Apply for CuratorLab and Research Lab CRAFT!

CuratorLab​, 60 credits
Socially-engaged curating in post-democratic times
Take part in a temporary parliament and defend art for social change. 

For the academic year 2019/2020 CuratorLab invites you to take part in a long-term jury and the temporary parliament of the Visible Award, an research platform devoted to socially engaged artistic practices in the global context. It supports art that has become visible as something else: in the fields of law, environment, politics, migration or economy—such as The Silent University, Conflict Kitchen, or the Karrabing Film Collective. This kind of expanded forms of art demands also an expanded understanding of the curatorial skills.

CuratorLab participants are invited to work in response to the shortlisted projects for the 2019 Visible Award edition, contextualizing their practices and participate in the public jury as their defendants. The debate will be held in Paris in fall 2019, in partnership with Lafayette Anticipations. We will ask which curatorial methodologies need to be developed around socially engaged artistic practices? How can art institutions go beyond exhibition and display towards agency and engagement? What is and could be a place for curators in this process? Each participant will work with a chosen artist or a collective and will be granted a small budget to develop public programing. Join us to explore how could art and socially engaged practices work together in an ethical, sensitive and complex way?

CuratorLab expands the ideas of the curatorial beyond the exhibition format. We have worked on public programs with Tensta konsthall, where we re-staged the Operaist Trial with the artist Rossella Biscotti, or co-edited a reader on love and Alexandra Kollontai with artist Dora García and curator Maria Lind. CuratorLab is open to everybody with curiosity to challenge new curatorial practices. We meet 4 times per year for 10 days sessions in Stockholm and Paris.

Head of the program: Joanna Warsza
Guest lecturers: Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander (Visible chief curators) and Maria Lind
Visible Project by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna in partnership.

Research Lab CRAFT! 60 credits
Research Lab 2019: Craft and the Ethnographic Museum

Research Lab explores, both through thinking and studio work, the role of craft today and what it can tell us about ourselves and society. It is a focused, one-year programme aimed at craft professionals. Taught in English, the core modules take place over 2 to 3 consecutive days each month to allow students to take part in the course without having to be based in Stockholm full time. Developed with practitioners in mind, the condensed aspects of the course provide a backbone for generating new work over the year, either in the studios at Konstfack or in the practitioners’ own studios.

From 2018, Research Lab will focus on a different aspect of Craft each year. In 2019–20 the theme for Research Lab is Craft and the Ethnographic Museum. Working in partnership with the Etnografiska museet in Stockholm, the year will explore how the museum and its collection can inspire contemporary craft and also how craft can explore the museum. Working with current debates concerning decolonising museums, the year will investigate the role of this, and other ethnographic collections—and museums more widely—in contemporary society, reading and discussion groups will explore the subject, and each participant is encouraged to apply the theme to their practice in the way that best takes their work forwards, resulting in a site-specific public group exhibition and publication which explores the thinking generated during the year.

Critical thinking is central for the field of Crafts at Konstfack, particularly thinking which challenges established craft and societal norms and expectations. To develop their research skills, students will develop their own area of enquiry drawing on a wide variety of theoretical and practical sources and using these to inform their own practical work and thinking in order to develop and even challenge what research in the field may be.