Books by Ellen Suneson
Portraying Unease: The Art and Politics of Uncomfortable Attachments, Gothenburg: Makadam publishing, 2022
Portraying Unease critically discusses a tendency amongst politicized scholars to endow artworks ... more Portraying Unease critically discusses a tendency amongst politicized scholars to endow artworks with traits of subversion and political productivity. Artworks that address structural discrimination, such as heterosexism, racism, or ableism, are often described as possessing qualities that can challenge unjust systems or initiate political change. This thesis considers hope and belief in the political utility of visual art in terms of an emotional attachment: an anticipatory emotional bond to a set of promises concerning art’s abilities. It follows the work of five artists: Laura Aguilar (US), T.J. Dedeaux-Norris (US), Sands Murray-Wassink (NE), Jenny Grönvall (SE), and Xandra Ibarra (US), for whom the act of attributing hopes of social or political change to art is portrayed as a source of depression, insecurity, self-doubt, embarrassment, and a sense of being stuck. When one turns to art in search of its potential political efficacy one risks, the author argues, using a framework wherein representations of specific kinds of weaknesses, failures, or institutional attachments become associated with scholarly discomfort or embarrassment.
Available free access online: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/portraying-unease-the-art-and-politics-of-uncomfortable-attachmen
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Articles by Ellen Suneson
Culture Unbound, 2018
Published in: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 2018 10(1): 49-64
Abstract... more Published in: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 2018 10(1): 49-64
Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyse popular neuroimaging of (dis)able(d) brains as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way “normal” brains are depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critique against ableism. e empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). e article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness has changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. In particular, there seems to have been a change in how the brain is visualized and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shi needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinctness transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
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Socialmedicinsk tidskrift, 2016
Published in: Socialmedicinsk tidskrift (2016), vol: 93, issue: 3, p. 288-296. Abstract: Sedan 2... more Published in: Socialmedicinsk tidskrift (2016), vol: 93, issue: 3, p. 288-296. Abstract: Sedan 2007 har ett flertal konst- och forskningsprojekt genomförts där personer som drabbats av neurodegenerativa nedsättningar deltagit i samtal om konst. Den forskning som hittills undersökt projektens betydelse har fokuserat på den fysiska och psykiska verkan konstvisningarna haft för deltagarna, baserat på intervjuer, mätningar och enkätundersökningar. I den här texten väljer vi att undersöka en annan aspekt av konstsamtalen där vi diskuterar hur den dialogbaserade konstpedagogiken synliggör samband mellan estetiska upplevelser och subjektskapande.
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Book Reviews by Ellen Suneson
lambda nordica, 2024
Review of The Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Feminisms in Contemporary Performance, edited ... more Review of The Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Feminisms in Contemporary Performance, edited by Tiina Rosenberg, Sandra D’Urso & Anna Renée Winget. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Published in: lambda nordica (2024), vol: 4, issue: 28, p. 128-133.
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Book chapters by Ellen Suneson
Genusvetenskapliga forskningsmetoder, (red) Marta Kolankiewicz, Mia Liinason & Maja Sager, Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2024
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Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Global Present, 2024
Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Global Present, eds. Kerry Greaves & Birgitte Thorsen... more Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Global Present, eds. Kerry Greaves & Birgitte Thorsen Vilslev. Berlin: De Greuter (as part of the series series Oyster. Feminist and Queer Approaches to Arts, Cultures, and Genders), 2024.
Abstract: This chapter discusses the performance Mr MEESE UND DIE LIEDER AUS DEM HERZEN #3 (2011) by Malmö-based artist Jenny Grönvall. In the performance, Grönvall portrays herself as envious of and longing to be recognized by a renowned white male artist. Based on this work, the essay proposes that representations of certain kinds of corporeal attachments becomes associated with political backwardness or scholarly embarrassment when approached by feminist theories founded on art as a means for political utility and subversion. Feminist art historian Irit Rogoff (1994) discusses how feminist art historians tend to acknowledge visual representations of particular types of corporeal vulnerabilities or dependencies as politically significant, while discarding others as vain, narcissistic, embarrassing, or uninteresting. Influenced by Rogoff’s argument, this essay stresses the importance to linger with representations of bodies in feminist and queer feminist art and performance without too quickly attempting to ascribe political efficiency to them (or criticizing them for their inability to produce politically productive effects). Sometimes representations of bodies may neither be radical, subversive, emotionally reparative, or good for politics. To reject such representations as politically backwards or uninteresting involves the risk, I argue, of fabricating a simplified preconception of resistance that (albeit involuntarily) directs attention away from the gravity of structural violence and liability.
