Seminar: Frictioned futures – power, responsibility and the work of change

We are living in deeply troubling times where the need for artistic reflection, critical dialogue, and collective action is more urgent than ever. Art has the potential to not only respond, but to reimagine. However, how does political art stay urgent and more than a marketable and profitable commodity in the capitalist art world? How do both artists and institutions work with trauma, grief and loss in an ethical way? What does it mean to share power, take responsibility, and do the real, messy and uncomfortable work of change? 

This one-day seminar brings together artists, makers, cultural workers, and arts institutions from the Nordic region to reflect on our institutional and artistic practices and the futures they are shaping.

Throughout the day, through a keynote, conversations, and a workshop, we will explore how artistic and institutional practices can become more deeply rooted in long-term, community-connected work of change. We will examine what lies beyond representation, and how curatorial strategies can move from exclusion to liberation. Together, we’ll ask how fiction and speculation might help us imagine more equitable futures, and how, in the midst of urgency, we can still work with care, clarity, and commitment:

What perspectives dominate when "decolonization" is institutionalized?

How to stay with the friction and stay with the trouble?

What are artists dreams of the future? 

About:
The seminar is organized by Dansens Hus Oslo in collaboration with Helsinki-based UrbanApa.

It is part of BRIDGES, a Nordic initiative that seeks to build long-term and sustainable collaborations across the region and foster critical discourse around anti-racist and intersectional feminist practices in the performing arts. The BRIDGES partners are UrbanApa (FI), MDT (SWE), HAUT (DEN), Reykjavik Dance Festival (IS), and Dansens Hus Oslo (NOR). BRIDGES is supported by Nordic Culture Point and the Nordic Culture Fund.