiction became a tool for testing and conceiving of various historical, contemporary or future scenarios. Even if the works presented were (rather dystopian) portraits of our time—and dealt with our reality on the only planet that is habitable (as far as we know today)—the conceptual worlds that the artists can create with the help of science fiction could perhaps offer us a certain understanding of or preparation for what might await us in the future.

Visiting the exhibit, from left to right: Caroline Elgh Klingborg, Jesse Peterson, Myra Hird, Sabine Höhler, Sofia Jonsson, Silvia Thomackenstein, and Janne Holmstedt. Photo by Cecilia Åsberg.

I am sure we will see more of these perspectives and initiatives within the arts during upcoming years. The genre of science fiction has gained new relevance today and its themes and images bring together artists, film makers, writers and academics—bridging the gap between art, popular culture, activism and academia.

*The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with the same name. The book contains texts by Caroline Elgh Klingborg, Jerry Määttä, Mahan Moalemi, and Cecilia Åsberg, as well as short stories by Aleksandr Bogdanov, Ted Chiang, Karin Tidbeck and Alice B. Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr. and artworks by Agnieszka Brzezanska, Allora & Calzadilla, Anna Hoetjes, Arseny Zhilyaev & Asya Volodina, Brittany Nelson, Caroline Mesquita, Debora Elgeholm, Johannes Heldén, Jone Kvie, Larissa Sansour, Lawrence Lek, Lea Porsager, and Lee Bul.

Author Bio: Caroline Elgh Klingborg is a curator of contemporary art. Her work explores interdisciplinary processes and collaborations across different fields of research. In exhibitions and publications, she has brought forward the meeting between visual arts and fields such as speculative fiction, environment, new materialisms and truth. As a curator at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm she has recently curated the group exhibition Cosmological Arrows. Journeys Through Inner and Outer Space and Dora Garcia´s solo exhibition I Always Tell the Truth. Caroline Elgh Klingborg collaborates with The Posthumanities Hub and is also a guest lecturer at Stockholm University´s Curating Program.

Report: Dying at the Margins Workshop

, 2019-12-02

by Jesse D. Peterson and Natashe Demos-Lekker

On September 26-27, the Environmental Humanities Laboratory—along with the Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology—hosted the Dying at the Margins Workshop. Put together by PhD students Jesse D. Peterson (KTH) and Natashe Lemos Dekker (University of Amsterdam), this workshop brought together scholars at various stages of their career and from various backgrounds and disciplines to discuss how contemporary perspectives in environmental humanities and the medical humanities might further research on how dying “bodies”—animal (including human), plant, thing, place—challenge natural, normative, and notions of a “good” death. The workshop had two keynote presentations, along with discussions of participant papers and a creative embroidery workshop.

On the first day, Dr. Philip R. Olson (Virginia Tech) presented his work on bodily disposition. Beginning with Roy Scranton’s premise in Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene, he posed the question as to how might the demise of culture impact body care? If the Anthropocene is largely a problem of scale, what challenges and opportunities will face the disposition of human bodies now and into the future? Looking specifically into the practice of “natural organic reduction” (essentially composting human bodies) alongside other disposition technologies—such as alkaline hydrolosis, burial pods, green burial, submersible reef balls, and promession—Olson articulated how these alternative forms of disposition claim to be more environmentally friendly than burial or cremation as well as gentle forms of body recycling. Yet, as he pointed out, individualist norms “die hard,” that is, although a stunning array of new technologies have challenged the social and cultural norms of disposing of a corpse, many end users don’t want to see their loved ones transformed by some kinds of ecological relationships or contaminated by the technologies that process multiple bodies. For instance, what critters and creatures are allowed access to corpses or how do people negotiate the possibility for bodies to be passive rather than active forms of nourishment? As a conclusion, Olson suggested that these issues lead us to consider what kind of species ought we to be, asking us what are the moral virtues to be cultivated and moral vices to shun. He argued that humans not only need a species centered history but a species focused virtue ethics.

The second day, Dr. Marietta Radomska (University of Helsinki and Linköping University) spoke to us about the need for “queering” death studies. Responding to calls in queer theory and posthumanism that challenge normative conceptions of the human subject, a queer death studies ought to help reconfigure notions of death and practices related to it that have relied upon such conceptions. In other words, by challenging basic assumptions about dying and death, queering death can lead to producing alternative imaginaries about dying, death, and the dead beyond gender and sexuality. It also provides the means for moving away from “normative ontologies”

Marietta Radomska presents Queer Death Studies

Participants were also treated to an embroidery workshop led by Karina Jarrett (Broderiakademi), who stitched together ways in which fine arts feature in memorial, memory, and creative response to loss and grief. Having been working with residents of Malmberget, a town in northern Sweden currently being dismantled and “moved” to allow for the expansion of the local mine (LKAB malmberget), Jarrett curated a personal exhibition and provided the participants with time to express themselves by embroidering a friendship card. The experience highlighted how there is still very much to be done when facing loss even when there feels like there is nothing left that one can do.

Workshop participants practice their stitching.

Thanks to all the participants for their attendance, energy, and enthusiasm.

Crosscuts Film Festival: In-vision Environmental Humanities

, 2019-11-18

by Sofia Jonsson, festivalgeneral

Den 22-24 november är det dags för Crosscuts att inta Bio Rio i Stockholm igen.