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Peter Bengtsen, Max Liljefors & Moa Petersén (eds.), Bild och natur. Tio konstvetenskapliga betraktelser, 2018
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Kristofer Hansson & Markus Idvall (eds.), Interpreting the brain in society. Cultural reflections on neuroscientific practices, 2017
Book chapter about the linking that is often made in popular media of creativity - frequently thr... more Book chapter about the linking that is often made in popular media of creativity - frequently through examples from art history - and neurological disease. The chapter discusses the implications this linking may have for the dissemination of ideas about personality traits, artistic expression, neurological disease and neuroscience as a discipline.
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Papers by Ellen Suneson
Essay for the catalogue to the exhibition Performance/Documentation/Presentation, Lunds Konsthall... more Essay for the catalogue to the exhibition Performance/Documentation/Presentation, Lunds Konsthall, 2020.
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Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, André Talborn, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016
Published in: Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, André Talborn, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016.
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Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patrik Näsman, André Talborn , Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016
Published in: Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, André Talborn, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016
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Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, André Talborn, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016, 2016
Published in: Sandra Mujinga, Karl Patric Näsman, André Talborn, Moderna Museet Malmö, 2016.
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Conference presentations by Ellen Suneson
Re-Evaluation in Feminism(s) and Contemporary Art, 2024
Re-Evaluation in Feminism(s) and Contemporary Art.
A hybrid one-day conference – Friday 13 Sept... more Re-Evaluation in Feminism(s) and Contemporary Art.
A hybrid one-day conference – Friday 13 September 2024, 10am -7 pm (GMT). Location: Middlesex University London (The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT) and Online. Organised by Katy Deepwell, member of AICA UK.
Abstract: This paper traces representations of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art and performance produced by artists based in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. The exploration of positions of political compliance and internalization of oppression in these works, along with an analysis of their reception in the writing of contemporaneous as well as subsequent feminist art audiences may, I argue, provide crucial insights into the development of theories and methods in the disciplinary field of feminist art history. In line with many other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, feminist movements during this time began to direct an increasing interest in the social construction of oppression and the possibilities of emancipation. Instead of seeing individuals as innately different, there were now increasingly widespread discussions about how sex, gender, and social hierarchies were constructed by societal structures (Love 2021, Rubin 2011). Since then, strategies for social emancipation and transformation have continued to be a central focus for feminism(s) and for feminist art history. The paper argues that while an interest in social change is important a too dominant disciplinary focus on emancipation may impede the ability to engage with and interpret artistic representations of subordination. Employing formalism (particularly as developed by feminist, queer and decolonial art historians and visual scholars including Doyle 2006, English 2019, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, and Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework, the paper places artistic representations of subordination from the 1970s in a juxtaposing relation to similar themes in preceding, contemporaneous, and subsequent art and visual materials. By proposing innovative methodological frameworks and strategies for engaging with representations of subordination, the paper discusses how epistemological frameworks focused on art’s emancipatory potential are still formative for – and partly construe constraint for - theories and methods in feminist art history.
