Elective courses for our programme students

Elective courses spring semester 2026

Infrastructural Aesthetics?

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 3
Teacher: Sam Lewitt
Dates: 19 – 23 January
Time: 10.00 – 15.00
Form: Seminar/Intensive Workshop
Language: English
Number of students: 15-20

Course Description and Learning Outcomes

This week-long seminar meets five times for three hours each day and investigates the relationship between infrastructure and aesthetic experience. Beginning from late modernist attempts to shift the terrain of the artwork from isolated object production to institutional and urban systems, and extending to recent theorizations of infrastructural critique, we will explore how artistic work can foreground the social conditions and physical supports that make cultural production possible, rather than treating them as invisible or secondary. Readings by Marina Vischmidt, Sabeth Buchmann and others will frame debates on institutional critique and the expanded field of artistic strategies that engage with infrastructures of everyday life. Group discussions of historical practices such as Mierle Ukeles Landsman, John Knight, Charlotte Posenenska, Michael Asher as well as contemporary practices such as Coumba Samba, Cameron Rowland, Maria Eichorn and Aaron Flint Jamison will bring us into the present moment, providing concrete case studies of how spatial, temporal and institutional infrastructures are understood and pressurized through artistic practice.

The course asks: How does infrastructure become both the condition and subject of artistic practice? What are the stakes of exposing or displacing the systems that sustain art’s production and circulation? In what ways might aesthetic form itself be understood as infrastructural?

The course is organized into four thematic units:

• Unit 1: Art of Infrastructure/Infrastructure of Art – Introduction: What do we mean by ‘infrastructure’ and what is its significance within late modernism and contemporary art?
• Unit 2: Aesthetic Form and Site Specificity – We will explore the concepts and histories reviewed in the previous unit from a wider perspective, focusing on theories of aesthetic experience and everyday life.
• Unit 3/4: Infrastructural Critique – This unit will engage students in a dialog around contemporary theories of ‘infrastructural critique’ through selected short readings (Vischmidt/ Buchmann). Readings will be accompanied by introduction and discussion to relevant contemporary practices.
• Unit 5: Practice as Intervention – Students will be asked to sketch a hypothetical intervention into a concrete infrastructural system. This may take the form of a one-page reflection to be presented and discussed on the day of our final meeting

Assessment

Assessment will be based on active participation, the preparation of daily provocations (statements or questions that affirm or put into doubt a moment in the text), and the presentation of a one-page reflection/presentation that applies the frameworks of infrastructural critique to a chosen system or context.

What is Media?

Optional MFA level course

Credits: 10
Teacher: Joakim Sandqvist
Dates and times: Wednesdays; 21, 28 January and 4 February at 13.00 – 16.00, 11, 18 and 25 February at 10.00 – 16.00  
Form: Seminar
Language: English
Number of students: 20

Course description

This course introduces key media-theoretical approaches to apparatus, format, reproduction, circulation, and materiality. We trace how images and sounds travel through platforms, standards, and infrastructures, and how these pathways’ structure reception, meaning, and power. We also draw on media archaeology and media geology to examine the often-hidden material infrastructures, extractive practices and environmental impacts of media systems. These theories will also be paired with case studies in sound and moving image.

Together we ask: What does a medium do—technically, culturally, politically? How do apparatuses and formats shape aesthetics and publics? How do different ways of reproduction and circulation redefine authorship and value?

Through close reading, listening/viewing, and seminar discussion, we will develop an understanding of this field of thinking and relate these debates to our own practices.

Assessment and Examination / Examination

Assessment consists of active participation in seminar discussions.

Preparation for each seminar is required: read/listen/view the assigned materials in full, highlight passages for discussion, and/or formulate questions to pose to the group. 

Preliminary literature list

• Walter Benjamin — The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935/1939)Walter Benjamin — Das kalte Herz (radio adaptation after Wilhelm Hauff, c. 1930–33)
• Harun Farocki — Eye/Machine (2001)
• Harun Farocki — Parallel I–IV (2012–2014)
• Vilém Flusser — Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1983)
• Stuart Hall — Encoding/Decoding (1973/1980)
• Erkki Huhtamo & Jussi Parikka (eds.) — Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (2011)
• Friedrich Kittler — Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Introduction (1986)
• Lev Manovich — The Language of New Media (2001)
• Jussi Parikka — A Geology of Media (2015)
• Pink Floyd — Brain Damage (1973
• Song Exploder — Episode 91: DJ Shadow — “Mutual Slump”
• DJ Shadow — Endtroducing….. (1996)
• Hito Steyerl — In Defense of the Poor Image (2009)
• Raymond Williams — Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)

Analysing your own work

Optional MFA level course

Credits: 7,5
Teacher: Gertrud Sandqvist
Dates: Tuesdays; 3, 10, 17, 24 February, 3 and 10 March
Time: 10.00 -12.00
Form: Lectures and Seminars
Language: Svenska och engelska/Swedish and English
Number of students: 6

Course description

The aim is to provide the students with deepened knowledge and insight in both the artistic field which their work will be a part of and the history of how that field has developed. To integrate analytical knowledge into their own artistic work, both in the spoken and the written language, will be given special attention. 

