An International Conference at Södertörn University and Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, Stockholm, June 13-14, 2024.
 
In the problem of the autonomy of art, not only the autonomy of art is at stake. In recent years, across different national contexts, policy measures and reforms have been launched that decimate the independence of cultural and educational institutions, while waving the false flag of ”freedom” – of art, of expression, of opinion, of academic research. Effectively countering this offensive presupposes a strong, critical understanding of the concept at its core. Here, the problem of autonomy and its forms regains full urgency. How should we understand the concept of the autonomy of art critically today? What would be the political implications of such an understanding?
 
Speakers: Nicholas Brown, Andrea Fraser, Jackqueline Frost, Stefan Jonsson, Linnéa Lindsköld, Sven Lütticken, Peter Osborne, Gustav Strandberg, Kim West, Josefine Wikström.
 
Practical information:
Thursday, June 13: Södertörn University, MA331, 10.00-17.00
Friday, June 14: Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, 14.00-19.00
Open to the public and free of charge. For more information and detailed program (forthcoming), see here.
 
Program
 
 
Thursday, June 13
Södertörn University, MA331
 
10.00 Welcome
 
10.30-11.30 Sven Lütticken, Infrastructural Critique and the Problem of Counterpublics
 
11.45-12.45 Linnéa Lindsköld, Cultural Policy as National Security Policy: Implications for the Autonomy of Art, Artist, and Audience
 
12.45-14.00 Lunch
&nbps;
14.00-15.00 Peter Osborne, Freedoms in Unfreedom
 
15.15-17.00 Panel: Gustav Strandberg, Kim West, Josefine Wikström. Gustav Strandberg, Murdering the Imagination
Kim West, Autonomy at Scale
Josefine Wikström, Contemporary Art and Cultural Policy, or Art and the State, 1990s to the Present
 
Friday, June 14
Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus
14.00-15.00 Stefan Jonsson, Figures of Autonomy? Notes on Collective Agency and the Tweets, Drops and Masks of Freedom
 
15.15-16.15 Jackqueline Frost, Aimé Césaire between Political Autonomy and Poetic Knowledge
 
16.30-17.30 Nicholas Brown, Handle with Care: Affect, Sociology, Index, and Other Critical Evasions
 
17.45-18.45 Andrea Fraser, Autonomy and its Contradictions Revisited
 
18.45-19.00 Closing Remarks
 
19.00-late Festivities
 
 
Organized by Gustav Strandberg, Kim West, and Josefine Wikström within the framework of the research project “Autonomy, Culture, Action: On Culture’s Spheres of Political Action in the Neoliberal Welfare State”, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, hosted by Södertörn University. Additional conference support from the research school Critical and Cultural Theory, Södertörn University. Arranged in collaboration with Tusen kulturhus at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Image by Christoffer Paues.