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AAH Association for Art History 2024 Annual Conference, 2024
AAH, Association for Art History 2024 Annual Conference, University of Bristol, Bristol UK, April... more AAH, Association for Art History 2024 Annual Conference, University of Bristol, Bristol UK, April 3 - April 5, 2024. Session: New Ways of Knowing in Feminist Art Histories (session chairs Béatrice Cloutier-Trépanier and Laura Ryan)
Abstract: Over the last decades, a body of feminist research (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Freeman 2010, Halberstam 2022, Hemmings 2011, Tesfagiorgis 1993) has problematized established stories that chronicle the development of Western feminist movements’ recent past. Drawing from this strain of previous research, this paper is particularly influenced by a number of scholarly works that analyse how conventional but simplified stories about the 1970s tend to produce present-day scholarly frameworks wherein certain kinds of feminist representations become discarded as politically naïve, awkward, or uninteresting (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Robinson 2008, Rogoff 1992, Wadstein MacLeod 2012).
This paper stresses the potential of employing formalism (Doyle 2006, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework for studying visual representations of the experience of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. This methodological framework, this paper argues, proposes both new interpretations of already recognized artworks and suggests the artistic importance of a number of previously largely overlooked artworks and performances from the time. As noticeable in its title, this paper explores the implication that a different methodological framework, focused on showing (describing/watching/comparing) rather than telling (placing visual material into established narratives of the past), will have for the interpretation of feminist and queer feminist artworks produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s.
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Presented as part of Thinking Wildly with Jack Halberstam: A Queer Studies Symposium, Uppsala Uni... more Presented as part of Thinking Wildly with Jack Halberstam: A Queer Studies Symposium, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
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NORDIK XIII: Collections, organized in collaboration with the Department of Arts and Cultural Stu... more NORDIK XIII: Collections, organized in collaboration with the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, the University of Copenhagen. Abstract: What are we subjected to when presented with stories about art's past in the context of classrooms or collections? In order to prepare students for a profession in the humanities or in the field of artistic production and reception at large, art history courses in higher education are obliged to provide them with an understanding for the collection of texts, debates or works of art that are considered particularly important or characteristic to account for, for example, a particular time, place or cultural development. At the same time, the continuous repetition of certain dominant stories about art's history oversimplifies complex cultural developments, often privileges white, Western, or male individuals, and contains a tendency to "pass on" biased models for interpretation and artistic value over generations.
One common strategy to tackle the problem of canons is to first provide students with knowledge about central artworks, persons, debates, or texts of art history and then problematize these dominant narratives by introducing students to (also canonized) texts that criticizes these dominant stories of the discipline's past. Inspired by influential suggestions on how to tackle the problem of canons differently in classroom settings, such as affective engagements with works of art, this session invites papers that contemplates on novel approaches to work with dominant cultural canons in the setting of undergraduate art history courses, curatorial practices, or guided tours in museums.
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Affects, flux, fluides. Représentations, histoires et politiques des émotions en arts (2019), Str... more Affects, flux, fluides. Représentations, histoires et politiques des émotions en arts (2019), Strasbourg university, France. Abstract: "In this paper, I discuss artworks in which the artists make use of the affect of shame to problematize art fields as “structures-of-feeling” (Williams, 1977), from feminist, queer and anti-racist perspectives. Based on Sara Ahmed’s (2010) suggestion that feelings may be how structures get under our skin I argue that these artworks critically depict the role that emotions play for the compliance to and maintenance of dominant values and meanings in various fields of art."
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NORDIK XII (2018), Copenhagen University, Denmark. Abstract: Emotions can be physical experiences... more NORDIK XII (2018), Copenhagen University, Denmark. Abstract: Emotions can be physical experiences. They may cause an unpleasant pressure on your shoulders, contract the skin over your collarbones, or make your arms or chest burn. They can fill your body with aggression, cause a pleasant warmth in your abdomen, or obstruct your breathing. This paper discusses emotions as physical and material phenomena—as matter— and the possibility to understand them as an artistic medium that, comparable to clay, plaster or paint, can determine the character of artworks.
To explore emotions as artistic medium, I shall consider art scenes as “emotional communities” structured by systems of feelings (Ahmed, 2004, Rosenwein, 2010, 2002). Such structures prescribe certain relations between a given aesthetic expression and its supposed emotional force in particular settings. One does not have to agree with a system of feelings, or even share its dominant emotions, but within an emotional community it will still bind certain aesthetic gestures to particular emotions. This, in turn, affects inclusions and exclusions, art historiography, and judgements of quality within the community.