The course aim is to enhance the students’ ability to formulate and show a well-motivated artistic wholeness. The goal is that the students shall develop a deepened understanding of artistic work.

The course offers a model for analyzing your own work and training in analyzing images. Students analyze works by other students, and listen when their own work is analyzed by the others. The course serves as an introduction to the analytical component of the MFA exam.

The course offers close analysis of the students’ own work in group seminars. The method is simple. It aims at giving students tools for thorough analysis of individual works and an understanding of how viewers understand their work. If it is relevant and if the participants wish, we will also read image theory that might be applicable to the students’ work.

Introduction to 3D tool customisation

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 5
Teacher: Youngjae Lih
Dates: 16, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27 February, 2, 4 and 5 March
Time: 10.00 – 16.00
Prerequisite: A laptop, 3-wheel mouse
Form: Workshop
Language: English
Number of students: 8

Course description

In this two-week intensive, the students will explore 3D technologies as a means to create personal tools for their work. Participants will learn to 3D scan objects, model designs in Fusion 360, and fabricate small-scale 3D prints that can be turned into usable tools. The workflow will also incorporate mold-making from 3D prints so that students can cast their designs in other materials later. By the end, students will have designed and produced a custom tool (or set of tools) of their own conception, and in doing so will have gained solid introductory-to-intermediate skills in 3D scanning, CAD modeling, 3D printing, and basic molding/casting. Therefore, this course will be an excellent option for someone who lacks skill or a fully equipped workshop but wants to formulate a basic prototype of their idea, artistic creation, invention and supportive tools for other manufacturing methods.

Laptop/3-wheel mouse will be required for each working session.

• If you do not bring your laptop and the mouse to the workshop, you CAN NOT participate in the session and will have to arrange a make-up session.
• Computer modeling is highly energy intensive. Please bring a power cable to plug your computer in during the work sessions. Computers will run slower on batteries.

The student will be able to:

• To gain knowledge and skills related to 3D model/ printing technologies. To know basic object scanning skills.
• To learn the selection of material, equipment and development of a product.
• To understand the various software tools(Fusion360), processes and techniques for digital manufacturing.
• To prepare a project proposal, complete a large scale printing project that requires multiple printed pieces, collaborate with other interested parties to complete the project, and prepare and present their project to a group of individuals.
• To prepare a provided 3D CAD model using slicer software for FDM printing, successfully print the model, and post-process the final print to create a high-quality final print.

Course Outline

• Example Showcase
• Design / Printing Process Overview Design for 3D Printing
• Modelling  Working with Meshes(Fusion360) Modelling : Scanning Tool
• Modellin: Editing Scanned Files Modelling : Fixing Scan Bugs Prototype Printing : Workflow Prototype Printing: Slicing / Calibration

Thinking sculpture - form and content

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 5
Teacher: Gabriel Karlsson
Dates: 9 – 13 March and 27 March
Time: 10.00 – 16.00
Form: Seminar
Language: Svenska/English
Number of students: 8

Course description

Form is what prevents the content from leaking out

Through a slow conversation, we examine in a group how close reading, and a "close viewing" can be used in the understanding of sculpture and how it can be used in sculptural processes. The course focuses on the concepts of form and content; how they are closely connected and what distinguishes them from each other. Furthermore, how the concept of form can be used in relation to sculpture, text and process.

Form is often used to describe formal structures in a work, purely technical or physical, but the framework also communicates on its own terms and suggests its own logic. Content is categorized as the meaning of what something is and what an artwork communicates. In the meeting between these two parts of a work, a third aspect is created, something that is less tangible. In the course we map the parts to see how they can be used in artistic processes.

By exploring artworks, texts and different frameworks, we further discuss what distinguishes our view of form in relation to different media such as text, sculpture, installation; and examine how form communicates.

The course is based on spatial experiments where we install and look at objects together. Using text excerpts, we investigate similarities and differences between “reading” and “viewing”. We read text and look at objects in parallel, side by side, and see how this creates cross-constructions and thereby new meaning in the viewing of a work. 

