Björn Lövin, installation view, Consumer in Infinity and “Mr P’s Hoard”. Two environments , Moderna Museet, 1971 © Björn Lövin
Photo: Erik Cornelius/Moderna Museet
Critical thinking in Björn Lövin’s art practise
Lectures & talks
The programme starts with a presentation by the writer and former environmental minister Isabella Lövin, who is Björn Lövin’s daughter.
This is followed by lectures by Helena Mattsson, professor of architectural theory and history, Maria Lind, curator and cultural counsellor at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow, and Rasmus Fleischer, researcher in economic history. The event will be facilitated by Marianna Feher, assistant curator, researcher and artist.
Showing one’s face: Critical thinking in Björn Lövin’s art practise
Date
Saturday 2 April 2022
Time
At 14–16
Place
The Auditorium, floor 2
Language
Swedish
Tickets
Free admission. Tickets are not required for the programme in the Auditorium.
The lectures and talks are part of the preview-day for the exhibition “Björn Lövin – The Surrounding Reality”.
Contact: Catrin Lundqvist, curator
What tools can be used to better understand the systemic crises of our time? What role can art and criticism play in an increasingly fragmented public domain? What factors can bring us together – and what boundaries can exclude us?
From the 1970s and onwards, the artist Björn Lövin explored society and its transformation. He used fictive (but physical) environments to reveal the gap between the welfare and consumer societies, and marginalised groups, the relationship between individual and collective, between image and reality, and what happens when they meet and boundaries are erased.
Isabella Lövin
Isabella Lövin left politics and her position as minister for the environment in spring 2021. She is currently a writer, and her book “Oceankänslan” will be published by Natur & Kultur this spring. In 2009-2014, she was a member of the European Parliament; in 2014, she was appointed minister of international development cooperation, and in 2016, she became co-spokesperson of the Green Party and deputy prime minister.
Lövin is the chairman of the Stockholm Environment Institute since autumn 2021.
She also has honorary doctorates from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the World Maritime University in Malmö. In 2007, she was awarded several prizes for her journalistic book “Silent Seas – The Fish Race to the Bottom”, including the Swedish journalism awards Stora Journalistpriset and Guldspaden.
Helena Mattsson
Helena Mattsson is a professor of architectural theory and history at the KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm. In her research she has studied the relationship between politics, economics and spatial organisation, focusing on the welfare state. She has also explored how architecture relates to consumption, and more recently issues concerning neoliberalism and architecture.
Mattsson is co-editor of “Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State” (2010) and “Neoliberalism on the Ground: Architecture & Transformation from the 1960s to the Present” (2020). Her most recent book “Architecture and Retrenchment: How aesthetics, space, and neoliberalization transformed the Swedish Model, 1968-1994 ” will be published by Bloomsbury in 2022/23.
Maria Lind
Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently serving as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden, Moscow. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tensta konsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). From 2002-2004 she was the director of Kunstverein München and in 1998, co-curator of Europe’s itinerant biennial, Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg. In 2015 she curated Future Light for the first Vienna Biennial, and in 2019 she co-curated the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara.
Maria Lind has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. Currently she is a lecturer at Konstfack’s CuratorLab. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. She is the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In 2010 “Selected Maria Lind Writing” was published by Sternberg Press, and “Seven Years: The Rematerialisation of Art from 2011 to 2017” appeared in the fall of 2019. In 2021, “Konstringar: Vad gör samtidskonsten?” was published by Natur & Kultur. “Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden” (2021) and “The New Model” (2020) are two publications reflecting long-term projects at Tensta konsthall, both published by the art center and Sternberg Press.
Rasmus Fleischer
Rasmus Fleischer is a researcher in economic history at Stockholm University. He is currently collaborating with Daniel Berg on a book about quality adjustment in the consumer price index. Based on archive studies at statistics agencies, they have developed and “index-critical” framework for asking what comparisons of human living standards over shorter or longer periods entails.
Rasmus Fleischer’s previous publications in Swedish include “Det postdigitala manifestet” (2009), “Boken och biblioteket” (2011), “Musikens politiska ekonomi” (2012), “Tapirskrift” (2013) and “Den svenska enhörningen: storyn om Spotify” (with Pelle Snickars, 2018). For the past year, he has been a columnist for Dagens ETC, where he writes about issues relating to digital media.
Marianna Feher
Marianna Feher is the assistant curator for the exhibition “Björn Lövin – The Surrounding Reality”, and is also a researcher and artist. Her practice incorporates text, performance, video, curating and collaborative processes. Since 2020, she and Olivia Berkowicz together operate the artistic research project Tentative Transmits: The Radio as G/Host in the “Former East” at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