In this paper, I will analyse three art performances by Anna Linder, Line Skywalker Karlström and Jenny Grönvall, which use the emotion of shame to problematize art scenes as emotional communities, from queer feminist perspectives.
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Lancaster Disability Studies Conference (2018), Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
The ... more Lancaster Disability Studies Conference (2018), Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse popular neuroimaging of the (dis)able(d) brain as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way the “normal” brain is depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critic against ableism. The empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). The article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness have changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. Specially, there seem to have been a change in how the discursive logic of the brain is visualised and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shift needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinction transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
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Books by Ellen Suneson
Available free access online: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/portraying-unease-the-art-and-politics-of-uncomfortable-attachmen
Articles by Ellen Suneson
Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyse popular neuroimaging of (dis)able(d) brains as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way “normal” brains are depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critique against ableism. e empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). e article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness has changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. In particular, there seems to have been a change in how the brain is visualized and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shi needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinctness transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
Book Reviews by Ellen Suneson
Published in: lambda nordica (2024), vol: 4, issue: 28, p. 128-133.
Book chapters by Ellen Suneson
Abstract: This chapter discusses the performance Mr MEESE UND DIE LIEDER AUS DEM HERZEN #3 (2011) by Malmö-based artist Jenny Grönvall. In the performance, Grönvall portrays herself as envious of and longing to be recognized by a renowned white male artist. Based on this work, the essay proposes that representations of certain kinds of corporeal attachments becomes associated with political backwardness or scholarly embarrassment when approached by feminist theories founded on art as a means for political utility and subversion. Feminist art historian Irit Rogoff (1994) discusses how feminist art historians tend to acknowledge visual representations of particular types of corporeal vulnerabilities or dependencies as politically significant, while discarding others as vain, narcissistic, embarrassing, or uninteresting. Influenced by Rogoff’s argument, this essay stresses the importance to linger with representations of bodies in feminist and queer feminist art and performance without too quickly attempting to ascribe political efficiency to them (or criticizing them for their inability to produce politically productive effects). Sometimes representations of bodies may neither be radical, subversive, emotionally reparative, or good for politics. To reject such representations as politically backwards or uninteresting involves the risk, I argue, of fabricating a simplified preconception of resistance that (albeit involuntarily) directs attention away from the gravity of structural violence and liability.
Papers by Ellen Suneson
Conference presentations by Ellen Suneson
A hybrid one-day conference – Friday 13 September 2024, 10am -7 pm (GMT). Location: Middlesex University London (The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT) and Online. Organised by Katy Deepwell, member of AICA UK.
Abstract: This paper traces representations of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art and performance produced by artists based in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. The exploration of positions of political compliance and internalization of oppression in these works, along with an analysis of their reception in the writing of contemporaneous as well as subsequent feminist art audiences may, I argue, provide crucial insights into the development of theories and methods in the disciplinary field of feminist art history. In line with many other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, feminist movements during this time began to direct an increasing interest in the social construction of oppression and the possibilities of emancipation. Instead of seeing individuals as innately different, there were now increasingly widespread discussions about how sex, gender, and social hierarchies were constructed by societal structures (Love 2021, Rubin 2011). Since then, strategies for social emancipation and transformation have continued to be a central focus for feminism(s) and for feminist art history. The paper argues that while an interest in social change is important a too dominant disciplinary focus on emancipation may impede the ability to engage with and interpret artistic representations of subordination. Employing formalism (particularly as developed by feminist, queer and decolonial art historians and visual scholars including Doyle 2006, English 2019, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, and Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework, the paper places artistic representations of subordination from the 1970s in a juxtaposing relation to similar themes in preceding, contemporaneous, and subsequent art and visual materials. By proposing innovative methodological frameworks and strategies for engaging with representations of subordination, the paper discusses how epistemological frameworks focused on art’s emancipatory potential are still formative for – and partly construe constraint for - theories and methods in feminist art history.