During the course, we develop a framework for a shared viewing together. Different strategies and perspectives are chiseled out that can be used as tools in thinking about text and sculpture, form and content - and furthermore artworks and space.

The course aims to investigate and create common methods and tools for looking at sculpture, based on the concepts of form and content. The course is intended to provide an in-depth understanding of how close reading can be used both as a method in viewing sculpture and practically in individual artistic practice. As well as how one can use the concepts of form and content as tools in one's artistic process.

Location: Project room. The course is conversation-based and the participants jointly steer the course forward in larger and smaller groups. The course week requires mandatory on-site attendance.

Examination

Active participation and individual presentation of artistic work.

Manthia Diawara: One World in Relation 

Optional MFA level course

Credits: 3 (TBD)
Teacher: Jürgen Bock
Dates: 16 – 20 March
Time: 10.00 – 16.00
Form: Seminar
Language: English
Number of students: 20

The aim of the seminar is to screen and discuss the films of Manthia Diawara and impart knowledge about:

1. The production and presentation of films in the context of the art world
2. The cinematic work of Manthia Diawara and
3. The themes raised in Diawara's essay films.

Manthia Diawara was born in Mali, West Africa. He is a distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University. Diawara is a prolific writer and filmmaker. His essays on art, cinema and politics have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Libération, Mediapart, October and Artforum. He is the author of two acclaimed memoirs: In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 2000) and We Won’t Budge: An African in the World (Basic Books, 2008). He has published several books on African and African American cinema. Diawara’s notable films include Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023),  AI: African Intelligence (2022), A Letter from Yene (2022), An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2016), Édouard Glissant, One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008) and Rouch in Reverse (1995). His films have been presented at festivals, biennials and a wide range of exhibition venues, including the 15^th Sharjah Biennale, 73^rdBerlinale–Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 34^th Bienal de São Paulo, the Centre Pompidou, documenta 14, Museu de Serralves, HKW-Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Manifesta 12, Lumiar Cité, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Serpentine Galleries.  

The seminar examines contemporary film production conditions in the art world, using the cinematic work of Manthia Diawara as an example. Similar to filmmaker Harun Farocki, the material conditions and contexts of his film production have shifted over time from the world of cinema and television to the art world. The cinematic oeuvre of both filmmakers occupies today a hybrid position between these worlds.

The seminar focuses on Diawara's essay films with their autoethnographic approach. In addition to screening a series of his films, texts by Diawara will be discussed.

The topics addressed in the films will be examined along with analysing how Diawara rendered these topics into the medium of film. These include the poetic philosophy of Édouard Glissant; questions of African modernity from the perspectives of Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka and the first president of independent Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor; dramas of classical operas in the context of contemporary refugee dramas; the work of Mozambican, Portuguese and South African artist Ângela Ferreira; the philosophical positioning of US activist Angela Davis; and questions about contact zones between African rituals of possession and the emergence of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

One of the seminar’s starting points will be questioning the extent to which Diawara, as a researcher at the interface between European and African philosophy, uses the medium of film to connect different worlds and thus create new ones.

Films and artists/topics to discuss: 

1. Maison Tropicale (2008)
2. Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation (2010)
3. Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2015)
4. An Opera of the World (2017)
5. AI: African Intelligence (2022)
6. Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023)

Mireille Ngatsé lived for several years in Maison Tropicale in Brazzaville, designed by Jean Prouvé, a famous French constructor and architect. Ngatsé describes this aluminium house as comfortable, even though it had no electricity or running water. She loved the fresh air and the light coming in through the round windows. One day, four men came from France to Brazzaville, and took Maison Tropicale away in containers. Today, Mireille Ngatsé sees her house in a catalogue, and reads about it as it is being exhibited around the world as a precious art object.

Diawara's documentary complements Ângela Ferreira's artistic project on the Maison Tropicales designed by Jean Prouvé, which was exhibited at the 2007 Venice Biennale. The film uncovers the hidden stories and memories of those left behind in Africa when the structures were removed. It is a postcolonial exploration of African identity, art and cultural heritage.

