Ways of knowing – SKH meets CAPIm

The seminar is part of the seminar series “Ways of knowing Spring 2025” where we every Wednesday this Spring explore how Ways of Knowing manifest themselves in the field of artistic research right now. Read more about the seminar series and find upcoming seminars.

History never ended

Founded in 2024 and funded by the Swedish Research Council, CAPIm is a joint initiative between the Royal Institute of Art and HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg co-chaired by Prof. Mick Wilson and Prof. Natasha Marie Llorens. CAPIm is the first research environment with a mandate to develop education and research conditions for artistic research, with a focus on art and the political imaginary.

At the core of CAPIm’s mission is the understanding that art plays a critical role in confronting political determinism—the widespread belief that there are no alternatives to the current political and economic order. This idea, often reinforced through media, policy, and spectacle, is central to the consolidation of fascist and neo-authoritarian power. When imagination is stifled, so too is the capacity to collectively envision futures beyond fear, control, and competition.

For this inter-institutional research seminar artist and researcher Michele Masucci and curator, arts writer and co-chair of CAPIm, Professor Natasha Marie Llorens will introduce the centre's structure, aims, and current research practices. Departing from the title “History never ended” and drawing on thinkers such as Spivak, Castoriadis, Federici and Moten, this seminar will explore how art inherently is a practice to the closure of the political imaginary, offering ways to rehearse, embody, and imagine futures that remain otherwise unspeakable within the dominant logic.

Masucci will present Territories of Imagination, a research project investigating how artist collectives and autonomous spaces act as infrastructures for counter-hegemonic organization. From the 1943 anti-fascist revolt in Maschito to contemporary autonomous centres, the project develops a collaborative archive of artistic-political organizational forms. These include for example reenactments of staffette—anti-fascist couriers during WWII—reimagined as contemporary carriers of collective memory, care, and resistance.

Biographies

Michele Masucci, is an artist, researcher and lecturer in writing and artistic research at the Royal Institute of Art. Masucci is a PhD candidate in Critical Theory from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (expected in 2025) and is pursuing a PhD in Medical Science at Karolinska Institutet (expected in 2025). They also include a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Södertörn University, a Master in Fine Arts and Post Master in Art&Architecture from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Masucci’s practice is deeply informed by performative art, collective organization, and care practices. They have held academic positions at Konstfack and the Royal Institute of Art, and recently curated “A Careful Strike*” at Mint Konsthall. Their contributions to conferences, publications, and exhibitions highlight an ongoing engagement with social issues, including “Ecologies of Care – The Social Centre as Self Organized Infrastructure for Art,” a lecture and seminar at Stockholm University of the Arts (2024). Masucci is pursuing research entitled Territories of Imagination: “The Republic of Maschito”, which examines how artistic practices intersect with political movements. One focus is the 1943 revolt in Maschito, Italy, during which women led the resistance against fascism to briefly establish a partisan republic.

Natasha Marie Llorens is an arts writer, independent curator and Professor of Art Theory at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Llorens is co-director of the Center for Art and Political Imaginary, the first Center of Excellence in the field in Sweden. She edited Waiting for Omar Gatlato A Survey of Contemporary Art from Algeria and Its Diaspora (Sternberg Press, 2019). This volume accompanied the first of three eponymous exhibitions curated by Llorens all dedicated to Algerian aesthetics: at the Wallach Art Gallery (2019), Triangle France-Astérides (2021), and Centre National d’Art Contemporain Le Magasin (2023). Llorens was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant for short-form in 2022. In 2023, she and Algiers-based curator Myriam Amroun were awarded a three-year grant in artistic research from Vetenskapsrådet for a project entitled, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” centred on transnational curatorial methodology. Also in the context of a long-term research project, in December 2023, she curated Massinissa Selmani’s first solo exhibition in Algeria, “1000 Villages”; it was presented in Stockholm in September 2024 at Index Foundation. Their work revolves around a socialist urban planning project initiated by Algerian government in the mid-1970s, which has close parallels with Swedish architectural history. Llorens holds a PhD from Columbia University and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, both in New York.