Abstract: Over the last decades, a body of feminist research (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Freeman 2010, Halberstam 2022, Hemmings 2011, Tesfagiorgis 1993) has problematized established stories that chronicle the development of Western feminist movements’ recent past. Drawing from this strain of previous research, this paper is particularly influenced by a number of scholarly works that analyse how conventional but simplified stories about the 1970s tend to produce present-day scholarly frameworks wherein certain kinds of feminist representations become discarded as politically naïve, awkward, or uninteresting (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Robinson 2008, Rogoff 1992, Wadstein MacLeod 2012).
This paper stresses the potential of employing formalism (Doyle 2006, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework for studying visual representations of the experience of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. This methodological framework, this paper argues, proposes both new interpretations of already recognized artworks and suggests the artistic importance of a number of previously largely overlooked artworks and performances from the time. As noticeable in its title, this paper explores the implication that a different methodological framework, focused on showing (describing/watching/comparing) rather than telling (placing visual material into established narratives of the past), will have for the interpretation of feminist and queer feminist artworks produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s.
One common strategy to tackle the problem of canons is to first provide students with knowledge about central artworks, persons, debates, or texts of art history and then problematize these dominant narratives by introducing students to (also canonized) texts that criticizes these dominant stories of the discipline's past. Inspired by influential suggestions on how to tackle the problem of canons differently in classroom settings, such as affective engagements with works of art, this session invites papers that contemplates on novel approaches to work with dominant cultural canons in the setting of undergraduate art history courses, curatorial practices, or guided tours in museums.
To explore emotions as artistic medium, I shall consider art scenes as “emotional communities” structured by systems of feelings (Ahmed, 2004, Rosenwein, 2010, 2002). Such structures prescribe certain relations between a given aesthetic expression and its supposed emotional force in particular settings. One does not have to agree with a system of feelings, or even share its dominant emotions, but within an emotional community it will still bind certain aesthetic gestures to particular emotions. This, in turn, affects inclusions and exclusions, art historiography, and judgements of quality within the community.
In this paper, I will analyse three art performances by Anna Linder, Line Skywalker Karlström and Jenny Grönvall, which use the emotion of shame to problematize art scenes as emotional communities, from queer feminist perspectives.
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse popular neuroimaging of the (dis)able(d) brain as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way the “normal” brain is depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critic against ableism. The empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). The article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness have changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. Specially, there seem to have been a change in how the discursive logic of the brain is visualised and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shift needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinction transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
Available free access online: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/portraying-unease-the-art-and-politics-of-uncomfortable-attachmen
Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyse popular neuroimaging of (dis)able(d) brains as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way “normal” brains are depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critique against ableism. e empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). e article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness has changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. In particular, there seems to have been a change in how the brain is visualized and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shi needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinctness transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
Published in: lambda nordica (2024), vol: 4, issue: 28, p. 128-133.
Abstract: This chapter discusses the performance Mr MEESE UND DIE LIEDER AUS DEM HERZEN #3 (2011) by Malmö-based artist Jenny Grönvall. In the performance, Grönvall portrays herself as envious of and longing to be recognized by a renowned white male artist. Based on this work, the essay proposes that representations of certain kinds of corporeal attachments becomes associated with political backwardness or scholarly embarrassment when approached by feminist theories founded on art as a means for political utility and subversion. Feminist art historian Irit Rogoff (1994) discusses how feminist art historians tend to acknowledge visual representations of particular types of corporeal vulnerabilities or dependencies as politically significant, while discarding others as vain, narcissistic, embarrassing, or uninteresting. Influenced by Rogoff’s argument, this essay stresses the importance to linger with representations of bodies in feminist and queer feminist art and performance without too quickly attempting to ascribe political efficiency to them (or criticizing them for their inability to produce politically productive effects). Sometimes representations of bodies may neither be radical, subversive, emotionally reparative, or good for politics. To reject such representations as politically backwards or uninteresting involves the risk, I argue, of fabricating a simplified preconception of resistance that (albeit involuntarily) directs attention away from the gravity of structural violence and liability.
