Art & Governmentalization

“Data-ecologies of Evaluation: Tracing Access, Values, Spill- Overs, and Impacts in Swedish Cultural Policy”

In this paper, we map the development of the evaluation processes and methods used in the context of Swedish cultural policy. By using Actor-Network Theory, we trace the international skeins through which methods, concepts, people, data and practices of evaluation have flowed. By describing these skeins, we hope to better understand current evaluation practices in…

Art and the Racial State

In 2016, the Swedish government allocated SEK 100 million to arts projects in the Million Programs. In this paper we conceptualize one part of this venture in terms of its biopolitical parameters. We describe how it is conceived in by the Arts Council of England and how it is relocated in the Swedish context. We…

Telematic Governmentality: Digitising Theatre, Intensifying Policy

Digitisation offers a way of understanding the micro-stakes of artistic practice in the macro-tensions of cultural policy. European cultural policy has arguably undergone four transformations since its inception in the 1960s and 70s: 1) emphasising excellence and democratisation, 2) increasing decentralisation and regionalisation, 3) including entertainment culture and the cultural industries, and 4) characterised by…

Malmö City Theatre

“Malmö City Theatre is one of Sweden’s leading theatres. It has existed in its present form since 1993. The theatre is owned by the City of Malmö and its primary purpose is to perform dramatic pieces, usually using its own ensemble. The municipality’s Culture Committee has responsibility for Malmö City Theatre, both in terms of…

Malmö Arab Film Festival

Malmö Arab Film Festival (MAFF) is an intercultural platform for diversity and tolerance. The festival is widely regarded as one of the most influential and largest festival with an Arabic cinema focus and offers a platform for collaboration between the Nordic and Arab film industries. MAFF is the largest festival with an Arabic cinema focus…

Banditsagor

Banditsagor is a touring independent theatre company based in Malmö. It was established in 2008 and performs in kindergartens, schools and libraries all around Sweden. “We have always the collective storytelling at the centre. Regardless of whether we perform improvisations or fairy tale theatre, we and our work is only a tool to focus on…

“On Veridiction: Metrologies of Art in the European Welfare State”

Project presentation at the Foucault Circle annual meeting, hosted this year by the Loyola Marymount University. The conference paper is being made ready for publication. In the meantime, this is the conference abstract: In this paper, we elaborate on Foucault’s term “veridiction” and explore how it illuminates the recent developments in governing the arts in…

Cultural policies, metrologies and the dispositif of art management

Article in Cultural Management Education in Risk Societies – Towards a Paradigm and Policy Shift?! CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 2016, pp. 195-208. Download the book here.

Workshop: Art for Integration

In the morning session we presented and discussed a typology of govermentalization. In the afternoon workshop we worked with the typology to critically reflect on the social relevance of the artistic work the participants had engaged with. We also looked at Swedish cultural policy goals, discussed their relevance to the participants’ work, and discussed what indicators are…

On Veridiction: The Case of Art in the European Welfare State

Forthcoming The seventeenth annual meeting of the Foucault Circle Los Angeles, California March 23-25, 2017 (hosted by Loyola Marymount University) In this paper, we focus on Foucault’s term “veridiction” and explore how it can illuminate the recent developments in governing the arts in European welfare states. For Foucault in Biopolitics, the market becomes something like…

Art for Control: Inscription Devices and the Politics of Debt

The current “Social Turn” in the arts is re-inscribing the ways in which art is connected to notions of social cohesion and community. For example, L. Ruffel argues that the nineteenth-century aesthetic notion of art which created “the grounds for a sensus communis” is being replaced by “micro-political approaches … privileging the inscription of the…