In 2009, Diawara accompanied poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant on a transatlantic voyage from Southampton (UK) to Brooklyn (New York) aboard the Queen Mary 2, capturing the journey on camera. This poetic meditation continued in Martinique, Glissant's native home. These extraordinary voyages resulted in an intellectual biography in which Glissant elaborates on his theory of relation and the concept of ‘tout-monde’. In the 1980s, his theories of creolisation, diversity and otherness, as set out in the book Le Discours Antillais (1981), were considered groundbreaking texts for emerging studies in multiculturalism, identity politics, minority literature and Black Atlanticism. During the 1990s and 2000s, he developed the theories of ‘poétique de la relation’ and ‘tout-monde’, in which the concept of ‘relation’ is perceived as an autonomous entity that moves between objects, providing them with energy, poesis and difference. In his book Philosophie de la relation (2009), Glissant used this concept to reflect on the new meanings of globalisation, chaos, violence, equality and justice

Based on archival material, Diawara organises an imagined dialogue between Léopold Senghor, one of the founders of the concept of negritude, and Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The film probes the current relevance of the concept of Negritude, against the views of its many critics, not only to the decolonization and independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s, but also to an understanding of the contemporary artistic and political scenes of nationalism, religious intolerance, multiculturalism, the exodus of Africans and other populations from the South, and xenophobic migration policies in the West.

The film is based on Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which narrates an eternal immigration drama. The opera, filmed in Bamako in 2007, serves as a mirror for Diawara to build an aesthetic and reflexive story, through song and dance, about the current and yet timeless drama of emigration between North and South. The film ponders the realities of cultural encounters through the concepts of métissage and hybridity. The success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives are tested by interlacing performances from Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, past and present archival footage of migrations, classic European arias and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists.

The film explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession among traditional fishing villages onthe Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Diawara asks if Africa could be the context of emergence of such improbable algorithms.

In this film, Diawara provides a visual and sonic introduction to the radical and ever-evolving philosophy of Angela Davis. The focus of his artistic project is Davis's political philosophy. Drawing on international archives of photographs, paintings, drawings and writings, Diawara creates visualisations, illustrations and counterpoints to Davis’s statements on philosophy and the lived experience of oppressed people, which he gathered through interviews. The interviews aimed to compile a collection of keywords and phrases for Davis to define and elaborate on. Another important component of the film is a soundtrack featuring Davis's favourite music. This was inspired by her belief in the power of the arts — and music in particular — to imbue people's aspirations with meaning, sometimes even before they realise it themselves.

Jürgen Bock gained an MFA from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and a Ph.D. from the Malmö Art Academy / Lund University. He works as a curator, writer and film producer. Exhibitions he has curated include a series at the CCB Project Room, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2000–01), comprising projects with artists such as Eleanor Antin, Nathan Coley, Harun Farocki, and Renée Green; Andreas Siekmann, Triennale-India, New Delhi, 2005; Ângela Ferreira, Maison Tropicale, Portuguese Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007; Heimo Zobernig, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2012; Allan Sekula, The Dockers’ Museum, La Criée, Rennes, 2012, and Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich, 2014; Parting with the Bonus of Youth—Maumaus as Object (with Simon Thompson), Galeria Avenida da Indía, Lisbon Municipal Galleries, 2019; Maumaus as Object (with Simon Thompson) as part of The Educational Web exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2023. 

Over the course of the last three decades, Bock has established and grown the Maumaus School of Visual Arts in Lisbon from a local photography school to an internationally recognised independent study programme. Since 2009, Bock has curated and programmed more than fifty exhibitions at Lumiar Cité, the exhibition space affiliated with Maumaus, including work by artists and filmmakers such as Gabriel Abrantes, Maria Thereza Alves, Judith Barry, Cosima von Bonin, Alejandro Cesarco, Tiffany Chung, Loretta Fahrenholz, Harun Farocki, Ângela Ferreira, Peter Friedl, Renée Green, David Hammons, Judith Hopf, Ana Jotta, Dozie Kanu, Aglaia Konrad, Lone Haugaard Madsen, Jawad Al Malhi, Willem Oorebeek, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Fredrik Værslev.

In addition, Bock has written numerous essays, published a range of catalogues and edited several books, including From Work to Text: Dialogues on Practise and Criticism in Contemporary Art (2002) and Parting with the Bonus of Youth—Maumaus as Object (co-edited with Simon Thompson, 2021). He produced Renée Green’s artist’s book Negotiations in the Contact Zone (2003) as well as Portuguese versions of Allan Sekula’s books TITANIC’s wake (2003) and Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2015). Bock has been responsible for the organisation and coordination of numerous international conferences and has produced several documentary films, such as Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023) and AI: African Intelligence (2022), both directed by Manthia Diawara. 

Analog photography

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 6
Teachers: Maria Hedlund
Dates: 23 – 27 March and 13 – 17 April
Time: 10.00 – 16.00
Location: Photo-video studio and dark room, Båghallarna
Form: Workshop
Language: Svenska/English
Number of students: 6

Course description

The course provides both foundational knowledge and deeper exploration of analog photography, aimed to beginners as well as those already working with photography. The intention is to give an understanding of photographic processes and offer opportunities for continued artistic development.

