Bodies as institutions as bodies

"Bodies as institutions as bodies" 22–24 October, 2025
Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) and Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus

Registration

links will be available here end August

Please note that the Wednesday Research Seminar 22 October is for an invited audience, Wednesday evening and Thursday activities are open to those interested in experiencing various approaches to artistic research, Thursday evening’s film showing and conversation between filmmaker and academic Hito Steyerl and artist-researcher Sher Doruff is open to a broader public, and Friday morning is the annual EARN meeting which is open to members and any interested parties.

bodies as institutions as bodies

Curated as a series of performance, film and installation events programmed alongside seminars, workshops, and panel discussions, bodies as institutions as bodies proposes to explore the term ‘institute’ as both a verb - to set in motion, to generate, to actuate, and a noun - a university, an alliance, a group. Addressing concepts and practices of institutionalisation via doctoral and supervisory, individual and collective, disciplinary and interdisciplinary artistic research perspectives, the symposium unfolds how we institute and are instituted in the field of artistic research, and how this plays out in our bodies, and in the various institutional bodies, contexts and conditions we work, research, perform in, and create.

The symposium, hosted by the academic context of Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) and the community context of Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, will take place from 22-24 October 2025 in Stockholm, Sweden.

link to the program of the symposia will be available here in August 2025.

A full list of presenters at bodies as institutions as bodies will be available here in August 2025.

Main organisers of the symposium are Rebecca Hilton (Professor of choreography for the profile area Site Event Encounter at SKH, and lead of animal bodies), Hanna Husberg (assistant professor of Performative and Media-based Practices at SKH, and lead of environmental bodies), Kathrin Gollwitzer-Oh (Head of Research Coordination, University of the Arts Bremen (HfK), and lead of institutional bodies) and Sebastian Dahlqvist, core member of BODIES and artistic and executive director of Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus.

*BODIES is an international group of researchers, educators and practitioners coming together from across artistic, academic, and activist contexts. Unfolding via three discrete yet interrelated working parties – animal bodies, institutional bodies, and environmental bodies – BODIES is what emerges when transdisciplinary, collaborative, practice-led research is situated in, and cared for by an artistic research environment.