ART FOREST
The Arts for Resilient Futures — ART FOREST — is an in-house, interdisciplinary platform that was founded in the autumn of 2022 by and for researchers in the aesthetic sciences. In these transformational times, it aims to provide a space that addresses the role of aesthetics in relation to climate change and environmental challenges, the ways in which these crises call for new ways of living, and which addresses the inequalities and conflicts that follow in their wake.
The arts and humanities are mobilising around issues concerning the climate and environment in a variety of ways. Both historically and in the present, different forms of artistic expression have examined and are examining the interactions between humans and nature, and may speak of the histories of their attachments and conflicts. How can we shape a better future by using this knowledge of the past?
ART FOREST gathers a range of smaller initiatives at Södertörn University, such as “Rataoskr – research group for cultural and literary human-animal studies”
External link., which has extensive networks with scholars throughout northern Europe and published its first peer-reviewed anthology in 2022. In December 2024, the group is organising the Multispecies Methods External link. conference. ART FOREST is affiliated with the EcoJust External link. research platform at Södertörn University, which focuses on a fair transition to sustainability.
Externally funded research projects currently affiliated with ART FOREST include
- a literary project about the figure of the bear in northern-European nation building in the 19th and 20th centuries External link.; another called Revolutionary Diets: Famine, Science, and Literature in Early Soviet Russia External link.; and another called Experimental Animals: Non-Human Agency in Early-Soviet Film, Literature and Theory External link..
- projects in Art History on Arctic nature and representations of extreme weather in art; External link.
- and a project in Aesthetics about ice and cold as objects of for knowledge and representation External link..
ART FOREST hosts seminars with guest speakers from Sweden and abroad, holds workshops for applications for external funding for projects in the platform's areas of interest, and has cooperated with organisations such as Strindbergs intima teater, Accelerator and Bigert och Bergströms studio
ART FOREST was initiated and coordinated by Dan Karlholm External link. (art), Ann-Sofie Lönngren External link. (literature), and Cecilia Sjöholm External link. (aesthetics) during the autumn of 2022. In 2023-2025 the platform is being further developed by Amelie Björck External link., Claudia Lindén External link., Stefano Fogelberg Rota, External link. Erik Wallrup External link., Anna Rådström External link. och Åsa Arketeg External link.
Everyone is welcome!
If you want to know more, please email us.
Illustration, top: Dan Karlholm