We will work practically with medium and large format cameras, film development, printing and lighting techniques. Throughout the course, we will examine artistic practices where photography plays a significant role, and discuss concepts such as staging, fiction/documentary, appropriation, and more. There will be opportunities för individual studio-visits. The course concludes with a group presentation, where participants share their work and reflect on their process with the group.

Monster, Minor, Margin: Black Body / Being / Performance in Archive and Media

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 3
Teachers: Kandis Williams
Dates: 20 – 24 April and reading
Time: 10.00 – 15.00
Form: Seminar
Language: English
Number of students: 15-20

Course description

Kandis Williams — artist, writer, curator, and founder of Cassandra Press — will lead this one-week seminar. Her work moves between performance, installation, publishing, and curatorial projects, all grounded in sustained inquiry into race, gender, power, and representation.

The course will work toward building a language performance as a conceptual body in Motion — how this type of work is researched, conceived, produced, documented, framed, and received — and for thinking about the strategies of how performance is drawn from lived experience. In the seminar, we’ll look at how highly aestheticized bodies circulate through the entertainment complex of popular culture, dance, and movement, and how these forms intersect with and reflect social movements and parafictional applications of performance. In the studio, students will bring these questions into their own practice, testing ideas in relation to the mechanics and politics of performance.

Readings and screenings, centered in Black Studies, will engage the work of marginal authors in film, stage, and music. We will look at early and contemporary global horror cinema, read Christina Sharpe, Robin R. Means Coleman, Erica Edwards, Felicia McCarren, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, among others, and watch classics such as Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Persona, or Pina Bausch’s Rites of Spring.

Together, we’ll develop ways of “seeing” and “reading” performance in both live and mediated forms — as sites of storytelling, as archives, and as spaces where aesthetics and politics meet in and outside of the body.

Kandis Williams (b. 1985, Baltimore, Maryland) received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2009. She has presented solo exhibitions at The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; 52 Walker, a David Zwirner exhibition space, New York, NY; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; Works on Paper, Vienna; St. Charles Projects, Baltimore, MD; and SADE, Los Angeles. She has participated in group exhibitions at several institutions, including the Hammer Museum and Huntington Libraries, Los Angeles; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Rancho Cucamonga, CA; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Underground Museum, Los Angeles. Her work has recently been featured in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artforum, GQ Style, Frieze, W Magazine, LA Weekly, and Cultured, among others. As of 2021, her work belongs in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin; and the New Berlin Art Society, Berlin. She is the 2021 recipient of the prestigious Mohn Award, granted by the Hammer Museum in recognition of artistic excellence, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ 2021 Grants to Artists Award.

Documenting your own work

Optional BFA level course

Credits: 5
Teachers: Youngjae Lih & Johan Österholm
Dates: 11 - 13 May and 21 – 22 May
Time: 10.00 – 16.00
Form: Workshop
Language: English
Number of students: 10

Course description

The aim of the course is to introduce photographical- and digital technique, and to give appropriate knowledge making the participants able to make documentations of their own work.

Photo-studio

We will go through “general” camera settings, how to use gray card, light settings on flat and three-dimensional objects, discuss common obstacles and how to overcome them.

As a preparation for photographing installation views, we will discuss natural light vs portable studio light and look at examples from both. We will also document work in motion and reflective works.

Computer-room

We will look into how to get a good digital workflow: Calibrating screen. Photoshop editing and RAW-file processing. Correcting exposure, white balance and lens distortion. Merging images with different exposures and removing unwanted objects like dirt from the floor and walls, emergency signs etc. Straightening lines. Creating a seamless sequence of images.

Practical assignment

Divide into smaller groups, preferably three students in each. Document an exhibition or a section of it, at either KHM galleries or at another Malmö venue. With focus on capture both the artworks in relation to the room/space and an individual work. Edit the image sequence together in the group and present them to the class. Did you encounter any problems during the shoot or editing? How did you overcome them? Is there something you wish you had done different?

• Camera and light settings:
  ”General” camera settings, how to use a gray card, common obstacles and how  to overcome them. 
   
• Photographing installation views and individual works:
  Natural light vs portable studio light - examples from both
  How to document works in motion and reflective works, with examples
   
• Digital work flow: 
  Calibrating screen, Photoshop editing and RAW-file processing Correcting exposure, white balance and lens distortion. Merging images with different exposures and removing unwanted objects (dirt from floor and walls, emergency exit signs etc), straightening lines and creating a seamless sequence of images.
   
• Help with specific needs or questions from the students