MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Åsa Sonjasdotter
In this MA Forum we welcome artist-researcher Åsa Sonjasdotter who will be speaking about their practice in relation to the research cluster ‘Environment: Ecological and Climate Challenges’ and under the title ‘Moving Stories’.
In her research based practice, Åsa Sonjasdotter brings stories to the fore that already are there, right with us, yet not recognized, often suppressed. For these stories to come to life, Sonjasdotter works not only to find a form for them to thrive, but as well a situation or a set of relations, from where their journey can begin and from where they can move, in order to move others. In her talk Sonjasdotter will introduce specific projects to discuss how stories take place and reverberate as embodied relations.
The work Cultivating Abundance engages in the recultivation of peasant-bred crops within the highly industrialized farming landscapes of southern Scandinavia. The project employs a twofold approach of recultivation and tracing back through textual, visual, and material archives, including the cultivars themselves. The outcome was concluded in the 2022 film Cultivating Abundance. In the process-based work The Potatoes’ Testimonies on the Defense of the Earth Sonjasdotter collaborates with artist Daniela Zambrano Almidón to activate stories of solidarity and struggle among peasants in the Andean region, Central Europe, and beyond, connecting them by cultivating plants and stories of papas/potatoes.
Åsa Sonjasdotter’s research takes place at the intersection of artistic and academic methodology. Sonjasdotter has contributed extensively to the discursive field of art and agriculture, introducing questions of farming and breeding as a practice creating ontologies beyond the nature-culture divide. Sonjasdotter received her PhD in artistic practice at HDK-Valand, the University of Gothenburg, in 2024. Towards Peasant Cultivation of Abundance involved long term collaboration with farming communities in Scania organising around the custody of peasant-bred, common grains. The outcome was concluded in the 2022 film Cultivating Abundance, screened widely and internationally. The film is distributed by Filmform, Stockholm, and represented by Malmö Art Museum and KIN Museum of Contemporary Art.
Image courtesy Åsa Sonjasdotter
MA Forum is a seminar series on artistic research, hosted by HDK-Valand in collaboration with L’Internationale Online. Through invited guests, the series explores different dimensions of artistic research. The lectures are free and open to all.
Related activities
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HDK-Valand
Climate Forum I
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–Van Abbemuseum
The Soils Project
‘The Soils Project’ is part of an eponymous, long-term research initiative involving TarraWarra Museum of Art (Wurundjeri Country, Australia), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It works through specific and situated practices that consider soil, as both metaphor and matter.
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–MACBA
Where are the Oases?
PEI OBERT seminar
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–tranzit.ro
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–Moderna galerijaZRC SAZU
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–Moderna galerijaZRC SAZU
Open Call – Summer School: Our Many Easts
Our Many Easts summer school takes place in Ljubljana 24–30 August and the application deadline is 15 March. Courses will be held in English and cover topics such as the legacy of the Eastern European avant-gardes, archives as tools of emancipation, the new “non-aligned” networks, art in times of conflict and war, ecology and the environment.
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–MSU ZagrebVan AbbemuseumModerna galerijaZRC SAZU
Open Call – School of Common Knowledge 2024
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–Institute of Radical Imagination
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–MSU ZagrebModerna galerijaZRC SAZU
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–SALT
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–Museo Reina Sofia
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HDK-Valand
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HDK-Valand
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HDK-Valand
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–SALT
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–SALT
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–Museo Reina Sofia
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HDK-Valand
MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Nkule Mabaso
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–Museo Reina SofiaMACBA
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–IMMANCAD
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HDK-Valand
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HDK-Valand
MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Nour Shantout
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MACBA
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HDK-Valand
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HDK-Valand
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–MSU Zagreb
Open Call: Artist Residency
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HDK-Valand
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HDK-Valand
MA Forum in collaboration with LIO: Åsa Sonjasdotter
In this MA Forum we welcome artist-researcher Åsa Sonjasdotter who will be speaking about their practice in relation to the research cluster ‘Environment: Ecological and Climate Challenges’ and under the title ‘Moving Stories’.
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