A hybrid one-day conference – Friday 13 September 2024, 10am -7 pm (GMT). Location: Middlesex University London (The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT) and Online. Organised by Katy Deepwell, member of AICA UK.
Abstract: This paper traces representations of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art and performance produced by artists based in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. The exploration of positions of political compliance and internalization of oppression in these works, along with an analysis of their reception in the writing of contemporaneous as well as subsequent feminist art audiences may, I argue, provide crucial insights into the development of theories and methods in the disciplinary field of feminist art history. In line with many other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, feminist movements during this time began to direct an increasing interest in the social construction of oppression and the possibilities of emancipation. Instead of seeing individuals as innately different, there were now increasingly widespread discussions about how sex, gender, and social hierarchies were constructed by societal structures (Love 2021, Rubin 2011). Since then, strategies for social emancipation and transformation have continued to be a central focus for feminism(s) and for feminist art history. The paper argues that while an interest in social change is important a too dominant disciplinary focus on emancipation may impede the ability to engage with and interpret artistic representations of subordination. Employing formalism (particularly as developed by feminist, queer and decolonial art historians and visual scholars including Doyle 2006, English 2019, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, and Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework, the paper places artistic representations of subordination from the 1970s in a juxtaposing relation to similar themes in preceding, contemporaneous, and subsequent art and visual materials. By proposing innovative methodological frameworks and strategies for engaging with representations of subordination, the paper discusses how epistemological frameworks focused on art’s emancipatory potential are still formative for – and partly construe constraint for - theories and methods in feminist art history.
Abstract: Over the last decades, a body of feminist research (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Freeman 2010, Halberstam 2022, Hemmings 2011, Tesfagiorgis 1993) has problematized established stories that chronicle the development of Western feminist movements’ recent past. Drawing from this strain of previous research, this paper is particularly influenced by a number of scholarly works that analyse how conventional but simplified stories about the 1970s tend to produce present-day scholarly frameworks wherein certain kinds of feminist representations become discarded as politically naïve, awkward, or uninteresting (Angkjær Jørgensen & Åsebø 2020-2025, Robinson 2008, Rogoff 1992, Wadstein MacLeod 2012).
This paper stresses the potential of employing formalism (Doyle 2006, Getsy 2015, Pollock 1988, Simmons 2021) as a methodological framework for studying visual representations of the experience of subordination in feminist and queer feminist art produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s. This methodological framework, this paper argues, proposes both new interpretations of already recognized artworks and suggests the artistic importance of a number of previously largely overlooked artworks and performances from the time. As noticeable in its title, this paper explores the implication that a different methodological framework, focused on showing (describing/watching/comparing) rather than telling (placing visual material into established narratives of the past), will have for the interpretation of feminist and queer feminist artworks produced in the Nordic countries during the 1970s.
One common strategy to tackle the problem of canons is to first provide students with knowledge about central artworks, persons, debates, or texts of art history and then problematize these dominant narratives by introducing students to (also canonized) texts that criticizes these dominant stories of the discipline's past. Inspired by influential suggestions on how to tackle the problem of canons differently in classroom settings, such as affective engagements with works of art, this session invites papers that contemplates on novel approaches to work with dominant cultural canons in the setting of undergraduate art history courses, curatorial practices, or guided tours in museums.
To explore emotions as artistic medium, I shall consider art scenes as “emotional communities” structured by systems of feelings (Ahmed, 2004, Rosenwein, 2010, 2002). Such structures prescribe certain relations between a given aesthetic expression and its supposed emotional force in particular settings. One does not have to agree with a system of feelings, or even share its dominant emotions, but within an emotional community it will still bind certain aesthetic gestures to particular emotions. This, in turn, affects inclusions and exclusions, art historiography, and judgements of quality within the community.
In this paper, I will analyse three art performances by Anna Linder, Line Skywalker Karlström and Jenny Grönvall, which use the emotion of shame to problematize art scenes as emotional communities, from queer feminist perspectives.
