PARSE - Platform for Artistic Research Sweden

09/01/2025

Encounters in the Archive open call now closed!

Thank you to all applicants and to everyone who has shared the call- we have had an incredible amount of interest and look forward to reviewing all the proposals.

Keep a look out both on the PARSE and websites for updates relating to the public symposium scheduled for March 18 in London.

Encounters: Art, Power and Archives is a partnership between Autograph and Parse Journal

Image: Sasha Huber, Tailoring Freedom – Fassena [detail], 2022. Commissioned by The Power Plant, Toronto; Autograph, London; Turku Art Museum, Finland; and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Original image courtesy the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 35-5-10/53048.

30/12/2024

A song to Sana in (becoming) sea by Catalina Mejia Moreno, selected by Cathryn Klasto as one of the highlighted articles for December 2024.⁠

'A song to Sana in (becoming) sea' is a video essay and love letter to Catalina’s unborn son. It is a piece which works through grief, recognising that grief as embodiment is a series of processes of accumulation, as well as of weaving and attuning to multiple human and more-than-human beings and bodies of water. Drawing upon Michrochimerism, or the fate of travelling cells from mother to son, this piece is constructed of seven citations that dwell on Astrida Neimanis’s “becoming bodies of water”.⁠
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Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/a-song-to-sana-in-becoming-sea/ to view the video essay.⁠

image: still from A song to Sana in (becoming) sea by Catalina Mejia Moreno
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#�Becoming #�bodies #�citationalpolitics� #�water�

24/12/2024

Interventionist Internet Art and The Aesthetics of Information Ethics, a presentation by Paolo Cirio for the third Biennial PARSE Research Conference: Human ⁠selected by Cathryn Klasto for the December 2024 featured articles.

Paolo Cirio operates between legal, activist and artistic realms, addressing and intervening in the all-pervasive information society we live in. In his presentation Cirio expands on his working methods and concerns, focusing on 4 bodies of work, including the project Obscurity (2016). ⁠
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Drawing attention to mass incarceration in US, and the ethics surrounding the sensitive public data of online republished mugshots, Cirio cloned, blurred and the shuffled the data contained on mugshot websites, therefore creating "noise" in google search results. A direct and concrete action, advocating for the . ⁠
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Viist https://parsejournal.com/article/paolo-cirio/ to watch the presentation in full

image: Obscurity installation detail, Paolo Cirio.⁠

18/12/2024

The Mothership is Not a Metaphor by John-Paul Zaccarini, selected by Cathryn Klasto as one of the highlighted articles for December 2024.⁠

A text transcript of a performance lecture in which an audience is put into an intimate relation with their racialisation. Guided by the rubrics of philosophical, psychoanalytics and Afrofuturistic Black Studies, and held in a relationship to a “good enough” black father, they journey into the luminous darkness of their inner space.

Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/the-mothership-is-not-a-metaphor/ to read the text in full

16/12/2024

OPEN CALL: Encounters in the Archive
For more information visit: https://parsejournal.com/opencall/encounters-in-the-archive/

Call for papers 📢 Submit your project or research addressing how creative practices can disrupt power structures embedded in archival collections

In March 2025, and will host a new symposium ‘Encounters: Art, Power and Archives’ in London to discuss strategies and methodologies to rethink, reimagine and reshape the histories embedded in archival collections

Submit your paper for a paid opportunity to present your work at the symposium ✨ Here’s how to apply:
🔹 Read full details about the call online
🔹 Submit a 400-word project description and a 200-word bio
🔹 Along with samples of supporting material: up to 6 images and 3 links
🔹 The deadline is Wednesday 8 January 2025

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Encounters: Art, Power and Archives is a partnership between Autograph and Parse Journal

Image: Sasha Huber, Tailoring Freedom – Fassena [detail], 2022. Commissioned by The Power Plant, Toronto; Autograph, London; Turku Art Museum, Finland; and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Original image courtesy the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 35-5-10/53048.

12/12/2024

Figurations Following the Ethical Turn by Lois Klassen, selected by Cathryn Klasto as one of the highlighted articles for December 2024.

As militarized border enforcement is materialized in the everyday of asylum seekers—in Canada, as well as for those caught between Mexico and the US, and indeed most other locations—this text focuses on situations of intense ethical demand for artists. Incidents of artists claiming a personal failure are not unfamiliar in what might be described as a time of ethical and moral preoccupation. Outside of art, a proliferation of ethics—as a term, marketing trope, regulation, or the sincerest of intentions—contrasts with blatant disavowals of the dignity of immigrants in public discourse. In a set of serial and interrelated entries, ethics is examined here as a topic, critique, meaning, or feature produced in and through art. Four sections reflect on how ethics is made productive through its failure, its political work, its relationality, and its own aesthetics. Considering where the failures of migration policies intersect with Indigenous resurgence and territorial claims, this text focuses on artworks that serve to figure or mark specific temporalities and locations in which ethics does (or fails at) its work. Described as figurations (Braidotti) or ecotestimonios (Driver) the artworks highlighted here activate non-metaphoric specificities—territorial and geopolitical.

Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/figurations-following-the-ethical-turn/ to read the text in full.

10/12/2024

The Speculative Art of Assemblism by Jonas Staal, selected by Cathryn Klasto as on of the highlighted articles for December 2024.

Exemplified by four of his collaborative artistic-political projects, here Jonas Staal claims that, despite the fact that we tend to understand it as a catastrophic logic underlying systemic economic crisis—a maddening and criminal system of abuse and exploitation, a sadistic game played by few upon the lives of the many—speculation simultaneously might be part of the answer to this condition. Speculation is also part of what we can term the radical imaginary of both politics and art.

Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/the-speculative-art-of-assemblism/ to read the article in full

image: New World Embassy – Rojava. City Hall Oslo, Norway, 2016. Photo: István Virág and Ernie Buts

05/12/2024

Relocations: The Idiot as a Figure of Miscommunication by Barbara Neves Alves ⁠selected by Cathryn Klasto as one of the highlighted articles for December 2024.⁠
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The article explores the concept of the "idiot" as a figure representing miscommunication and disruption within societal norms. It examines how "idiocy" challenges conventional knowledge systems, revealing power dynamics and gaps in understanding. The discussion spans philosophical, cultural, and artistic contexts, suggesting that the idiot's miscommunication can spark critical reflection and new ways of thinking. It highlights the potential of deliberate misunderstandings to provoke dialogue and transformation.

For more details, read the full article here: https://parsejournal.com/article/relocations-the-idiot-as-a-figure-of-miscommunication/
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03/12/2024

Featured articles for December 2024, chosen by Cathryn Klasto, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art HDK-Valand, Academy of Art and Design and PARSE working group member.⁠

I have selected text-based articles, a conference talk and two video works which offer us insight into the expanded and speculative role of ethics in artistic research.
As a spatial theorist, I work with ways spatial practice can shift meta-ethical epistemologies and I have found these diverse knowledge contexts to be valuable resources to think with.

Visit the PARSE homepage https://parsejournal.com/ to reach the articles.⁠
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28/11/2024

Some Like it Hot

The 6th biennial PARSE conference (November 12-14, 2025) hosted by the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg invites proposals that address the topic of HEAT.

In an era of escalating ecological crises and ever-increasing intensities, heat has global but unequal impacts. Driven by advanced capitalism, fossil-fuel dependency, and digital consumption, heat is a literal threat to the lives of many. Yet heat can also be the manifestation of embodied exuberance, generative pressure, and a catalyst for transformation. As such, heat is a tangible warning, a symbol of urgency, an ingredient of change, and an attribute of pleasure.

The 2025 PARSE conference builds on the previous themes of Violence (2021) and Powers of Love (2023) to now ask: how may artistic research turn up the heat? In what ways may heat act as a manifestation of violence, or lust as a counterpart to love? From mycelium to politicians – who actually likes it hot? What are the potential transformations triggered by friction, fever, sweat? How do conductors of heat (extremities, lightning rods, spices) and by-products of heat (nightmares, chaos, unruliness) function? How does sonic and somatic energy express urgency? What are the smokescreens and speakeasies of our current times?

The 2025 conference calls for proposals from emerging researchers, independents, collaborators, the recalcitrant and the curious. We prioritize artistic, curatorial, performative, and work-in-progress propositions that address heat from a range of positions, perspectives, and disciplines.

Call closes: Monday March 31, 2025

Visit https://parsejournal.com/opencall/some-like-it-hot/ to reach our online submission form

Peer review process
Each proposal will be peer-reviewed by the PARSE conference committee with reference to:
1. relevance to the overarching thematics of “Heat”
2. potential in developing a dialogue across the disciplines
3. originality of contribution

14/11/2024

Call for contributions: Fabulation
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This issue of PARSE aims to explore and interrogate the affordances of mobilising fabulation in artistic practices.⁠
Submission to the Fabulation issue includes participating in the workshop planned for Spring 2025, Gothenburg.⁠
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Deadline for abstracts 20 November 2024⁠
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⁠To read more about the call and how to submit visit https://parsejournal.com/opencall/fabulation-open-call/
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12/11/2024

Value and Doubt: The persuasive power of ‘authenticity’ in the antiquities market by Donna Yates⁠, selected by Elena Raviola as one of the featured articles for Novmeber 2024.⁠
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Archeologist Donna Yates on the contemporary market for antiquities, especially those traded at global reach, and the requirements for proof of authenticity that are both bolder and perhaps more discursively available than those of contemporary art.⁠
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Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/value-and-doubt/ to read the article in full.⁠
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07/11/2024

