The Vice-Chancellor's Christmas speech
This year, December in Stockholm has been unusually dark and the world around us is even darker. Still, when I come here, to SKH, in the morning, every day, I don’t feel the darkness. I feel a form of light, a sense of purpose, of optimism, of hope.
As I see it, the kind of understanding of oneself, of each other and of the world we develop and hold space for here carries the future because it is an understanding that takes time, that cannot arrive all at once, that cannot be spelled out as an answer. It is organised around practices that are slow and repetitive, that that emerges through bodies and materials. It occurs through rehearsing, through listening, through repeating, through adjusting. Through practice. It is understanding that cannot be transmitted in a lecture or explained in a book. It occurs between movements, bodies and ideas. It drifts, it slips, it moves. It does not rush to certainty, to simple answers, to statements, instead it is a form of understanding that can stay with complexity, with ambiguity and that allows questions to form and remain open.
This, for me, is hopeful. It makes us a university of the future.
At SKH one learns to stay with a process without demanding immediate results, by allowing uncertainty to remain present, and by accepting that understanding often emerges indirectly. In studios and our other spaces of practice, students learn to listen, to respond, to adjust, and to work through difference. They learn that things take time, that understanding is built through attention, and that responsibility is shared.
In the current climate, where speed, rapid conclusions, and clear positions are often rewarded, with polarisation and hardness as a result, this way of working seems significant.
In the current climate, where speed, rapid conclusions, and clear positions are often rewarded, with polarisation and hardness as a result, this way of working seems significant.
This is a way of working that allows complexity to remain present. It trains a particular relation to the world, one that does not rush to certainty, that can stay with difficult things, and that can allow questions to remain open. And when we think of the students, the future, their future, this is where I find hope:
Not because the studio offers answers, but because it trains the ability to stay with something difficult over time, without pinning it down and reducing it.
In preparation, in coordination, in technical expertise, in production, and administration; in all the forms of care and attentiveness that make it possible for artistic and educational practice to unfold, what we do here is about hosting the future. At a time when public life is increasingly shaped by simplification, speed, hostility and pressure to take sides, this kind of work has weight. It keeps imagination alive. It allows alternatives to be tried out rather than declared. It insists on plurality — on many voices, perspectives, and forms of knowledge existing side by side. In this sense, what we do here is deeply connected to society, to the future of society.
I wish you a peaceful holiday.