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse popular neuroimaging of the (dis)able(d) brain as a cultural phenomenon, as well as to explore how there has been, during the last decades, a subtle but important change in the way the “normal” brain is depicted in popular science. Popular neuroimaging is introduced and used as an empirical basis to analyse what Fiona Kumari Campbell sees as a critic against ableism. The empirical material consists of two British popular science documentaries (both produced by the BBC) on the topic of the brain: Human Brain (1983), and Brain Story (2004). The article argues that the position of normality and able-bodiedness have changed as the development of brain scanning techniques has emerged. Specially, there seem to have been a change in how the discursive logic of the brain is visualised and talked about. New frameworks for understanding normality, disability and vulnerability have appeared. Furthermore, we claim that this shift needs to be studied from a theoretical perspective that analyses the discursive logic of the (dis)able(d) brain where an indistinction transpires and creates a form of vulnerable normality.
Session: Passing on Stories: Collective Memories and the Canon (2022). Session hosted together with Johanna Rosenqvist.
Abstract: What are we subjected to when presented with stories about art's past in the context of classrooms or collections? In order to prepare students for a profession in the humanities or in the field of artistic production and reception at large, art history courses in higher education are obliged to provide them with an understanding for the collection of texts, debates or works of art that are considered particularly important or characteristic to account for, for example, a particular time, place or cultural development. At the same time, the continuous repetition of certain dominant stories about art's history oversimplifies complex cultural developments, often privileges white, Western, or male individuals, and contains a tendency to "pass on" biased models for interpretation and artistic value over generations. One common strategy to tackle the problem of canons is to first provide students with knowledge about central artworks, persons, debates, or texts of art history and then problematize these dominant narratives by introducing students to (also canonized) texts that criticizes these dominant stories of the discipline's past. Inspired by influential suggestions on how to tackle the problem of canons differently in classroom settings, such as affective engagements with works of art, this session invites papers that contemplates on novel approaches to work with dominant cultural canons in the setting of undergraduate art history courses, curatorial practices, or guided tours in museums.
Introduction to the publications (produced by CuratorLab, Konstfack) "Assuming Asymmetries: Conversations on Curating Public Art in the 1980s and 1990s" and "Curating Beyond the Mainstream: The Practice of Carlos Capelán, Elisabet Haglund, Gunilla Lundahl, and Jan-Erik Lundström".
Den performativa konsten undersöker ofta en kroppslig närvaro i rummet och utgör en egen genre med kopplingar till teater, dans, videokonst och ritual. Genom historien har performancecekonsten förhållit sig till mänskliga kriser, transformationer, intimitet och starka känslor. Konstnären och publiken delar en gemensam erfarenhet samtidigt, i samma rum.
Programserien skapas av Konstföreningen Auras programgrupp, som består av konstnärerna Marit Lindberg och Henrik Lund Jørgensen.
I sin föreläsning problematiserar Suneson tron på konstens performativa politiska potential och för fram argumentet att en betraktares förhoppning om konstens politiska effekter riskerar att lyfta fram vissa tolkningar av verk på bekostnad av andra. I föreläsningen diskuteras hur associationen mellan konstverk/konstnär och politisk radikalitet, förändring och emancipation delvis har sina rötter i modernistiska ideal om autonomi. Föreläsningen tar sin utgångspunkt i ett antal konstverk som på olika sätt porträtterar hur själva hoppet om konsten som en källa till politisk förändring även kan utgöra en källa till depression, osäkerhet, självtvivel, och genans.
I samarbete med Doc Lounge ger Moderna Museet Malmö en helkväll tillägnad Marina Abramović. Det blir förstklassig film, mingel, samtalsgäster och djs.
Kvällens inleds med välkomstdrink och mingel där Galleri Gordons Niklas och Martin står för stämningshöjande toner från dj-båset. Innan filmvisningen finns det möjlighet att se museets pågående utställningar. Efter filmvisningen finns curator och föreläsare Ellen Suneson på plats för samtal och frågestund. Ellen är konst- och genusvetare och har specialiserat sig på feministiska strategier inom performancekonst.