Devaluation by Andrea Phillips⁠, selected by Elena Raviola as one of the featured articles for Novmeber 2024.⁠
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Academic and organiser Andrea Phillips calls for a new political imaginary of devaluation, closely aligned to current de-growth debates, in order to repurpose the conditions and contexts of artistic and curatorial production.⁠
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Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/devaluation/ to read the text in full.⁠
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04/11/2024

Conversation Christian Boltanski, Paris, March 12 2014⁠, selected by Elena Raviola as one of the featured articles for Novmeber 2024.⁠
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A dialogue between the artist Christian Boltanski and the editors, Henk Slager Ingrid Elam Johan Öberg, where the danger and intrinsic slipperiness of judgement are manifest. This dialogical text is both an enactment of judgement and a deferral of judgement, as we move from Boltanski’s – “the older you get, the more you want to talk about serious things, and you become pompous” – to – “there is only discrepancy and postponed judgement.” The text is unsettled in its genre: part artist’s statement, part interview, part anecdote, part travelogue, and part diaristic reflection. The tangle of genre is a formal strategy that serves well to disclose the knotted discursivity of contemporary art rhetorics and the often oblique thematisation of its discourses. In the playful yet provocative torsion of its form-content, this text seems a fitting preface with which to announce a new peer-review journal that seeks to encourage, extend, and enlarge the dialogue of artistic research with other knowledge practices and other disciplines, but most importantly, to do so in a manner grounded in artistic practices and protocols.⁠
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Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/preface_boltanski/ to read the text in full.⁠
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Boltanski

01/11/2024

Featured articles for November 2024, chosen by Elena Raviola, Professor of Design at HDK-Valand and Co-editor of the current PARSE research theme, Imaginaries of Value.
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I selected these articles at the intersection of my intellectual interests and the pleasure of reading. They highlight a thread among PARSE contributors and editors who address significant societal discourses, such as value, work, judgment, and management, in new ways that depart from lived experiences and personal observations. Ultimately, they provide valuable insights into ways of thinking and engaging with academia that are not only enjoyable and significant for artistic research, but also importantly extend beyond it.
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Visit the PARSE home page https://parsejournal.com to reach the articles.⁠
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29/10/2024

A River with Standing: Personhood in Te Ao Māori, selected by Jessica Hemmings as one of the featured articles for October 2024.⁠

What does it mean for a river to have standing?⁠
⁠In 2017 The Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand was granted the status and rights of a legal person. ⁠
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In the text, A River with Standing: Personhood in Te Ao Māori, Mercedes Vicente explores the implications of this law which not only redresses Māori sovereignty and protects the river, but identifies a new epistemic order that shifts and extends the traditional anthropocentric social contract to include nature.⁠
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Visit https://parsejournal.com/article/a-river-with-standing-personhood-in-te-ao-maori/ to read the text in full
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image: Natalie Robertson, Waiapu River Confluence to Sea 22 Kilometers (2017)⁠
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23/10/2024

Open Call for contributions: PARSE Issue #22 Summer 2025 Fabulation
Editors: Ram Krishna Ranjan and Jyoti Mistry

Fabulation has been conceptualised and applied under various names depending on the social, epistemic and artistic context. Artists and scholars are invited to address imaginative capacities that foreground what is otherwise conceived of as irrecoverable and unrepresentable. Fabulation provides theoretical and artistic practices to imagine alternative futures. This issue of PARSE aims to explore and interrogate the affordances of mobilising fabulation in artistic practices.
Submission to the Fabulation issue includes participating in the workshop planned for Spring 2025, Gothenburg.

Deadline for abstracts 20 November 2024
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For the long version of the open call and more info on how to submit visit https://parsejournal.com/opencall/fabulation-open-call/

Please share this call as we are keen to extend beyond our own networks!⁠

21/10/2024

“Tête-à-Tête: Kalinda is Love” reveals the “transformability of performance through ritual war dances, erotic play, games, [and the] celebration of life and death which initiates experiences that shatter boundaries of being.”

In a demonstration-performance Jamie J. Philbert and Rondel Benjamin invited participants through call and response, dance and drumming to experience the sacred combat ritual of Kalinda from Trinidad and Tobago.

Rondel Benjamin is a martial artist, educator, public intellectual, community advocate and boisman. Jamie J. Philbert is an interdisciplinary artist, martial artist/bois woman, educator, scholar, published writer, curator, and Caribbean award nominated/locally winning filmmaker.

Visit https://parsejournal.com/media/jamie-j-philbert-and-rondel-benjamin-tete-a-tete-kalinda-is-love/ to watch the performance in full.

image: Courtesy the artists: Rondel Benjamin and Jamie J. Philbert