Crosscuts är Stockholms första miljöhumanistiska festival för text och film. Temat för i år är Ruptured Times/Brytpunkter. Genom dokumentärfilmer, poesiuppläsning och samtal mellan ledande forskare, filmare och aktivister utforskar vi den brytpunkt där vi befinner oss nu, i en tid av politisk ovisshet, globalisering och klimatkriser.

I programmet har vi Saskia Sassen, sociolog och professor vid Columbia University, speciellt inbjuden som hedersgäst för att presentera Fredrik Gertténs omtalade dokumentär Push, där hon även själv medverkar. I en efterföljande panel samtalar Saskia tillsammans med Erik Stenberg, arkitekt och lektor KTH och Marco Armiero, lektor och miljöhistoriker KTH om städers gentrifiering och konsekvenserna av detta. Samtalet modereras av Miyase Christensen, professor i media och kommunikation vid Stockholms universitet.

Under söndagen har vi äran att presentera en masterclass i filmskapande med vår andra hedersgäst: författaren och filmskaparen Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Efter masterclassen följer en visning av Minh-has uppmärksammade essäfilm Forgetting Vietnam. Filmen visas tillsammans med ett samtal mellan Minh-ha, Athena Farrokhzad, poet, författare och litteraturkritiker samt Jennifer Hayashida, poet, översättare och artist. Vi bjuder även på poesiuppläsning med Athena och Jennifer.

I programmet finns flera Sverige-premiärer, däribland Grit som visar situationen för lokalbefolkningen i olika byar i Indonesien efter ett jordskalv som begravt stora områden i lera. I dokumentärer får vi följa kampen mellan den drabbade befolkningen och det multinationella företag som kan ha orsakat skalvet med sina borrningar efter naturgas.

Under lördagen visar vi den första dokumentärfilmen som gjorts om den kanske mest inflytelserika, just nu levande, franska filosofen Alain Badoiu. Badiou har gett sig på allt från radikal politik till kärlek och antik filosofi i sina böcker. I filmen talar han själv om sitt liv, sina tankar och sitt verk. Efter visningen följer ett samtal mellan regissören Rohan Kalyan och filosofen Ashley Bohrer, verksam vid University of Notre Dame i USA. Samtalet hålls på engelska.

Festivalen avslutas med premiären av Look Away, en dokumentär med avstamp i Calais där vi får följa och ta del av den verklighet som många människor på flykt upplever. Efter filmen följer ett samtal mellan Roberta Biasillo, forskare på KTH och Fabio Gianfrancesco, flyktingaktivist och kapten på en av de båtar som räddar flyende människor på Medelhavet och Shahram Khosravi professor vid Socialantropologiska Intitutionen på Stockholm Universitetet.

Nytt för i år är sektionen Annals of Crosscuts – en filmgranskningsprocess där dokumentärfilmare från hela världen har skickat in bidrag på temat Ruptured times. En panel av granskare från film-, konst- och forskarvärlden har gjort ett urval av filmer och under festivaldagarna blir det världspremiär för dem. I panelen finns bland annat Kalle Boman, Forum för Visuell Praktik, Issraa El-Kogali, kreatör och filmskapare samt Jan Olsson, professor emeritus i filmvetenskap vid Stockholms universitet.

Varmt välkomna till en helg fylld av spännande dokumentärfilmer och samtal!

***
Fullt program finns på https://www.crosscuts.se och https://www.biorio.se
Crosscuts på Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EHLcrosscuts/
Bio Rio på Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBioRio/

Crosscuts
Crosscuts är en internationell festival för film, konst och forskning inom miljöhumaniora. Varje film visas tillsammans med ett samtal med speciellt inbjudna gäster. Festivalen organiseras i år av KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory (EHL) i samarbete med den ledande forskningsmiljön vid JMK, Institutionen för mediestudier, Stockholms Universitet och Bio Rio. Crosscuts arrangerades första gången 2018.

EHL: https://www.kth.se/en/abe/inst/philhist/historia/ehl
Forskningsmiljön vid JMK: https://research.ims.su.se/en/environments/1-global-media-studies-and-the-politics-of-mediated-communication

Sagt om Crosscuts:
This Stockholm Environmental Humanities Festival for Film and Text that was held for the first time in the fall of 2018, was an extremely successful and important event for both academic community and the general public. Madina Tlostanova, professor i postcolonial feminism, Linköpings Universitet. Paneldeltagare under Crosscuts 2018.

Vi är väldigt glada och stolta över att få vara samarbetspartner med Crosscuts och att dessa viktiga filmer och samtal kommer att äga rum på vår biograf. Vi befinner oss i en brytpunkt vad gäller klimatet och Bio Rio vill vara med och skapa den förändring som krävs vad gäller vår miljöpåverkan. Jocke Kellekompu, VD Bio Rio
——————————————————————

Kontaktpersoner:
Sofia Jonsson, festivalgeneral, 0739-108787, sofia@crosscuts.se
Jacob von Heland, programansvarig samt chefredaktör för Annals och kontaktperson för Trinh T. Minh-ha, 070-727 24 87, jacob@crosscuts.se
Miyase Christensen, programplanering, ansvarig Stockholms Universitet och kontaktperson för Saskia Sassen, 070-389 20 07, miyase.christensen@ims.su.se

Hemsida av https://www.wrangedesign.se/
Logga av https://carmonamedina.com/

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