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

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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.